ELANGOVAN, bilingual poet, playwright-director, screenwriter, literary editor, transcreator, and pioneer of modern Tamil poetry and Tamil experimental theatre in Singapore, was educated in Raffles Institution, and obtained a BA (Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts) and a MA (Middlesex University, UK) in Theatre Directing. He is the Artistic Director of Agni Kootthu (Theatre of Fire).
He has published three collections of poetry and 13 collections of plays. His plays TALAQ (2000) and SMEGMA (2006) and STOMA (2013), though available in book form, are still banned for ‘performance’ in Singapore.
Since 1991, he has written, adapted, transcreated and directed numerous plays for Agni Kootthu (Theatre of Fire), a prominent bilingual exploratory theatre group in Singapore. His unpublished plays include BECAK (Trishaw), PULI (Tiger), SANGRE (in Spanish - Blood). His works have been staged in Australia, UK, South Africa, Spain and India. He has also participated as a Dramaturg: MOSAIC Youth Theatre of Detroit, USA, Dec 2000, UNESCO International Theatre Festival, Sinaia, Romania, Jul 2001, and at the FIESTA! International Experimental Theatre Festival, Dec 2001, Caracas, Venezuela.
Elangovan was listed on tamilnation.org as one of the renowned individuals in their list of 100 Tamils of the 20th Century - Tamils who had made significant contributions to the world. He was listed as No.8 on the language and literature category among other prominent Tamil intellectuals.
Considered controversial and a persona-non-grata in the boot-licking - self-censoring - state-blessed literary milieu, his works explore the untouched realities in Singapore. He believes that art should conscientise, confront and question accepted societal stereotypes of vision, perception, feeling and judgement to examine reality as a historical and social process. He received the 1997 SEA (South-East Asia) Write Award in Bangkok, Thailand for his bilingual contribution to literature (poetry) and theatre in Singapore.