Singaporeans were wary at first of their government's newly liberal tone. But slowly some of the more adventurous--writers, directors, web-surfers--began to test whether the new boundaries had indeed been moved. Many were surprised how far they could go, and soon Singapore was producing some of its own adult-rated movies, drama companies were staging plays about formerly taboo subjects, political discussion groups were formed without immediately being branded Marxist subversives and sintercom.org, a U.S.-originated Internet site critical of the status quo in Singapore, was permitted to be carried on government-supervised Web servers. "The government may not be more liberal," says playwright Haresh Sharma. "But it sees the positive effects of being seen to liberalize."
Sharma is resident playwright of The Necessary Stage, an experimental theater that has produced--in addition to the aids play--works dealing with mental illness, interracial relations and rigid educational techniques. "Theater is dialogue," he says, "and that is what Singapore needs." Sharma, who has had run-ins with the authorities in the past, says Singapore is difficult to explain to outsiders. "When I am traveling--all I hear is 'you are fined if you don't flush, jailed if you chew gum,'" he says. "Well, yes and no--you don't actually get jailed. But the discourse always revolves around the same thing, so nobody overseas wants to talk to us Singaporeans."
Until recently dialogue at home was stifled by controls on the media and the numbing effects of ever-increasing prosperity--in 1997 Singapore's per capita GNP hit $33,000, exceeding that of Germany and the U.S. The government-influenced Straits Times still addresses its readers in the tones of the commissar, reproducing reams of ministerial utterances, no matter how forgettable. But the explosion of the Internet gave Singaporeans a convenient, anonymous forum to vent their views on everything from political figures to school curriculums, and the government--which watches everything--realized this was a medium even it could not control.
Soon the cyber habit of dialogue migrated back into real space. Late last year, The Working Committee (TWC), a discussion group led by professionals and non-governmental-organization workers, began holding forums on issues like feminism, the role of foreigners in Singapore and other subjects just outside the political arena. Given official fears that such societies might be fronts for political movements, TWC has kept each forum discussion "closed door," which means it cannot advertise the meetings publicly--though e-mail helps get around that restriction--and the proceedings cannot be reported by journalists. "The government wants dialogue to happen but is not sure how," says Tan, the theater art director, who is also part of the TWC. "It's very touchy at the moment."
Lim, the economist who set up The Roundtable discussion group in 1994, has been even more forthright. "I thought citizens should have a right to talk about politics," he says--a statement that remains iconoclastic in Singapore's context. The Roundtable, with 15 members, mostly lawyers and financiers, has been careful to keep its activities transparent and unthreatening, periodically offering position papers culled from its discussions for publication by the media. It has not avoided tough topics, though, including free speech, political participation and the government's haranguing of popular novelist Catherine Lim for allegedly eroding the authority of the Prime Minister in her newspaper column.
A surer sign of Singapore's renewal is the spread of the humor virus. "The East is red, the West is blue, Elvis is dead, Confucius too," writes local poet Damien Sin in his 1998 book Saints, Sinners and Singaporeans. Even such an oblique attack on the once-hallowed Asian values would have been risky before "Goh-lasnost," and it certainly would not have been for sale on the Singapore Writers' shelves of Borders Books and Music--which in the two years since it opened has probably become the best-stocked English-language bookshop in Asia. The humor is still cautious, often taking the form of irony or masking--a "literature of hedging," as poet and literary critic Kirpal Singh describes it. Russell Lee, an author of ghost stories, goes to public events dressed in a cape and hood to keep his identity concealed, subtly mocking the old surveillance mores.
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