Grace Lee-Khoo: Rehearsing for Life through Theatre

Every morning, Grace Lee-Khoo, founder of Access Path Productions, would wake up and tell herself: “Grace, don’t be f***king boring today. Don’t make boring decisions”. So what would be a “boring decision”? Grace makes a face and goes, “You know, when people say it has always been done this way." Not that Grace does not believe in ways that are tried and true, but to her, it’s crucial to understand why we do the things we do, and if they are genuinely the best way forward. To not take things for granted and follow existing structures blindly. In her own words, “I like to f*** around to find out, but I want to f*** around properly”. 

Social justice, accessibility, disability arts. These are words associated with Grace Lee-Khoo within the Singapore theatre ecosystem. But what do these words mean to her, specifically, personally, in her perspective? At first glance, Grace sparkles with wonderment for the world. If something captures her curiosity, she wants to know everything — from the what, why, how — she wants to turn it inside out to understand it fully from every angle. It is with this spirit that her theatre practice has spanned more than a decade, sprawling across roles such as collaborator, director, dramaturg, producer, and more. Even though her name is Grace, she is not in it for any “noble” reasons. She is in it because she genuinely enjoys and loves it. The matter of accessibility and disability arts is not about charity, and social justice is not just about stirring the pot. She subscribes intimately to the social model of disability, which translates in her practice to mean creatively removing obstacles such that people, artists included, can shine the brightest possible.

The throughline of her practice rings clear — it is the relationships she has with her collaborators that form the bedrock of everything she does. From the genesis of her practice and ideas, to the creation process and what comes after, all of it could be traced to the connections she has made over the years. There is an understanding that none of it came out of working in a silo; she is deeply rooted in the community. In 2017, she had just returned to Singapore after completing her Masters in Applied Theatre and a year-long residency with Graeae Theatre Company in London, when Peter Sau, former associate director at Unlimited Festival, introduced her to Centre 42. Then, she was nurturing the idea of staging And Suddenly I Disappear: The Singapore-UK ‘d’ Monologues, trying to figure out a way to apply all that she has learnt in the past few years to Singapore’s context. So when she, in her words, “vibed” with Centre 42 and found resonance with the team, she leapt with joy.

For a few months, Centre 42 provided a “liminal transitional space” for Grace as she sought to consolidate her practice and path forward. Together with the team working on the production, which comprises Peter Sau, Kaite O’Reilly and Phillip Zarrilli among others, they dove deep into researching with and interviewing individuals with lived experience of disability in the meeting room. Her practice, which she has described to be centred on removing obstacles creatively for the sake of social justice, necessarily requires her to be reflexive and responsive to the communities she works with in an intimate embodied way. Thus, the physical space was crucial for Grace to organise and clarify the way forward alongside people who she felt aligned with, in the context she’s invested in, that is Singapore. Following this process, the idea of Access Path Production gradually concretised and she co-founded the company with producer Natalie Lim a year later. [Natalie Lim left Access Path Productions in 2022.]  

In 2019, Grace was invited back to Centre 42 as the dramaturg for Are You Game, Sau(dara)?. This time, she relished in creation which, for her, is necessarily an enjoyably messy process. Theatre, to Grace, is a rehearsal for revolutions, for the reimagination of alternative ways to be and work with each other, so that we are able become better versions of ourselves and in moving towards that, create change in the world. To do that, one cannot work alone; the revolution is necessarily relational.

While describing the process of working on Are You Game, Sau(dara)?, the same sparkle in her eyes returned as she gushed about how “everyone is a cook in this kitchen”, with equal stakes and love for it. Even though “it’s messy and there are points of tension”, Grace saw it as a cauldron of possibilities as they “trust[ed] and respect[ed] each other enough to be direct about creative conflicts and not take it personally”. Ego has no place in the room, especially when it comes to genuine and constructive criticism. When asked how she manages to follow the vectors of humility and curiosity through the decade of her practice, Grace answered with a smile: “You just have to fail enough times such that you realise you really don’t know everything, and you really have to listen. Then you learn to take a step back to ask, what really needs to be done?”

What’s next for Grace? To her, it is an exciting unknown — she believes fervently in following where her curiosity leads her, changing course when the situation calls for it, rather than following a predetermined path. It is this fervent belief that one has to take personal risks through a willingness to be changed and challenged by the process that buoyed her wish for Centre 42’s future. To her dearest Centre 42 that has been a sanctuary in which she was able to be vulnerable and “f*** around safely”, Grace says: “Let’s keep removing these obstacles that prevent us from caring more fully for our communities, from creating sanctuaries of creativity. Let Centre 42 always be a symbolic mental space for all of us to come together — let it be a lighthouse, a harbour, in our hearts, to guide us towards creating a more just and equitable world through art.”

Published: 5 July 2024

Centre 42 celebrates our 10th Anniversary in 2024, marking ten years of supporting the theatre community around us. As part of our anniversary celebrations, we chart the growth of 10 noteworthy practitioners who have worked with us in the past decade, through a series of editorials that trace their personal and artistic development and Centre 42's role in their journeys so far. 

Read the other articles in this series: