Back in 2020, at the height of COVID-19, theatremaker Jo Tan was invited by T:>Works to present a little one-woman show called King, as part of their annual N.O.W. Festival of Women. With pandemic restrictions in place, King, however, was relegated to becoming a live film, streamed online.

Now, with the world open again, Jo is taking another stab at the play again, bringing it to its full glory to the stage at 72-13, the home of T:>Works. Playing from 10th to 13th August, King follows Geok Yen, a public relations executive who seemingly has it all – a stable job and a boyfriend who is about to propose. But at an innocuous office party, Geok Yan decides to change things up forever when she turns up in costume…as a man.

Emboldened by her male alter ego, Yen discovers a newfound confidence to speak her truth, and be whatever she could be without self-judgement. Speaking to Jo and director Irfan Kasban, we found out more about how the play has evolved from 2020, the place of women in Singapore today, new ideas and conversations they hope to spark, and above all – what does it mean to be a woman today?

“There’s been a lot of change since 2020 – having Irfan as a director already switches things up a lot,” says Jo. “Irfan’s sort of unleashed my character’s inhibitions, so to speak, and this version is going to be a lot more colourful, a lot more ridiculous, and contain even more drag numbers. In a way, it’s also going to be more truthful, because it allows Yen to be free from the idea of having to play a ‘serious man’, and really explore the idea of gender beyond stereotypes, in a way that’s larger than life.”

“Knowing Jo for so long, I felt that the work could afford to show off more of her ability to emote, and I wanted to make the work feel more personable, and really tease out more of Jo’s own struggles with the character, where we hashed it out by talking about the backlash that came out after the first staging, issues that still haunt her, and how exactly we’re presenting women,” says Irfan. “The idea is that we’re creating a world, where things are more balanced and less pointed, where we can both hate and empathise with characters at the same time, and realise that perhaps even the ‘villains’ are oppressed in their own way, and grew up educated a certain way that made them this way, and cannot easily unlearn.”

“My vision for the play remains a stripped down version, where the focus really is on the performances, and a lot of the work goes into the body and the gestures, and how that comes across in a bigger space,” he adds. “I do enjoy working on one-person plays, from The Death of Singapore Theatre to Ayer Hitam, because there’s so much that crosses over between the performance and the narrative of the work, and it really allows you to fall in love with the actors, and bring out their potential and a different side to them. It’s not just Jo doing the same show a few years later, but specifically, how she’s changed in that time, and how the work is still relevant to her now, and how it affects her before we consider how it affects the audience.”

In that sense, this new version of King moves it away from simply being presented as a feminist work, but more of a play that dives into exploration of gender identity and the convenient binaries society seems to impose. “We may not realise it because of how we’re so often institutionalised in spaces like school or work, we want to explore the idea of and raise awareness about how we’re always performing for different groups of people, where we behave differently with a lover or in public,” says Irfan. “I hope at the end of the work you begin to question at what point you’re performing, and at what point you’re resisting that.”

“I did have a lot of questions about whether as a cis female I should be doing drag, but now, we no longer just have drag queens performing hyperfeminine characters. Yes, it’s always been about spectacle, but it’s opened up more to new styles and presentations as well, such as bio queens, or how drag kings can explore glamour instead of rugged masculinity,” says Jo. “I think about how I’ve been given a few opportunities to perform at Becca D’Bus’ RIOT show, where I present my character of a clean-shaven, pretty boy, like a K-Pop star as opposed to the super muscular type of guy. Some people still get confused, but the thing is, that’s Asian masculinity, which really makes you realise how pigeonholing masculine and feminine behaviour or characteristics doesn’t make sense.”

“Even in the realm of queerness, gay men don’t conform to one specific stereotype, and the beauty of that is how there’s a myriad of personalities and interests that make up queer people,” says Irfan. “Just because you’re queer doesn’t mean you have to keep up with pop culture or go to Hard Rock Cafe and watch drag shows. A sequin may be associated with camp and femininity for drag queens, but at the end of the day, it’s really just a shiny plastic object reflecting light.”

