The four residents of Centre 42's Playwrights's Professional Development Residency have spent the past six months reading and thinking about the writer's context in society, observing how playwrights offer up perspectives from the hairline cracks of discourse — disrupting doctrine, subverting the historical record, objecting to the status quo. How can writers metabolise these energies for drama? Join us for this artists' sharing as our playwrights present works in progress and new dramatic experiments, bringing the first year of their residency to a close.

Pants, Please.

by Raimi Safari

Content Warning: References to institutional transphobia

Pants. Ties. Skirts. Uniforms. Unzipping the school uniform, revealing the true question—what does it really mean to belong?

Five persons standing and sitting in front of a row of music stands.

The final scene in Raimi Safari's Pants, Please performed by (from left) Medli Dorothea Loo, Fahim Murshed, Coco Wang Ling, Suhaili Safari, and Izzul Irfan. View more at: Centre 42 Facebook

Role Models!

by Choy Chee Yew

An unusually beautiful Samsui woman gets into a spat with a government official after she is caught smoking in a designated no-smoking zone. Things get out of hand as they debate fiercely about ethics and moral values.

Two persons standing and facing each other. One mimes flinging something at the other.

In Choy Chee Yew's Role Models, Coco Wang Ling (left) plays a cigarette-smoking Samsui woman who comes into conflict with a government official, played by Izzul Irfan. View more at: Centre 42 Facebook

The Beaver Project

by Sab Dzulkifli

In the confines of a conference room, the country's top civil servant offers an out of work actor a deal to save their sister. But the Party guards its secrets jealously, and a shared history between the two makes saying ‘I do’ impossible.

Set in a dystopian world where animals sit in seats of power and accountability is hard to come by, The Beaver Project explores how the theatre of politics can seep into the everyday - and turn those we love into someone we used to know.

Two female-presenting persons standing close together. In front of them, a person in a pig mask kneels on the floor.

A tense and climactic scene in Sab Dzulkifli's The Beaver Project, featuring Suhaili Safari as a civil servant, Medli Dorothea Loo as an actor trying to save their sister, and Izzul Irfan (front) as the Prime Minister (a pig). View more at: Centre 42 Facebook

this body is never truly yours

by Amitha Pagolu

Content Warning: References to sexual assault

Violence against women - sexual or otherwise - happens every day. It is horrifyingly normal. Every young girl learns that this is “just how things are”. Told through vignettes and episodes, this body is never truly yours aims to explore how women and their bodies are depicted and consumed, offering a vocabulary that sheds a light to the violence that is so often carried in a woman's skin.

Five persons standing in a row in front of music stands. Behind them is a painting projected onto screens.

Fahim Murshed, Coco Wang Ling, Suhaili Safari, and Izzul Irfan played university students in Amitha Pagolu's this body is never truly yours. In this scene, they were attending an art class taught by an unnamed professor, played by Medli Dorothea Loo. View more at: Centre 42 Facebook

Playwright's Professional Development Residency 2024 - 2026

Start: 1 February 2024