When poet, playwright, essayist and librettist Robert Yeo first wrote One Year Back Home in 1980, he was met with much criticism. For the first time ever, the topic surrounding Singapore politics and a dissident opposition politician was presented. It was so controversial that it almost didn’t stage. But things have changed since then – and about time, too. But in March last year, One Year Back Home, alongside two of his other works, was adapted and staged at Stamford Arts Centre Black Box.
And we can’t think of better practitioners to bring the iconic trilogy to a new generation of theatre and literature lovers than The Second Breakfast Company (2BCo). With an ethos of reviving old classics alongside new works by emerging playwrights, the not-for-profit theatre company advocates for an inclusive theatre culture built by young people for young people. This time, artistic director Adeeb Fazah and his team – Denise Dolendo, Kristine Ng and Dominic Nah – makes a comeback with an adaptation of Yeo’s landmark trilogy. The Singapore Trilogy integrates story and text from Are You There, Singapore? (1974), One Year Back Home (1980) and Changi (1997), the first plays that dealt with the controversial subject of political detention in Singapore.
Set across the late 1960s and the mid-1970s, the three plays by Yeo aim to provoke reflection about the staging of politics in a new nation forging its own identity and development. The audience is introduced to the central characters as foreign students at the London School of Economics during the late 1960s. This then sets the stage for the rest of the play, which follows the intertwining stories of two siblings and a close friend – Chye, Hua and Fernandez – first as international students in London before returning home and diving headfirst into Singapore politics with opposing ideologies.
Fernandez is passionate about having alternative voices being represented in parliament – but that burning conviction soon becomes his downfall, and he finds himself in solitary confinement, torture and exile. Art mimics real life. But in Yeo’s case, it showed great foresight. Forty years after the play was written, Singapore's 2020 General Elections happened. The Workers Party won 10 out of 93 seats in parliament, the highest-ever percentage of opposition legislators in history.
This is the first time all three plays of the Trilogy are performed together in a single adaptation – including deleted scenes from original manuscripts, new writing and a revised ending in consultation with Robert Yeo – and it comes at perfect timing. If anything, 2BCo’s highly-anticipated staging encourages audiences to reflect on the great changes we’ve made in domestic politics since Singapore’s independence, yet, how some things still remain the same.
The Singapore Trilogy features cast members Shrey Bhargava, Casidhe Ng, Ong Yi Xuan, Lim Shien Hian, Yuri D Hoffman, Aricia Ng and Aiswarya Nair. After a sold-out run in theatres in March this year, The Second Breakfast Company is now bringing The Singapore Trilogy for on-demand viewing on Vimeo for a limited time from now till August 31. You can stream the play here.