Ong Keng Sen (born 20 November 1963; ) is a Singaporean director of the theatre group TheatreWorks, which was founded in 1985.

Early life

Ong Keng Sen was youngest of six children born to immigrants from Putian, China. Ong joined the drama club at Anglo-Chinese Primary School and went on to serve as president of the Varsity Playhouse of the

National University of Singapore The National University of Singapore (NUS) is a national public research university in Singapore. Founded in 1905 as the Straits Settlements and Federated Malay States Government Medical School, NUS is the oldest autonomous university in th ...

as he was studying law. A trained lawyer, he completed his pupillage at Singapore law firm Lee & Lee. Ong is also

Fulbright scholar The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people o ...

who studied intercultural performance with the Performance Studies Department at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.

Theatre career

Theatre

Ong took on the post of artistic director of theatre group TheatreWorks in 1988. He was involved with the production of comedies such as ''Beauty World'' and ''Army Daze''. His local productions include Destinies of Flowers in the Mirror and Descendants of the Admiral Eunuch. Ong was the director of Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA) from 2014 to 2017. The SIFA was a revamped, independent version of its predecessor, the Singapore Arts Festival. Ong was invited to recreate this national performing arts festival after an industry review. He was the first artist to helm the festival since the festival's inception in 1977, which had previously been headed by

civil servants The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leaders ...

. In this capacity, he sought to ensure the sustainability of the festival. Ong restructured the festival and renamed it SIFA to highlight the Singapore and international perspectives in it. Beginning with 20,000 audiences in SIFA 2014, this has increased to 62,000 and in 2016, the festival peaked with 155,000 attendances, 96% capacity houses and 75% of its performances sold out. Further in 2016, he was responsible for raising 20% of the S$9 mil festival through sponsorship. During his tenure, he has brought international artists to work with Singapore art schools. He has capacity-built cultural development through his scaffold of an alternating international and local focus for SIFA from year to year. As festival director, he has been vocal about the government restrictions and non-transparent OB markers for performance arts staged in Singapore. In addition to serving as festival director, Ong has directed one performance every year at the festival. Ong directed ''Facing Goya'', a

Michael Nyman Michael Laurence Nyman, CBE (born 23 March 1944) is an English composer, pianist, librettist, musicologist, and filmmaker. He is known for numerous film scores (many written during his lengthy collaboration with the filmmaker Peter Gre ...

-composed opera, for the opening of Singapore International Festival of Arts 2014. In 2015, Ong directed a six-hour site-specific performance, ''The Incredible Adventures Of Border Crossers'', for the opening of the inaugural Singapore Festival in France at the Palais de Tokyo. The production involved 30 foreigners and explored what it meant to be a "border crosser". The festival also re-staged at Theater de la Ville Paris, TheatreWorks' ''Lear Dreaming'', directed by Ong. In the same year, ''Lear'', directed by Ong and written by

Rio Kishida was a Japanese playwright and director. She wrote several plays about women and the problems they faced in a patriarchal society that run parallel with the second wave of the feminist movement in Japan. Even though she did not strictly identify h ...

, was selected by '' The Business Times'' as one of the "finest plays in 50 years" alongside productions by Goh Poh Seng, Michael Chiang and

Alfian Sa'at Alfian bin Sa'at (born 18 July 1977), best known as Alfian Sa'at, is a prolific Singaporean playwright, poet, and writer. He is known for penning a body of plays, poems, and prose that often tackle issues considered taboo in the island-state, ...

and others. In 2016, Ong created Sandaime Richard based on Hideki Noda's script of the same title with kabuki onnagata Kazutaro Nakamura as Richard III. This gender bending production at Tokyo Metropolitan Theater was followed by a new production of Trojan Women at the National Theater of Korea, showcasing a blend of pansori, K-pop and Greek tragedy. In particular, the show gained much attention by casting a male pansori singer as Helen of Troy.

Film

Ong directed the Singaporean film

Army Daze ''Army Daze'' is a 1996 Singaporean comedy film based on the 1987 theatre play of the same name by Singaporean writer Michael Chiang. Distributed by Cathay Asia Films and directed by Ong Keng Sen, the film portrays a group of 18-year-old Singapore ...

, based on a play written by Michael Chiang. The movie was released in 1996.

Themes and style

Ong is a member of the Asia-Europe Network, which promotes the artistic exchange between Asia and Europe. He has been applauded around the world for this kind of transcultural theatre which mixes Western and Eastern performance traditions, especially dance with spoken word drama. Ong is largely contributed to cultivating young, educated, imaginative audiences for new works. Ong's unique "process-oriented" projects involves placing wide ranges of master practitioners of different traditions on the same stage, but remaining independent in their own aesthetics. He is particularly well known for his performance at the Bunkamura Cocoon Tokyo production of ''Lear'' in 1997, his ''Desdemona'' at the Adelaide Festival, Australia in 2000, and his ''Search:Hamlet'' at the Kronbourg Castle in Elsinore and Copenhagen.

Accolades

Ong is the first artist to have received the two most acclaimed Singaporean cultural awards, the Young Artist Award (1992) and the Cultural Medallion (2003). In 2010, he received the prestigious Fukuoka Prize for Art and Culture for his contemporary performance directions.

Personal life

Ong Keng Sen is the younger brother of

Ong Keng Yong Ong Keng Yong (born 6 January 1954) is a Singaporean diplomat who served as the 11th secretary-general of ASEAN between 2003 and 2007. He is currently the Executive Deputy Chairman of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at the N ...

References

External links

Culture base websiteEmedia website
*http://edinburghfestival.list.co.uk/article/18721-diaspora-with-theatreworks-and-the-singapore-chinese-orchestra/ *http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/features/display.var.2521037.0.New_angle_on_story_of_worlds_diaspora.php {{DEFAULTSORT:Ong, Keng Sen 1963 births Anglo-Chinese School alumni Living people Singaporean theatre directors Singaporean people of Henghua descent Recipients of the Cultural Medallion New York University people New York University alumni