3 Children

"From all accounts, Leow Puay Tin's Three Children is an important contribution to Singapore-Malaysian theatre. It is an impression most readers and audiences are likely to share. First produced in Kuala Lumpur in 1988, the revised version was presented by TheatreWorks early this year in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Yokohama, jointly directed by Krishen Jit (who, like Leow, is a Malaysian) and Ong Keng Sen. This sharing of interest and co-operation which already exists in other areas of the performing arts, augurs well for the further development of the region's theatre whose rich immemorial traditions include one in English as a colonial legacy..."

[...]

"... Plays are best seen. Yet published ones have their value, not only between productions or as complements to videos and other forms of visual retrieval, but also for intrinsic reasons. Such texts are portable. Moreover, they allow us to study the play. The stimulation of a performance is exchanged for opportunities of careful, deeper analysis of themes and characters. As we attend to words on the page there is the pleasure of staging/directing the play in our minds. With Three Children our interest is stimulated, indeed challenged, by both the playwright's and directors' notes. Like the play itself, they make fascinating, instructive reading. In launching its Southeast-Asian Plays Series with Three Children, NUS Theatre has picked a play that contributes significantly, perhaps even 'uniquely', to the 3 Ps, the main areas of a thriving theatre, namely, Play, Production and People (audience)."

– Professor Lim Pin (Vice-Chancellor, National University of Singapore)

(Source: 3 Children foreword)