The Vault: (in)action

(in)action is a double bill of devised performances responding to The Campaign to Confer the Public Service Star on JBJ.

In 2006, Singapore’s lawyer-playwright, Eleanor Wong, wrote her last play - The Campaign To Confer The Public Service Star on JBJ. Staged in 2006 and 2007 by Wild Rice, the play follows two protagonists, David Lee and Clara Tang, as they navigate the bureaucratic intricacies, distinct political players, and politics of Singaporean politics. Wong’s play critiques institutional legitimacy, activism, and the consequences of political action.

Two decades on, 13 students from the National University of Singapore’s Theatre Studies TS3103 Theatre Lab examine the relevance of this play in today's Singapore. The performance-response consists of two works - Rare Specimens and Defamation – Begins With Me - that will make the familiar strange, and the strange familiar, by interrogating the position and urgency of political action today.

Join us on 11 April 2026 at the Black Box, 42 Waterloo Street to experience the double bill in action!

20 years after The Campaign To Confer The Public Service Star on JBJ was first written in 2006, our Theatre Lab students are invited to look back on the last published play of Eleanor Wong.

This 8th collaboration with C42 is conceived, devised, directed and performed by our 13 students. Their response must show a clear connection with Wong’s play; present their own artistic take on the play from their positionality; and most importantly, offer insights to the issues and ideas arising from both their presentation and Wong’s text, relevant to the world they live in today, in line with their own artistic identities and ambitions.

Specific questions were posed. How do our students of 2026 view Wong’s play within its context then and now? How do they view our political landscape pertaining to theatre-making, why is it important for them to look back at this slice of history, and what do they wish to speak up in their own refreshed ways with their own artistic approaches and reframing of lens?

Some salient discoveries highlighted by our students comprise a sense of fear hence the use of subtext and other roundabout distractions to address seemingly everything else but "the other JBJ", questioning silence from an apathetic majority, examining what happens to an unfortunate rare specimen of a student activist who simply had to be sacrificed in Wong’s text, and reimagining the "what-ifs".

For the past 12 weeks, our inquisitive students experienced a series of movement and dramaturgical workshops conducted by selected peers, as well as Timothy Wan and Thong Pei Qin.

Thereafter, from research, play analysis, pitching of concepts, world-building, creating of original characters and text, to choreography, design and performance as an ensemble, the 13 students were guided to devise, direct and document everything on their own. This rigorously rich and rewarding process, proudly owned by the students themselves, is a culmination of what they have learnt on the National University of Singapore’s Theatre & Performance Studies Programme, following a lineage of TS3103 Theatre Lab works presented under Centre 42’s Vault Residency since 2019.

Thong Pei Qin
Dramaturg and Course Chair
TS3103 Theatre Lab

Eleanor Wong's The Campaign to Confer the Public Service Star on JBJ was first staged by Wild Rice in 2006 at the inaugural Singapore Theatre Festival. A hilarious look at the boundaries of fearless expression in Singapore, this fantastical account of an unlikely petition to publicly recognise an unsung hero unfolds into a wildly imaginative expose of possible official reactions. This sharply comedic political satire was opportunely staged during the National Day period, just three months after Singapore's memorable twelfth General Elections, which saw the ruling party's (People's Action Party) popular vote share drop by almost ten percent.

The play was nominated for both 'Best Original Script' and 'Best Production of 2006' at the Straits Times Life! Theatre Awards 2007. It was restaged in 2007 with slight changes made to the script, including the introduction of a character which 'better epitomised some of the issues raised by a generation of internet-savvy political commentators'. 

Click on the links below for more information about The Campaign to Confer the Public Service Star on JBJ and Eleanor Wong.