Nelson Chia: Looking Back In Order to Look Forward

Picture this: Nelson Chia as a nine-year old child in primary school, casting his classmates as superheroes in conflict about how to save the world. It was for morning assembly, and his teacher had asked the class to come up with something for the presentation. On a whim, Nelson wrote his very first play (though he didn’t know it then), directed his classmates and acted as one of the superheroes himself. More than four decades later, he is still writing, directing and acting as co-founder of Nine Years Theatre (NYT). 

NYT, co-founded with Mia Chee and the only theatre company to position itself as a Singapore Mandarin theatre company, has been around for 12 years. However, Nelson’s practice spans 30 years, and is one that plays the long game. Rooted in histories while gazing upon the future, his theatre practice looks towards building rigorous structures that is equal parts concerned with both longevity and innovation. 

In those decades between his very first play and now, Nelson signed on with the Singapore navy, and had planned to take a degree in computer science. If not for his younger sister asking him along for an audition for Toy Factory Productions in the early 1990s, there wouldn’t be the Nelson Chia we know today. A series of events from that audition led him to his very first production, Osean (1993) by Toy Factory Productions, then named Toy Factory Theatre Ensemble. He acted as a marine organism and a bird, and the dance-drama performance was set on the rooftop swimming pool of Pan Pacific Hotel. It was where he first realised that theatre was not what he initially thought it to be, that it can take on many different forms beyond what is “traditional”. The fact that rehearsals for that production were held in the public Toa Payoh Swimming Complex drove home that point. 

Just as how his current practice sprouted from seeds visible from way back, Nelson’s current preoccupations and throughlines can be traced to his earlier years. In NYT’s most recent show that was staged as part of SIFA’24’s work-in-progress series, Waiting for Audience, he explored the question of theatre’s significance if the audience is absent. 

Drawing from a conversation Nelson had with late William Teo of the Asia-in-Theatre Research Centre in his early twenties, he found an answer that he held close for decades: Everything done on stage is for the audience. In that particular conversation, Nelson recalls William’s provocative question: Why does an actor stand on the stage?

William had elaborated then, that an actor stands on the stage because the audience chose to come and watch them, out of everything else they could have spent their time on. Nelson thought to himself then, “This is a big deal!” and arrived at the decision that everything he does henceforth will be for the person who decided to give their attention to the show.

The next question Nelson spent the next decade trying to answer was then, how does one ensure that what happens on stage is of worthy quality? Hence, another seed was planted. This time, it’s a desire for something systematic and continuous, something that one can endlessly work and improve on. A robust method to the madness that is theatre. He found it in the Suzuki Method of Actor Training and Viewpoints when he attended a workshop by SITI Company in 2006. Since that first exposure to how an actor’s training can look like, both have become flagship classes that NYT offers to the wider theatre community. 

Following his desire to develop methodology beyond a single work, Nelson was awarded a fellowship by Centre 42 in 2016 to adapt Art Studio, a hefty sprawling novel by Yeng Pway Ngon about art students navigating 1980s Singapore, into a stageplay. Over the course of a luxurious 18 months of focused attention, Nelson’s rigour and eye for watertight structure led him to focus his efforts on devising and researching on methods that may be used in adaptations crossing genres. Art Studio went on to be commissioned by SIFA’17 as the festival opening show. It is in this time that he discovered the joyful challenge of transcreation, and lit anew his interest in writing original plays that are rooted in Singapore’s context and culture. 

This belief in continuous training and relentless betterment of art as a practice, as being inextricable from life itself, reverberates through various aspects of Nelson’s person across timespace. Before the birth of Centre 42, and at the nascent stage of NYT’s founding, Nelson was catching up with Centre 42’s Executive Director and Co-Founder Casey Lim over a meal, when Casey, then at the age of 50, told Nelson that he was thinking of “retiring”. To which, Nelson recounted how he blurted out, flabbergasted: “Retire from what!? Artists like us, we retire from what!?” 

Ten years later, the sentiment holds — life and art aren’t entirely separate things. Nelson persists that “the art [he does] is fed by the other things [in life]”. In a symbiotic way, art enriches his life, which he recognises largely comprises his family and friends. Nelson is now about the same age as Casey then, and indeed, he shows no sign of wanting to “retire”. In fact, he seems to be ramping up in terms of wanting more for NYT and Singapore Mandarin theatre. 

His dream for NYT and theatre at large? For theatre and Singapore Mandarin theatre to become integral to the general Singaporean consciousness, such that one would casually drop in for a show during a weekend like they would a movie. For the image of Singapore Mandarin theatre to diversify into something that is relevant to the here-and-now, rather than something that is “old-fashioned” or “too deep”.

He has already begun sowing the seeds for this dream, through Everything For You (2022) and its sequel, Between You and Me (2024), by bringing in a cast that includes household celebrity names such as Sharon Au.

It’s a long path, but not one that started with him. It was also a long cherished dream of late Kuo Pao Kun, whom Nelson has worked with for a significant part of his theatre career. It’s yet to be seen who would similarly be lit aflame, to carry this dream further into fruition, into the future, after NYT.

As for his wish for Centre 42, Nelson hopes that Centre 42 will grow into a place where theatremakers can refer to the archival materials and reassess their practice, to rejuvenate themselves before creating the next thing. Just as how throughlines and clarity can be found by revisiting the past, he hopes that Centre 42 will continue to be a place for remembrance, in order for us to look forward.

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: