Alfian Sa’at’s new play Causeway, staged two months ago at the Singapore Arts Festival, is a series of bold, short plays that candidly examines the love-hate relationship between Singapore and Malaysia, much to the chagrin of the happy censors on both the island and her former union. Having survived such government-sanctioned inanity, the play is finally showing at The Actors Studio Bangsar. Alfian, who also wrote Bulan Madu, my favourite production last year, is 25 and graduating soon with a degree that allows him to cut up human. After so many years on this planet, he merely managed to write an award winning short story collection, two excellent poetry anthologies and critically-acclaimed plays in both Malay and English (and come November, in Mandarin too). You could say he is doing pretty okay for a soon-to-be-doctor. But beware his cuts: they are real, and they will make you laugh.

What did you make of the response to Bulan Madu in Malaysia?
Frankly, overwhelmed. I still read the feedback forms for that double-bill with much fondness, especially the one which wrote 'Alfian's acting was great!' – even though the actor being referred to was Gene Sharudyn (my acting, I believe would have been comparable to the wooden stump used as a prop in his play). Anyway, it was a hell of an experience, because the audience received the works with a tremendous warmth unimaginable in Singapore. And frankly, I came with apprehensions – because I knew as Malay Singaporeans we're often configured as being the poorer cousins to our Malaysian counterparts, and I didn't know if the two plays would perpetuate us as 'deculturalised' Singaporeans – you know lah, the plays inside got swear words, and then even worse got some English text some more – all an affront to more purist (and puritan) sensibilities. So, the response we got was a very pleasant surprise.

What was the rehearsal process for Causeway like? What was your involvement like during the rehearsal? A lot of cringing/teeth-gnashing/laughing?
Rehearsals and devising sessions were exciting occasions, because it's the first time I've been involved in a process where there might be certain cultural negotiations involved. I'm not actually 'othering' the Malaysians, but I had to bear in mind that as much as we shared a common working language, our conceptual and theoretical languages could be very different [three of the performers are Malaysian]. And I could argue that all these differences are exaggerated because we work under the shadow of 'bilateral relations' (which I think is just a nice name to describe the ancestral enmity and bad blood that's unfortunately been inherited by (some members) of the current generation like a patrilineal family feud), but the truth is the process had to be very nuanced. There are cultural differences between the Malaysian and Singaporean Malay, which might have been related to their contrasting political systems, or not at all. For example, during one of the scenes, I remembered that we pointed out to one of the Malaysian actresses not to tie her tudung at her chin, because she was playing a 'Mak Singapore', and the way she wore her tudung made her look more like a 'Mak Malaysia'. Another thing – being the writer in the collaboration, I had to be careful not to colonise and appropriate the viewpoints of the co-collaborators – I had to respect what they had to say and find some way to incorporate it into the play. But yes, a lot of laughter, even if sometimes in classic Malay fashion, laughing through gritted teeth.

Malaysian practitioners often complain about the lack of government funding for the arts. Singaporean arts has lots of funding. Is it all that big a deal? Is there any draw back?
I think your very own Janet Pillai once mentioned in a forum in Singapore, if you can't get the funding, then just go ahead and do poor theatre. I do subscribe to this to a certain extent. If you remember Bulan Madu, the set wasn't elaborate – dry leaves, pillows (stuffed with newspaper – that's how poor we are!). So, I think, this issue of monetary resources can be overcome by other resources. Alin Mosbit, directing 'Madu II', could create an impression of the stage being larger than it is by her choreography of the two actresses in the space and by her careful use of certain soundscapes – so the tiny kitchen transforms into a talk-show studio, a cooking-show studio. Gene Sharudyn crowded the stage by playing a total of 14 characters (including a rooster singing Hari Raya songs).

But that said, I don't deny that sometimes your vision requires the use of expensive equipment like say, multimedia, or you're tired of spartan aesthetics and decide to go balistically Baz Luhrmann. Then in that case you just have to plunge into the dark and dirty world of arts funding. Singapore arts get funding, and even tenancy in housing clusters, so the picture might look rosy from the outside. The downside to all of this is that you don't know when the sponsorship ends and the censorship begins. Your work gets more policed, because these sponsors believe they are custodians of public money, and will scrupulously try to avoid controversy (laying down mechanisms and contingencies to handle controversy is just not in the bureaucrat's handbook). And you tend to develop a certain dependency syndrome as well. There are many ethical and political issues involved too. For example, would you be considered ungrateful if you criticise the state in your works, considering that you're receiving state funding? Also, what does 'public money' mean, and why does the arts council have to feel accountable about how they spend it, when the Singapore government can blow a few million of Singaporean's money at business projects in China with impunity? So, I think the thing to be mindful about constantly is that once you put loads of money into something, one of the world's oldest sources of evil, be prepared to engage in one of the world's oldest profession.