Expanding into the realm of gender in the workplace, Jo explains how there are still issues faced even in the supposedly more free-spirited and ‘radical’ theatre scene. “The way you present does affect the way people treat you – I’ve been asked why I’m behaving in a certain way before, or when I raise my voice a little to disagree, and you see their face change,” says Jo. “Elsewhere, I used to have a more feminine bob, and when I cut it shorter, I noticed guys in the gym became suddenly more rude and rough to me, maybe because they feel like I don’t fit. People have expectations in their head of how you should be leaning in to the gender you’re assigned, and the backlash is quite vocal when you don’t. At least in Singapore, I do think we’re still quite entitled about how we feel other people should behave a certain way. It’s somehow easy to think of ourselves as more righteous and have the moral high ground I guess.”

How then should we bridge this gap between the self-righteous and get them to free their mind and see outside the box? Conversations seem to be key. “As theatremakers, we constantly put ourselves in vulnerable positions, especially when it’s our own work we put out there. But I’m willing to listen. I recognise my privileged position as a cisgender Chinese female in a heterosexual relationship, and some people did say ‘ugh what does she know about queerness’ when I presented King,” says Jo. “But I’m not here to represent any community, but to really think about all these ideas of labels and what hoops we jump through to ‘earn’ or ‘qualify’ for that label. We need the space for all kinds of people and the space for conversation, and it’s hard to juggle people’s feelings of alienation, or how they might feel they’re intruding into someone else’s space and cannot speak on it.”

“I remember my mother brought a more conservative friend to Wild Rice’s La Cage Aux Folles before, and I wasn’t really ready or in the right headspace to have that conversation with her at that point,” she adds. “But just know that I am always here to have hard conversations when I can, or at least start talking about them. I’m not here to change the world, but we absolutely need that kind of conversation and exchange to better engage each other. We live in a world where we tend to see more extremes, and it can be hard to find common ground, but that’s why we have to be willing to meet in the middle, even if they fundamentally disagree with me.”

“There are still very entrenched, institutionalised perceptions and stereotypes that people hold within Singapore, and even within the queer community. We need to be more accepting that everyone is different, and you are not defined by your sexuality alone – there’s also your beliefs, your food preferences and so on,” says Irfan. “I do worry when identifying markers become political, which I see happening in the West, where people are beginning to define themselves as one thing and one thing only, and that’s very scary to have that kind of rigid mindset.”

“I guess it’s hard to voice our disagreements in a healthy way, if only because of the way we were brought up within Singapore and would prefer to stay silent and sweep things under the rug. I remember how when my mother was having issues with my dad, I went online and said that my dad was an asshole, and my cousin ended up telling me that I shouldn’t say that,” adds Irfan. “I think we should be able to discuss the things that hurt us, otherwise when we hide them, it festers and manifests in harmful ways. Conversation isn’t just exchange, but also connecting, even if it’s an argument. I wish in theatre at least, people were more willing to talk about things they didn’t like, and not sing praises just because they’ve worked with this company before, or the artists are their friends. We can only grow when we open ourselves up to criticism, given that it’s well-intentioned and expressed in a fair way.”

For now at least, both Irfan and Jo are happy with where they are, with a slew of new artistic explorations and projects lined up after King. “Even actors tend to pigeonhole themselves into certain roles, and I think we need to continually take a step back and think about what we’re doing or where we want to go,” says Jo. “Irfan is a great example of someone who has managed to tread being a multidisciplinary artist, by performing, writing, directing and more. At the end of the day, do we want to define ourselves for someone else’s comfort? There are so many things that are out of our control for sure, and it can be exhausting to keep wondering if people will like it and you end up trying to please them. Sometimes, you don’t have to fit any one definition, and just end up having fun with what you do.”

King plays from 10th to 13th August 2023 at 72-13. Tickets available from Peatix King’s Opening Night Party on 10th August at S$88, includes a ticket to King + free flow drinks & cocktail reception.