Tan Tarn How: Six Plays

"Tan Tarn How can be succinctly described as a playwright of the public life and a raconteur of social history in the way he captures the zeitgeist with the exactitude and incisiveness of a political analyst. This can be attributed to a spillover from his full-time occupation, initially as a journalist with the political desk of The Straits Times and eventually as a senior research fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies where the ambit of his duties encompasses studies of policy issues on the social rubric. His days in political journalism and active involvement in the media (he also had a short spell as a scriptwriter in MediaCorp television) make him particularly well informed about the subjects he deals with and his subsequent research on policy matters provides both an insider's look as well as a larger perspective...

[...]

"... Noting the topicality of these plays, therefore, one cannot help but detect a similar impetus between Tan and Naomi Klein's stance towards tumultuous moments in history, even though their respective fields of application and modus operandi are widely divergent, and the parallel ends here. Klein's bestselling book on how the "free market" came to dominate the world places a similar onus on the aftermath of a controversial event. Her definition of "the shock doctrine" is the cunning exploitation of public disorientation following massive collective shocks – wars, terrorist attacks, or natural calamities – to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy, and when the first two shocks don't succeed in eradicating resistance, a third shock is administered: the electrode in the prison cell or the Taser gun on the streets. Tan's quasi-historicist treatment of real life events in his drama similarly focuses on the public disorientation after a news-making incident, when too much rumour-mongering, confabulations and forum discussions can end up veiling its true significance, and one might mistake the smokescreen for the truth. Whether or not the dubious practice of censorship in Singapore functions as the "third shock" where Tan is concerned, his plays do serve as the social barometer of our times by their no-holds-barred political satire, putting events in their proper contexts and putting history into perspective for the elucidation of all and sundry."

– Dr K.K. Seet 

(Source: Tan Tarn How: Six Plays introduction)