The future of Singapore is bleak, in a city that is all too willing to archive its past.

While across the world, developing and using Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools in daily life is fast becoming the norm, it’s been especially worrying that local government entities have been leaping onto the AI trend and adopted it as the next big thing. From designing posters to interactive chatbots, AI has enamoured and convinced us of our need for it, and plays so well into our love for efficiency, that it wouldn’t come as a surprise if it eventually became something akin to an overlord, a sage we rely on for actual advice and policy planning.

That is the dystopian vision presented in Johnny Jon Jon’s National Memory Project, the latest production from Teater Ekamatra. Expanded from an earlier version in 2016, National Memory Project is a two-hander play that imagines a future version of Singapore that’s strangely, not too different from where we are now. We learn that the landscape has been irrevocably changed, with the disappearance of even places like Tanjong Katong rendering it practically unrecognisable, and how easily people have forgotten the past.

This is reflected in Mohd Fared Jainal’s set design – a raised white platform with steps going up and down, resembling an absurd Escher’s stair that leads nowhere, evoking existential fears and ideas of liminal spaces and backrooms. Scrawled onto the side of this set piece are sketches and drawings of national monuments long gone, from the old National Stadium to the old National Theatre, the old National Library and even Telok Ayer Performing Arts Centre, amongst other significant spaces and moments mentioned in the play. Their almost crude drawing style, in black and white, feels like the last vestiges of their existence, the fear of losing them from even memory felt from the artist, vulnerable and easily erased.

At the heart of the play is an experimental government project, where civil servant Judy (Ellison Tan Yuyang) has been tasked to interview death row convict Ahmad (Fir Rahman), collecting one memory of his choice to add to the titular ‘National Memory Project’, a new AI-powered entity that is part archive, part something else altogether that seems to hide hidden motives and agendas in its creation. Ahmad’s memory is deemed crucial to the project, and the process of extracting it proves a challenge for Judy. But as she tries her best to coax it out of him, she finds that their conversation begins to convince her to go from cog in the machine, to questioning the system altogether.

Mohd Fared Jainal, who also directs the play, makes full use of the set to bring the script to life, adding movement and levels for both actors to play with, rather than a static dialogue between two characters. Among the stars of the show are also lighting designer Alberta Wileo and sound designer Tini Aliman, who both showcase some of their strongest work this year. Alberta’s lighting is ever-changing, casting long shadows and silhouettes in the background to make the stage feel almost like a darkened hallway, while at a particularly high-tension moment, flickers lights as if they are possessed by something supernatural, heightening the fear and suspense immensely. Tini Aliman’s sound design is minimalist and sparse, coming in only at the most pivotal and crucial moments to evoke the memory of the past, or incidental noise in the distance, making its impact felt each time it features.

In their roles, both Ellison and Fir take some time to warm up, perhaps also reflecting the awkward, forced interaction their own characters have, both knowing it’s just a job. As Judy, Ellison is initially stiff and cold, but each time she opens up about her own memories as a means of connecting with Ahmad, you see her body ease and lighten, the very act of remembering a form of relaxation seen through her physicality. As Ahmad, Fir leans into initial hostility, pacing around like the caged animal his character is, and resisting Judy’s request with hollow laughs and teasing, a man who has given up all hope. When he finally decides to be real with Judy, he is still guarded, yet you can trace the hints of genuine nostalgia in his voice.

Unfortunately, while it does have strong moments between the leads, National Memory Project contains an overall pacing issue, and doesn’t seem to fully understand what kind of effect it wants to achieve, alongside a fair number of plot holes requiring heavy suspension of disbelief, such as how the memory extraction still requires the informal and highly risky method of voice recording on an iPad, or even why it has to specifically be Ahmad’s memory.

One has to give plaudits to both actors for performing in multiple languages throughout the play, with Ellison speaking in English, Mandarin and Malay, while Fir speaks in English, Malay and Hokkien. Ellison’s Malay isn’t perfect, and this is cleverly integrated into in the script itself, a feature of Judy clumsily trying to better connect with Ahmad that makes for some humorous linguistic errors turned poetic. But Fir, in speaking Hokkien, is meant to play a character fluent in it, and while getting the words right, is clearly unfamiliar with the language – this can initially be written off as a fuzzy memory, but when he appears again at the end of the play, it instead completely ruins what is supposed to be an emotional high point.

As a play that takes its cues from interrogation-based thrillers, Ahmad is a character that goes against the stereotype of a charismatic, genius criminal, instead being a pitiful, emotional figure who acts in a fit of rage, and is somehow put to death because of it. This is a hoarder who kills because the government is threatening to destroy his possessions, not because he’s a Hannibal-like figure, and while that is an interesting subversion, in practice, it causes the tension between him and Judy to fizzle, their dialogue becoming a lengthy ramble rather than a cat-and-mouse game for most of the play.

Ahmad then only really serves as a character to fuel Judy’s growth, and she is by far the more interesting of the two characters. Beyond her conversation with Ahmad, which takes up the bulk of the play, it is her other interactions that are also much more gripping, but feel underdeveloped. For example, there is the beginning of office politics and much stronger political commentary when she interacts with her colleague (also played by Fir) heading the project, and gives the play much more urgency when she realises how her own ministry doesn’t actually care about the memories collected, but with only two scenes where this happens, is rushed.

Judy’s strongest moment actually comes from a solo scene, where she interacts with a disembodied, AI-generated voice and personality of her late mother (featuring the voice of Ellison’s real life mother). This is by far the emotional crux and anchor of the play, as we see her spiralling when the AI begins to hallucinate, losing all trace of the mother she knew, a Black Mirror-esque moment that hammers home the limits and over-reliance on AI, and reflects the phenomena of people in real life treating AI Chatbots as real people dispensing advice and staving off loneliness. With this scene alone, without even meeting Judy’s mother, we understand Judy’s guilt and pain, Ellison’s voice cracking as she screams and realises too late her mistakes, regret filling her entire being.

National Memory Project is earnest in its message of how easily we forget, our willingness to knock down physical heritage in the name of progress as symptom of our anaesthetised society, hardening our hearts as we allow the government decide how to shape the narrative of our country, sanitising it, smoothing it over. But it is also a play that requires more finessing and editing, especially in terms of its pacing, where almost all of its strongest scenes and plot progression is squeezed into the final third of the show.

By its end, we recognise how it touches on a very current and perennially Singaporean issue, but never quite lands its parts coming together to provide a fully coherent story. Its final scene in particular seems to reflect that – Judy attempts to sing Di Tanjong Katong as a means of placating Ahmad in his last moments, but becomes frustrated when she struggles. Ahmad instead sings P. Ramlee’s Nak Dara Rindu himself, its lyrics echoing Di Tanjong Katong. In our amnesiac country, change is the only constant, and we build on and over what we have to create a supposedly brighter future. Is the way our heart bleeds for the past a distraction, or when we build upon the memory of a memory that has erased its origins, have we forgotten to build a solid foundation upon which to stand on?

Photo Credit: Teater Ekamatra

National Memory Project played from 25th to 29th June 2025 at the Drama Centre Black Box.

Production Credits:

Playwright Johnny Jon Jon Director/Set Designer Mohd Fared Jainal Cast Fir Rahman, Ellison Tan Yuyang Lighting Designer Alberta Wileo Sound Designer Tini Aliman Surtitlist Alysha Kaisah