It was in April 1992, at the opening of the Singapore Press Holdings Young Playwright Series, when then-Senior Minister of Education Tay Eng Soon intoned, “Ours is still a traditional society which values what is private and personal and is not comfortable with public values and explicit discussions of sexuality and what it considers as deviant values. By all means, let our “cultural desert” bloom. But please let the blossoms be beautiful and wholesome and not be prickly pears or weeds.”
The mid-80s to the early 90s was a particularly prolific period for Singapore theatre. This was the decade which theatre academic Robin Loon described as a “golden age” for local drama. Researcher Terence Chong also noted this period as a time when theatre-makers, both queer and queer-allied, felt emboldened enough to “perform their authenticity”.
The Vault: Desert Blooms delves into these ten years of Singapore theatre history, unearthing an abundance of LGBTQ-themed plays. Some of these plays are now celebrated works which continue to be restaged. Others, despite breaking new ground, have faded into obscurity.
An accompanying exhibition, titled The Desert Blooms, features nine of these plays. The exhibition details who, when and how these plays were created, and also touched on any resistance these plays might have encountered when they were staged for the first time. The Desert Blooms exhibition runs from 30 Nov to 20 Dec 2019 in the Centre 42 Library.