The Arts – Theatre

The multiple performance spaces available at Yale-NUS—such as the Black Box Theatre, Yale-NUS College Hall and Amphitheatre—as well as plentiful rehearsal spaces enabled students to develop their interest in the theatre, whether through acting, writing, directing or working behind the scenes.

The Theatre Programme offered the opportunity to take theatre courses from the Arts and Humanities major, regardless of the student’s major or level of experience.

Support also came from the staff of MICE (Makerspaces, Initiatives, Community, Exhibitions) and the Fabrication Studios, where scenery and props could be designed and built.

And of course, the students themselves took the lead in forming a range of theatre organisations to stage plays, musicals and other performances.

Theatre Programme

The Yale-NUS Theatre Programme made the Acting, Directing and Theatre-Making courses from the Arts and Humanities major available to the whole student body.

The courses were practice-based, including staging one or two productions each year, and encouraged collaboration, close reading, project management and creative thinking, as well as the use of imagination, courage and a sense of play. The programme also organised training workshops and talks by prominent theatre industry professionals.

And beyond the curriculum, every year the programme’s students and faculty worked together, often with members of the wider NUS community and even theatre professionals, to collaborate on staging a play at the Black Box Theatre.

For the courses Acting I, Acting II, and Theatre Directing the students studied Western and non-Western plays.

The Theatre-Making Laboratory course introduced a wide range of creative processes for developing original theatre. Lecturer of Humanities (Theatre) Jonathan Vandenberg tasked students to work together to conceptualise, write and perform their own original performances.

What I find really special about this kind of course at Yale-NUS, is that everyone brings a different perspective to the table; different levels of experience, skill-sets and majors, all coming together to contribute to the diversity of the pieces that we create.

Kyle Foo (Class of 2022) on the Theatre-Making Laboratory class.

The Theatre Programme team’s 2022 play was Hanjo by the acclaimed Japanese playwright Yukio Mishima. It tells the story of an artist’s obsession with a woman driven mad by the grief of lost love.

The 2023 production, The Exile from Ayodhya, explored ideas of duty, family, honour and justice through the dramatisation of an episode from the Ramayana, the Hindu epic studied by all Yale-NUS students in the Common Curriculum.

The Fifth Wall

The Fifth Wall was the College’s first official drama organisation, with initial discussions dating back to the Class of 2017’s trip to Yale University in July 2013, before they even arrived in Singapore.

The group aimed to give a platform to the many voices in the Yale-NUS community, and enable students to share their stories though the medium of theatre.

They staged their first production in March 2014. Consisting of three ten-minute plays, Unweave was performed at locations around the College’s original home in RC4.

Staged on 15 November 2014, Confessions was an interactive play based on the controversial Following house style - to display show title in ‘Yale-NUS Confessions’ website, where anecdotes, jokes, trolls, insane characters, issues and disputes were compiled.

In 2015, The Fifth Wall organised 24:00 PL:AY, a project where students wrote, produced and rehearsed a new play within one 24 hour period. This gave students a quick insight into many aspects of theatre production. The ’24 Hour Play’ concept was repeated in later years by the Green Room Theatre.

Green Room Theatre

The Fifth Wall later became known as Green Room Theatre, while continuing to produce original plays by the College’s students.

Green Room Theatre members
Radio Plays On Air was a project to produce a series of original radio dramas presented as podcasts. The first episode was previewed at a listening party held in Elm Common Lounge in January 2016.
Green Room Theatre staged Rule of Threes at the Black Box Theatre in April 2016. All three were written, produced, directed and performed by Yale-NUS students.
Mirage featured two 45-minute plays, Rivers Flowing Upstream and In Tunnel and Shadow. Both were written, directed, produced and performed by the College’s students, and presented by the Green Room Theatre at the Black Box Theatre in November 2016.
Based on the theme of the changes students made when entering Yale-NUS, these four student-penned plays were performed together as I Heard it Said at the Black Box Theatre in October 2017.

(aside)

Although The Fifth Wall and Green Room Theatre had successfully staged short plays, often written by students, (aside) was the first theatre group to stage full-length productions of plays by established writers.

(aside)

Although The Fifth Wall and Green Room Theatre had successfully staged short plays, often written by students, (aside) was the first theatre group to stage full-length productions of plays by established writers.

Playdough!

