Winners of the 24-Hour Playwriting Competition 2010

On 16^th October 2010, TheatreWorks and South East CDC announced the winners of this year’s 24-Hour Playwriting Competition.

The 13^th edition of the competition was held at at the SAF Yacht Club in Changi over one weekend.  In a scenic room overlooking the Straits of Singapore, 60 participants across walks of life pitted their creativity against one another in friendly jostling of the written word. While a few participants were occupationally involved in the arts, others comprised an eclectic mix of participants from all walks of life: including students, office executives, bus officer and retirees.  Many have not written plays before.

Mr. Matthias Yao Chih, Mayor of South East District, was  the Guest-of-Honour. He said, “South East CDC is happy to work with TheatreWorks in engaging our aspiring local writers and giving them valuable space to showcase their works. At the same time, the 24-hour playwriting competition allows self-expression, bonding among participants, and a better appreciation of one another’s uniqueness as well as shared experiences living and growing up in Singapore.”

Excerpts from the prize-winning scripts were also read. They were directed by Associate Director Robin Loon, and performed by Serene Chen, Nora Samosir and Gerald Chew.

The winners are as follows :

OPEN CATEGORY

1st Prize winner
Ahmad Musta’ain Bin Khamis with SERUNDING
Age 23, an undergrad at NIE.
He is a first-time winner, and second-time participant when he participated in 2008.

This winning play will be presented in the South East District as TheatreWorks’ community outreach programme. The dramatised reading of this play will be performed by Alin Mosbit and directed by Lim Yu Beng. The intention is to develop the work dramaturgically with inputs by professional theatre practitioners and to develop the skills of the writer. It will be presented in different venues in South East District over six weekends.

2nd Prize Winner
Bryan Tan with THERE WILL NOW BE A FIFTEEN-MINUTE INTERVAL
Age 36, Lawyer
A regular in the competition. He previously won a Special Mention award in the 2009 competition. Tan’s works have been staged previously, the most current was SOMEDAY, SAMSARA, that was staged in the Arts House.

3rd Prize Winner
Jacke Chye with ONE WEDDING & A FUNERAL
Age: 40s/ Works in Marketing
A regular in the competition. He has won previously: 2nd Prize of 24h 2007, Merit Prize of 24h 2008 & 2nd Prize 24h 2009.

Merit Prize Winners

Edgar Liao with AND THEY SHALL SAIL WITH US
Age 28, Postgrad student at NUS
A regular participant in the competition, he won the first prize in the 2007 competition and in 2004 won the first prize in the TheatreWorks-organised Singapore Young Dramatist Awards.  One of his works, MA GOES HOME, is currently being staged by Action Theatre.

Nurudin Bin Sadali with RED OZ
Age 22, Undergrad at NUS

Special Mention

Othman Bin Ibrahim / Untitled
Age 59, Bus Driver
First time participant and is the only participant to write in long-hand. No laptop and typewriter.

YOUTH CATEGORY

No first, second or third prizes were awarded.  Only two merit prizes were awarded to:

Richard Neo with COMING HOME
Age 17, Student at Raffles Institution Junior College

Shriram Jayakumar with BRECHTIAN COMEDIES
Age 17, Student at Anglo-Chinese Junior College

The three judges were Academic and Founder of NUS Theatre Studies Programme Dr. K K Seet, playwrights Desmond Sim and Ovidia Yu.

Dr Seet said : “I am particularly gratified when the winners are a mixed bag of veterans and first-timers. On the one hand, the veterans remind us that their craft, which they continue to hone through the rigor of such playwriting competitions, is part and parcel of accumulated experience. On the other hand, the first-time winners inspire us with their freshness of perspective and innovative templates, as well as reassuring us that new, untapped talent is in constant supply.”

Robin Loon, who has been the Associate Director for the Writers’ Lab added, “This year’s Open category winners exhibit a maturity and confidence, the likes of which the 24-hour Playwriting Competition has not seen in a while.  The genres range from broad ensemble comedy, to sensitive & candid monologues, to intimate & intense two-handers.  These winning entries are very encouraging and will inject great excitement into the local play-writing scene. I do hope that the writers will continue to develop their writing.”

The 2010 24-Hour Playwriting Competition was supported by: South East CDC, Community ArtReach by People’s Association, National Arts Council and the SAF Yacht Club.

Prize Giving 2009

Big Thank You to South East CDC, PUB, judges, all staff and everybody else that helped in one way or another to make this happen!

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2009 WINNERS

Open Category (19 years and above)
2nd: Chye Shing Jye Jacke – The CheongSam Mafia
2nd: Fok Jian Liang Christopher – Walitha’walitha
3rd: Alexander Ian Mitchell – Remembering
3rd: Ong Yi Ling – Synaesthesia

There is no 1st Prize for Open Category

Youth Category (13 – 18 years)
1st: Lim Ting Wen Thomas – Eulogy
2nd: Ho Mun Ci Angelica – Unknown
3rd: Chew Wei Shan – I Eat You You Eat Me
Merit: Aruna Narandran – The Only Constant

Special Mention: Tan Kuan Ho Bryan – DykeBorn

Best Blog Entry: Ng Yi-Sheng (Read entry here)
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24-HOUR PLAYWRITING COMPETITION 2009

Comments from the Judging Panel
(Prepared by Dr KK Seet – Resident & Chief Judge, together with Ovidia Yu and Tan Tarn How)

Unlike the previous year, where the Peranakan precinct of Joo Chiat left an indelible stamp on participants and resulted in a surfeit of entries exploring cultural heritage issues, this year’s site of the Marina Barrage, with its vast vistas and extensive landscapes, provoked a corresponding expansion of creative imagination. The judges encountered so much variety in theme and descant that it was impossible to pigeonhole entries into particular categories. A reassuring note is the relatively fewer number of screenplays using the vocabulary of film. Our exhortation to participants year after year to be mindful of stage conventions and to see theatrical devices as distinct from cinematic montage obviously bore fruit.

