In the Living Room with Michael Chiang

Michael Chiang. The playwright who began his writing-for-the-stage journey in 1984. 30 years and 10 plays later, he is one of the most familiar names in Singapore and Singapore theatre. Lesser known was his role as editorial director at Mediacorp Publishing (1990 to 2009).

With casual chit-chat and open conversations, we go beyond the playwright and his plays to uncover and re-frame themes, obvious and obscure, in his body of work. We invite you to join Michael in our Living Room for a time of reflection and rethinking, to relate what is discussed to yourselves and the environment we live in, and to evaluate it against your own experiences and beliefs.

The Living Room is a programme by Centre 42 that welcomes chat and conversation. Through focused but casual dialogues and face-to-face exchanges, this programme encourages participants to re-examine trends, happenings, people (on & off-stage) and phenomena in Singapore theatre.

This cosy session saw Dr Robin Loon in conversation with Singaporean playwright Michael Chiang, chatting about his play-writing journey, the development of the local theatre scene in the 80s and 90s, and his personal responses to some of the harshest critiques of his work. The 75-minute Living Room Chat has been repackaged into a 3-part video recording.