Playdough! was a student organisation that aimed to help students learn about theatre, with each event featuring short plays written, directed and performed by the College’s students.

Plays

My Body Told Me was a play by members of the Devising Theatre and Interdisciplinary Theatre class which explored the thoughts, ideas and musings of bodies and their journeys. It was stages at the Black Box theatre in March 2016.
Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet was staged by Yale-NUS students in spring 2016. Inspired by studying the play for class, directors Roshan Singh and Ritika Biswas (both Class of 2018) commented that “Although we have learned more about the play, we have most certainly, in the process, learned more about ourselves.”
SCH/SM: An investigation of faith & sexuality was written, directed and performed by Mariel Chee (Class of 2017). Two performances were staged at the Black Box Theatre in March 2017.
Inspired by Indonesian writer Putu Wijaya’s play Ought, students from the course YHU2258 Asian Traditional Theatre in and out of Context presented this play in the Black Box Theatre in April 2017.
Staged by Yale-NUS students in 2017, this play by British playwright Sarah Kane explored the experience of clinical depression.
A one-man stage adaptation of Homer’s ancient Greek epic poem, An Iliad was directed by Assistant Professor of Humanities Lee Chee Keng and performed by Shaun Lim (Class of 2018) at the Black Box Theatre in March 2018.
Written by Singaporean playwright Eleanor Wong, Mergers & Accusations tells the story of a young lesbian lawyer who married her male best friend to hide her sexual orientation. Co-directed by Bozy Lu (Class of 2019) and Shaun Lim (Class of 2018), the play explored romantic relationships and gender roles in conservative Singapore.
Shaun Lim and Jamie Buitelaar (both Class of 2018) directed and performed the two-character play Oleanna by the American playwright David Mamet. Staged at the Black Box Theatre in April 2018, the play explores the conflict between a university professor and a female student who accuses him of sexual harassment.
Written, directed and performed by Anthea Chua (Class of 2020) and Jirasiri ‘Numhom’ Techalapanarasme (Class of 2019), Flamingos was staged at the Black Box Theatre in October 2018. The play explored “intimacy and loneliness [and] the desire to be seen and heard as we are”.
Written and directed by Myle Yan Tay (Class of 2019), Master Race was set in a near-future Singapore where citizens are able to undergo a medical procedure to change their race. Told through three parallel storylines, the play features citizens debating the procedure, and a talk show where a representative of the company offering the procedure is questioned. The play was staged at the Black Box Theatre in November 2018.
Babies! was staged at the Black Box Theatre in March 2019. Written by Cheang Chu Ying (Class of 2021) and directed by Cheang and Syafiqah Nabilah (Class of 2020), the play depicted the entangled lives of four university students. Mixing comedy and drama, the script explored friendships and relationships, centered around a pregnancy scare.
Directed by Kavya Danani and Russell Chong (both Class of 2025), Normal was performed by a cast of Yale-NUS students on 3rd April 2022 at the Black Box Theatre. Written by acclaimed Singaporean playwright Faith Ng, the play examines the lives of students struggling to cope in the Singapore education system.

Musicals

Originally a successful Broadway production, the College’s students staged their version of Next to Normal
in March 2020 at the Black Box Theatre. Directed by Ashley Sim, Bernard Boey (both Class of 2022) and Keryna Chandra (Class of 2023), the rock musical tells the story of a mother’s struggle with bipolar disorder.

A song showcase was held in November 2019, before the staging of the full Next to Normal musical.

Written and directed by Myle Yan Tay (Class of 2019), with songs by Nathaniel Mah (Class of 2020), Overtime tells the story of two friends as they set out on their new careers after graduation. Staged in November 2017 at the Black Box Theatre, it was the College’s first original musical.

Without this funding, we would not have been able to stage the College’s first original musical. It pushed us to work hard so that we could give back to the school community.

Creators Myle Yan and Nathaniel on the financial support Overtime—and other Yale-NUS music and theatre productions—received from the Tolani Performing Arts Fund, in particular for the set and lighting design.

Performances

Moving beyond conventional theatre, groups of students occasionally staged some more experimental performance pieces or multimedia productions around the campus.

One of these groups was Artslab, a student organisation dedicated to creating experimental, interdisciplinary and intercultural work. They used theatre, performance and other artistic media to focus on current issues and social and political environments.

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