To be on the margins is to exist or be pushed out to the very furthest limits of a page, an area, a state, a condition, a society, to be at risk of being forgotten. To operate within the margins is to colour inside the lines, to stand behind the yellow line, to be ensconced in familiarity and similarity at the stable centre. When this status quo is challenged, the instinct then is for self preservation.
We retreat and turn inward to the certainty of the black-and-white, to shun the unknown and the different.
Yet, so much of being human exists in the grey. And Haresh Sharma possesses a keen awareness of this. His plays have the uncanny ability to flesh out these states of grey, and to steer an audience away from absolutes and reductive judgments. His words and characters evoke empathy and a deeper understanding of what it means to be human. In his worlds, he finds a place for those standing at the margins, whether metaphysical, philosophical or physical, and gives them dignity and the time to speak. But to truly understand Sharma's work is to appreciate that the stories he writes are not a product of a single imagination. Together with long-time collaborator and Artistic Director of The Necessary Stage, Alvin Tan, they have developed a unique devising process that is hugely collaborative, characterised by extensive research, dialogue and exploration with a diverse group of voices. This is the heart and engine of Sharma's work, and the nuance and sensitivity that emerge become ever more precious in the uncertainty and fear that define our world and age today.
This is the first time that The Studios has focused the spotlight on the work of a single playwright. Historically, Sharma's work has mostly been directed by Alvin Tan. But for this season, in the spirit of continued dialogue and exploration, we asked five different theatre-makers to select and respond to works by Sharma. The four full-length productions presented - Fundamentally Happy, With/Out, This Chord and Others, and Hope - have taken on new life as each of the theatre-makers approach the text with their vastly different practices, aesthetics, vocabularies, cultures, and perspectives. For RAW this year, precise purpose of being broken is a new work-in-progress adapted from a special collage of ten texts by Sharma, some of which have never been published or staged.
We invite you to take the time to listen to the re-telling of these stories. For it is perhaps in rooting for those who struggle to find hope in desperate situations; in mourning with a man as he comes to terms with his mortality; in questioning a woman's choice to protect her paedophilic husband; in seeing three friends negotiate friendship regardless of race, language or religion; that we can begin to re-discover our common humanity and to realise that the margins we draw might not actually be margins at all.
(Source: Esplanade - Theatres on the Bay Programme)