Spaces of Citizenship in Contemporary Singaporean Theatre: Staging the 2011 General Election

Studies of the spaces of citizenship, spaces of democracy, and political performance in public space have often focused on the importance of key sites that perform the political identities of citizens and politicians as well as the process of democracy itself. This paper argues that in the case of S...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Asian theatre journal 2019-09, Vol.36 (2), p.472-489
Main Author: Bullock, Nathan F.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
China
Citizenship
Democracy
EMERGING SCHOLARS
Geography
Indonesia
Political aspects
Politics
Said, Edward
Sharma, Haresh
Singapore
Theater
Theatre
United Kingdom
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Studies of the spaces of citizenship, spaces of democracy, and political performance in public space have often focused on the importance of key sites that perform the political identities of citizens and politicians as well as the process of democracy itself. This paper argues that in the case of Singapore, contemporary theatre is the most important public space of citizenship and democracy where both concepts are contested and resisted in their performance. This paper proposes and uses a contrapuntal performance analysis of two contemporary plays surrounding the 2011 General Election with the legal and founding documents defining citizenship in Singapore. The findings of this paper show that contemporary Singaporean theatre fills the role of providing a voice to critique and deconstruct the state’s top-down conception of citizenship and a space where civic discourse takes place and is performed for audiences. Nathan F. Bullock is a Ph.D. graduate of the Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies at Duke University. His dissertation is on the performance of citizenship in Singapore through a focus on architecture, art, and theatre.
ISSN:0742-5457
1527-2109
1527-2109
DOI:10.1353/atj.2019.0035