Collected Plays Two

By Alfian Sa'at

Alfian Sa’at’s The Asian Boys Trilogy is a fascinating, insightful tour through the lives and loves of the gay community in Singapore. In the campy and carnivalesque Dreamplay, history is turned upside-down as a goddess travels through time to ‘save gay men from themselves’. In Landmarks, geography takes centrestage, as eight short plays explore the spaces that have been claimed, colonised, and trespassed by those at the margins of the mainstream. In Happy Endings, the playwright’s adaptation of the novel Peculiar Chris evolves into a meditation on the relationship between life and literature. With clear-eyed compassion and eloquent outrage, this collection of plays charts the coming-of-age of a community finding its voice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ethos Books
• Release date: Aug 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9789811416682

Book preview

Dreamplay

Asian Boys Vol. 1

"Asian Boys Vol. 1 is a runaway success, a fandango of laughter, tears and even more tears of laughter…laced requisitely with enough risqué elements to rile prudish sentiments, and injected with enough bitchin’, wit and insider allusions to delight those in the know. The routine…is all very delightful, supremely ironic and self-conscious fun…Playwright Alfian Sa’at’s adaptation of August Strindberg’s A Dream Play takes the skeletal plot of a goddess descending on earth to save mankind from mankind, and dresses it up feverishly with local colour and pop-culture references galore. The effect is electrifying."

- Yeow Kai Chai, The Straits Times, 2 Dec 2000

The clever and witty script…provided portraits of contemporary gay Singaporean culture, where extraordinary flights of objective speculation were punctuated with personal confessions. Alfian has engaged in furious dialogue over various issues associated with this particular sexual minority, illuminating the gay culture of Singapore in the process. Alternately friendly and threatening in the approach to various gay issues…cruising through time, the play grabbed gay history by the collar and made bitter love to it…embraced what is seen as alien, clinical or criminal in Singapore and loved it into poignant life…marks an important step and direction for gay theatre in Singapore.

- James Koh, The Flying Inkpot, 1 Dec 2000

Dreamplay

Asian Boys Vol.1

Playwright’s Note: The exchange between Indra and Agnes is taken from the opening passage in August Strindberg’s ‘A Dream Play’.

One: Agnes’ Descent

Agnes: 40’s female, big-haired, divine, flamboyant but stern

Indra’s Voice: Where are you daughter? Where?

Agnes: Here, Father, here!

Indra’s Voice: You have strayed, my child. Beware you are falling. How did you get here?

Agnes: Racing on a cloud, I followed a lightning beam from the highest ether...but the cloud fell, and is still falling...oh great father Indra, god of gods, what regions have I come to? Why is it so close? So hard to breathe?

Indra’s Voice: You have left the Second World and entered the third. Far from Sukra, the Morning Star. You have come to a circle of vapours called Earth. Mark there...the seventh house of the sun, Libra, where the star of day lights the balance scale of autumn and day and night weigh the same...

Agnes: You speak of the Earth, is it this dark and heavy world lit by the moon? I see...that it is fair...with green forests, blue waters, white mountains, and golden