About
Thomas Lim is a writer, director and arts educator based in Singapore.
His works span across genres and languages, including plays, musicals, exhibitions and short films that have been performed in Teochew, Mandarin, Malay, Bahasa Indonesia, English and Pig Latin.
He made his professional debut as a playwright and director with Grandmother Tongue, a semi-autobiographical tribute to his Teochew-speaking grandmother. Subsequent writing credits include Supervision, Straight Acting and National Day Charade. Thomas also makes theatre for families, such as musical pantomimes like Peter Pan in Serangoon Gardens, Pinocchio, and shows for young audiences like Red Riding Hood and There’s A Dinosaur In The Concert Hall.
Education is at the heart of Thomas’s artistic practice. He enjoys teaching, collaborating and co-creating with students and young people. He is the co-programme director of the Singapore Youth Theatre and teaches theatremaking and playwriting in secondary schools and tertiary institutions.
Storytelling at the Periphery: A collective playwriting project
This research project was a practice-led research that set out to investigate the ways that playwriting pedagogy and the practice of collective playwriting can challenge the dominant structures that influence how plays are produced and valued in Singapore.
Through a three-phased playwriting programme, 12 non-professional writers wrote a collective play which was presented in a dramatised reading.
The findings revealed that the participants’ confidence to write was built through demystifying the process of writing and through peer affirmation. Explicit acknowledgement and expression of subjectivity was key for participants in understanding the effect of their creative choices on the audience.
In the participant-led process of assembling the play, it was important for them to maintain and uphold the authorship of each individual. When it came to the dramatised read, both participants and audiences valued the play for showcasing “small stories”, or stories that reflected the everyday lived experience of Singaporeans. Participants felt however, that their impact and contribution to the cultural scene was small.
The project affirms the inherent cultural value that exists in the work, separate from its economic or producible value. However, it revealed the powerful direct and indirect influence that arts institutions wield in the ways that we value a cultural good through their programming decisions.
It remains to be seen how a sustained and active fringe of unproducible productions, like this present project, may have an influence on how we value a cultural good, and on the influence of producibility.
Professional practice
Mu Yanyu
Lai Juan-Xiang, Jesse
Paul Wong
Regina Chua
Choi Jeong Won
Simon Pike
