Reflections on Kuo Pao Kun and Singapore theatre in the 1980s

"'The world does not treat us unkindly or forget us in the midst of solitude…'

It takes a supreme effort of imagination and will to think of one’s own imprisonment, without trial and often in solitary confinement, as a time of “solitude” and reflection.

The title of this essay celebrates the soaring imagination and the indomitable will of one artist who dominated the Singapore theatre scene in the 1980s. It is the first line of a poem that the late Kuo Pao Kun wrote on a card he made for his wife, Goh Lay Kuan, during Lunar New Year in 1977. Pao Kun had been detained under the Internal Security Act the year before and would eventually spend four years and seven months incarcerated by the state.

More than imagination and will, it takes an immense benevolence and an unbridled faith in humanity to transform an experience of such terrible bitterness into the picture of beauty, which is the poem. This, precisely, is the work and the responsibility of an artist."

As part of The Studios: fifty by Esplanade - Theatres on the Bay, ITI Director T. Sasitharan was commissioned to write an essay on Singapore theatre and the forces that have shaped it. In his article, he pays tribute to ITI co-founder Kuo Pao Kun, who influenced other theatre practitioners to revitalise the art form at a time of great economic and socio-political change in the 1980s.

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