Written by Haresh Sharma, Off Centre (1993) focuses on the relationship between two young schizophrenics, both of whom face stigma from people in their lives while trying to reintegrate into society.
Featuring a strong ensemble including Neo Swee Lin and Siti Khalijah, Oliver Chong helms this production to tell a resonating and personal story of friendship and societal and familial pressures in a Singaporean context.
Off Centre is The Necessary Stage’s landmark play. First staged to critical acclaim in 1993, it is best remembered for bringing mental illness and the plight of patients to public and media attention. It has since been adapted into an experimental feature film, a television movie, given a full reading in the UK, studied as an academic text—at tertiary level and as part of the Ministry of Education’s GCE ‘O’ level literature syllabus—as well as translated and staged as Otak Tak Centre in Kuala Lumpur.