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

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

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.

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.

this body is never truly yours

by Amitha Pagolu

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.