A/P Philip Holden (email: ellhpj@nus.edu.sg)

Week 7: Politics (1) -- Questioning

No literary text here for reading--we'll be going to see the Wild Rice production of Animal Farm at Jubilee Hall, Raffles Hotel.  Enjoy the play, but try to also to maintain a  critical attitude to the performance, thinking over what is going on and why.

This will also be a chance for us to review assignment 1, and to discuss plans for the project.

Reading

1. Interview with Ivan Heng about Animal Farm.

[Available from the IVLE Workbin: please print out and bring to our class meeting]

2. Review of Wild Rice's production of Animal Farm from the Straits Times.

[Available from the IVLE Workbin: please print out and bring to our class meeting]

3. Brief BBC Guide to George Orwell and the original Animal Farm.

4. Kuo Pao Kun, "Knowledge Structure and Play -- A Side View of Civil Society In Singapore

[This isn't in your reading pack, but I'll provide you with a copy of the text before this class meeting]

Questions

1. Comment on any aspect of the production (e.g. lighting, set, characters' actions and gestures, costumes) that you found interesting or thought-provoking.
2. What do you think the purpose of the production is--why did Ivan Heng choose to adapt Orwell's novel into a play?
3. The play is praised in both the interview with Ivan Heng and the ST review, but there are also some suggestions that it is "tame" and the American interviewer uses it as an example to confirm his prejudices about Singapore as an "authoritarian society." Do you think the play is successful in asking people to question the society in which they live?
4. How--if at all--does Animal Farm relate to Kuo Pao Kun's notion of "play" as an important element of civil society in Singapore?
5. Respond to anything in Kuo's article with which you agree or disagree.

Last updated: 5 September, 2003