In general, the final shortlist of the Youth Category is stronger than that of the Open Category. There is, in each of the four prize-winning plays, some highly original sleight of hand that dazzled and inspired us, whether thematically, structurally or performatively. At this juncture, I hesitate in giving away the ranking too soon, and so my brief appraisal of each play in the final shortlist is in no meritorious order. The entry, “The Only Constant” personifies change as the only constant, and juxtaposes frenetic crowd scenes emblematic of teeming, evolving life with the intimate tableaux of change as this impacts on one family. The entry “I Eat You, You Eat Me” is founded on an interesting premise, where a child’s mindset, as it copes with a tragedy that it cannot fully comprehend, effects a seismic shift on the perspective of the adult world, in the vein of receiving wisdom from the mouth of babes. To understand death as re-absorption into one large food chain, where source in one instance is regenerated as product in another, also aligns with forms of pantheistic philosophy where the spirit resides in all nature. The entry, “Unknown”, befitting its enigmatic title, plays with the meta-narrative of performativity. A dark, almost Pinteresque fable of mind games interjected by pregnant pauses, black humor, ellipsis and counter-turns, this deliberately ambivalent tale of a man held hostage amid suggestions of suburban dyfunctionality, toys with notions of truth, fiction and what our minds can be seduced into believing. Finally, the entry “Eulogy” takes us on a lyrical yet emotive journey, as a son grapples with the memories of what his late father represented. “Eulogy” in particular employs a potent yet minimalist mise-en-scene. An ensemble functions in multiple roles and the late father is resurrected by different members of the chorus to demonstrate his multi-faceted character as well as the son’s increasing understanding. The trajectory, tracing the passage from doubt and cynicism to total acceptance, is wrought with admirable finesse and psychological credibility. The cherry in the cake has to be the fine distinction it draws between concepts of happiness and a child-like joy.

In comparison, the winners of the Open Category, while still highly commendable, are often flawed by one or two devices in their scripts. Once again, my observations are no indication of the final ranking, because I want to keep all of you on tenterhooks for a while longer. The entry “Cheongsam Mafia” falls under the genre of entertaining chick-lit as a localised cross between the Cashmere Mafia and the Gossip Girls, with its know-it-all nod at Singapore high society. It’s alarmingly well made, with the denouement already hinted at in the expositional opening scene, and the various stimuli ingeniously incorporated. But it also risks being rather pedestrian and formulaic, like a homespun Noel Coward soiree, by merely delivering what it sets out to do and not aiming very high. The entry “Walitha’walitha” is an odd excrescence in a Singapore-based playwriting competition as it evokes the era of the Maccassan infiltration into the Antipodies. One wonders if the contestant has just been studying anthropology or conducting research into Australian history and fauna, with this piece as an intellectual exercise of sorts. Despite token references to Singapore and a smatter of local patois, this is essentially a landscape inhabited by aboriginal deities like Walitha’walitha, or tribal spirits like Wurrumu. It is provocative in its own way, with its post-colonial narrative, its advancement of the idea that sacrifices have to be made in the name of progress, its stand on wildlife conservation. And it also devotes much thought to theatricality, with its melange of life-sized talking animals that range from a possum to a koala. Yet the periodic intrusion of the Didgeridoo only serves to remind us that the realms it conjures are wondrous but far-flung from Singapore and her concerns. The entry “Remembering” competently yokes together two forms of remembering: remembering significant events in our lives as filtered through trying to remember where our car was parked, by using the stimulus of the haze as a conceit for the element of doubt that can obscure our vision yet ironically clarify it by acknowledging the innate slipperiness of all recollection. It dissects the central relationship and the jockeying for power between the two protagonists convincingly, while suggesting that a major agenda behind the struggle is a desperate grasp at some measure of certainty or control over our lives. However, the introduction of a talking cat Watanabe brings in an obtrusive element of the surreal that dissipates the pivotal dynamics between the man and the woman. Last but not least, “Synaesthesia” is a script infused with an artist’s sensibility that delights in the modalities of sensory perception. The language and imagery, in particular the use of colours and the multivalent signs, are undoubtedly engaging, but the configuration on stage is primarily static, with much talk and little action. There is also insufficient exploitation of a fractured chronology for potential connections, parallels or reversals. In the end, everything develops in a piecemeal manner.

Before we announce the pecking order of the winning scripts, I would like to give a special mention to one of the entries. A contestant was inspired by the stimuli to write a prose poem instead of a play. In this case, the stimuli were very organically integrated. the lines passionate and compelling, and the final product reduced more than one judge to tears. While we recognise the prevailing rules of this competition, we also applaud this contestant’s bravado in not letting his creativity be confined or encumbered by prescriptions. While it is not ultimately a play per se, it qualifies as a piece that can be enacted or dramatised as performance art. For these considerations alone and in view of the eloquence of the writing, we shall award it a special literary prize, not cash but a literary text.

To conclude, I wish to thank my fellow judges Ovidia Yu and Tan Tarn How for their discerning selection. I also wish to thank every participant for his or her enthusiasm and most of all, stamina. And to the deserving winners one and all, may this spur you to even greater heights of literary achievement!

Thank you.

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CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL WINNERS!