by D.Y.

Jo Tan brings a new initiative to the Singapore Writer’s Festival (SWF 2025); connecting playwrights and their older works with new dramaturgical support, in hopes of revitalisation.

As theatre companies produce season after season, smaller local scripts can slowly fade away from public memory, especially in favour of bigger, flashier productions. This is the problem that local theatremaker, Jo Tan, set out to remedy with her programme ‘Rewrite my Fire’, which started out as an end-of-residency project at Centre 42. There, she performed a dramatised reading of her ‘worst-reviewed’ play – Happy Place, before giving a brief presentation on why she believed that previously-staged work deserved opportunities for further development and staging.

Hence, aligning closely to this year’s festival theme: Shape of Things to Come, the Singapore Writer’s Festival (SWF) has adopted this programme, highlighting revivals as part of the Theatrical landscape to come. This year’s programme saw Jo Tan re-staging another iteration of Happy Place – marking yet another checkpoint in the show’s development under the programme. Joining her is fellow multi-hypenate, Adib Kosnan with his intimate two-hander, 28.8, delving into how finances can influence relationships.

First, Tan’s Happy Place is set in a dystopian Singapore, where the world has been consumed by a strange phenomenon: the Nevernessence, which threatens to turn people into dust after prolonged outdoor exposure. Directed by Judy Ngo, the entire play is contained within a radio show hosted by Val (Jo Tan) and a missing Po (Edward Choy) as well as invited guest, Estee (Rusydina Afiqah). What follows is a relentless series of bickering, betrayals and moments of reminiscing between Val and Estee’s bygone friendship; all set within the confines of Val’s studio. As the pioneering work of ‘Rewrite my Fire’, Happy Place’s premise makes for an interesting foundation by situating its characters and their struggle for truth against its apocalyptic backdrop; creating an undying tension not only between the characters but also within their inner selves. Yet, its underdeveloped script still lacks focus, in spite of new dramaturgical support (and supposed restraint) from Joel Tan. While big leaps have been taken in sharpening the focus, Happy Place still feels trigger-happy in its emotional dealings, overdoing moments of tension to monotony and numbing moments of emotional resonance expected of its more touching sequences. 

In terms of its performances, Tan’s Val is played with all of the on-air deejay enthusiasm and off-air emotional complexities expected of her. However, Rusydina’s Estee is less convincing, partly due to her character’s emotionally undulating arc as well as Rusydina’s occasional hiccups articulating her lines. Moreover, as a pair, the friends lack the knowingness of a friendship forged from university, making it insufferably difficult to root for them when they clash at every juncture and especially, in their moments of tenderness (which came across forcibly).

However, in all of its instability, Happy Place presents the strength of ‘Rewrite My Fire’ as a playground for experimentation and development. Although its scope could be further refined, it still manages to ask some meaningful questions about the palliative role of entertainment in a dying, segregated world – reminding audiences of its pandemic origins. Hence, within the programme, Happy Place highlights a kind of daring promise in the art of revision that may come into fruition in another future reworking. 

In contrast, Adib Kosnan’s 28.8 highlights the kind of update ‘Rewrite my Fire’ can provide to previously-staged works. Told as a series of vignettes in a disjointed timeline, 28.8 depicts the love story of a young couple from their first date to the day they collect their BTO keys, placing an acute emphasis on the role finances play in the relationship. While it is easy to veer on the superficial, Adib’s incisive writing thoroughly explores the interdependencies of gender, power and money between his two lovers, Andy and Narissa, as they confront both the relationship ahead of them and their individual histories. Additionally, intrinsic to the play is an underlying interrogation of Malay gender politics underlined by the Malay language written in complementarily to form the play’s bilingual vernacular.

Between both plays, Rusydina emerges as a common thread, taking on Narissa opposite a charming Irsyad Dawood as Andy. Here, Rusydina’s character is, once again, written to be quite unlikeable but is given the opportunity by Kosnan to breathe and build a genuine chemistry with Irsyad’s Andy. As Narissa unravels herself to the audience, Rusydina’s character makes objectively poor financial decisions that endangers the couple in an unforgiving capitalistic society. Yet, Rusydina still manages to find some moments of real empathy like when she shares the loneliness she feels with her expectant baby. Irsyad also delivers – playing a young man navigating love and his adult responsibilities through a pragmatic lens (which Narissa often chides him for). But amidst all this, in the couple’s lowest moments, Dawood’s Andy displays a touching desperation to salvage their relationship within the confines of their reality; which makes for a compelling watch. 

Ultimately, 28.8 owes its strength to Adib’s script, featuring some sharp one-liners and a deep understanding of purpose within each scene. The merit of this new iteration should also be credited to dramaturg Nabilah Said, whose proposed structural changes are transformative in audience appreciation. By pivoting the play away from its monologue-based origins, the play steers away from confessional, allowing the audience to appreciate the broader context of the couple’s relationship and its subtext. Thus, although 28.8 can still be improved in terms of its scenic organisation and Narissa’s character, the current iteration showcases Adib’s talent to not only imbue astute societal observations into his characters’ lives, but also his flexibility and creativity in adopting a new structural format. Hence, 28.8 brings out how ‘Rewrite my Fire’ can reimagine scripts, finding new strength for fresh audiences in older material.

By the end of show, ‘Rewrite my Fire’ identifies a crucial gap in the Singapore Dramatic Canon that it has convincingly found a solution for on paper. While its mixed execution highlights a clear disparity in the works the programme is able to produce, the difference is also a sign of its breadth and a keen willingness to improve on its chosen texts, regardless of where the programme meets them.

In Singapore’s fast-paced, production-focused calendar year, such platforms are thus vital to allow room for scripts to breathe and develop. Therefore, despite the varying strength of its scripts, the programme has established itself as crucial in allowing older works the opportunity to make exciting comebacks or at the very least, grow. Hence, it is that hope that drives the programme, not just to seek further external support, but more importantly, in inviting audiences to invest dauntlessly into older Singaporean stories made anew.

The 28th Singapore Writers Festival ran from 7th to 16th November 2025. More information available at singaporewritersfestival.com.