You often said you wish you could come up to Malaysia because you are tired of the censorship in Singapore. Surely you have encountered some form of censorship in your attempts to stage the play here. Has that changed your resolve?
Yes, there's been a bit of tricky navigating around the scissors we've had to do for the play to be staged in KL. But it'll take more than that to keep me off KL. I have more than a few artist friends in Singapore who agree that KL is really very seductive. There's a certain chaos which I think makes it a very exciting crucible for artistic activity. The NGO scene is thriving there. People speak up when they're talked down to. Am I making gross generalisations because most of my friends from KL are artist types? Your Amir Muhammad, Salleh Joned, Leow Puay Tin, Charlene Rajendran, Jit Murad, Huzir Sulaiman, Krishen Jit, Jo Kukathas, Jerome Kugan, even you, I mean, all must jaga baik-baik because to me they're the true Datuks and Datins of that particular, noisy, committed cultural universe you have there. Well, maybe I'm a bit biased, but who cares. The food's much better there anyway.

Care to surmise the differences between Singaporean censors and Malaysian censors? Can we expect a play from you about this in the future?
Aiyoh, I can't really do this now since I've hardly had any experience with Malaysian censors. And it's hard to detect any kinds of patterns, which shows you just how bloody arbitrary censorship can be. I mean, the magazine Cosmopolitan in banned in Singapore, but you can get it in Malaysia. Schindler's list was shown in Singapore. You can get away with homosexuality in Singapore theatre, but over there I've heard they're not considered healthy 'Malaysian values'. On the other hand an Instant Café Theatre in Singapore will be called Instant Suicide Theatre. I heard in Malaysia some magazines are censored with painstaking craftsmanship vis-à-vis sliced pages (the ones who do that in Singapore, by the way, are perverts vandalising library magazines). But Performance Art is banned in Singapore, such that if you want to apply for a license to put it up, you have to call it something dodgy like 'movement piece' or even 'dance with text', which is essentially calling a spade a 'tool based on the fulcrum-lever system used mainly for topsoil excavation'. So what are the differences? Suffice to say that they're just dumb. And dumber. As to which one's the latter, why don't we throw that question to the media in both countries and see them lunge at it like a pack of hounds?

What advice would you give other writers trying to tackle this highly censorable subject of Malaysia-Singapore relations?
The same advice I give to anyone who wants to do anything that upsets other people's agendas: Just do. Don't care. Censors are paid to do their jobs; don't upset their rice bowl. But another piece of advice more specific would be is to really look at the complexities in both countries. To get actors who are able to be as politically committed as you are in articulating the various tensions in your work. And what I mean by this is that when they perform, they can double-code what they're doing, such that even if the performance operates on a metaphorical level, they can still reveal the political subtext. And this is something very difficult – very few actors can reach this stage effectively. And also, to really look at the premises of your play. What was very interesting for me during devising was realising how little the KL cast knew about Singapore politics. But this wasn't because they were politically apathetic, but because their sets of politics were different. Politics meant other things to them – the Reformasi movement, Islamism, etc. And maybe it was because I worked on the assumption that bilateral spats are conducted mainly between KL and Singapore, between the capitals where the ideologues nurse their grudges. And this deficit of information made sense because ya tak ya juga, in KL they don't receive either Singapore radio or television. Whereas in Singapore we get TV1 and TV2. I was wondering what kind of a play we might have had if we had worked with Johoreans instead, who might have had more tangible encounters with Singaporeans, either through watching Najip Ali on TV or being shouldered aside by some puffing, sweaty, rude shopper piling his cart with groceries.

Do you prefer to say Malaysia-Singapore or Singapore-Malaysia?
I prefer, actually, to say Malaya. Actually sometimes I think I don't want to live in either Singapore or Malaysia. I want to colonise an island in between, maybe call it Pulau Malaya Kechil (note the quaint old spelling!). On this island, Singapore Malays will live with Malaysian Chinese along with Indians who haven't been Bumiputra-fied or PAP-coddled. And a lot of the other minority ethnicities too who have never been drunk on power or who have suffered from some kind of repression – we'll have Malaysian Temuan people side-by-side with Singaporean Jehovah's Witnesses. It will be a place of refuge, a place for exiles. I haven't figured out the other stuff like the GDP and what we're actually going to do, but I like the idea of starting again, before the '64 riots in Singapore, before the '69 riots in Malaysia.

You said to me (sorry to plunder a supposedly innocent casual ICQ chat…) that you feel more affinity with Malaysian Chinese than Singaporean Malays. Care to elaborate?
Ah, I actually said, sometimes I feel more affinity with the Malaysian Chinese than Malaysian Malays. Because I know what it's like to grow up as a minority in the country you are born in. I know what it's like to be a stranger in your own house. And to live under the gaze of the majority, to constantly justify the way you live (now Muslims in Singapore are being tarred with the same Chinese paintbrush thanks to the arrests of Muslim proto-terrorists). It hurts, because you have your dignity taken away from you. Just recently I received an email from Jerome (Kugan), where he ended off with the phrase 'Insya Allah'. And then I recall one of Singapore's previous elections, where a Malay opposition party member used these very same words and was almost sued by the PAP who thought he was trying to stir up communalist sentiments. How stupid and ignorant is that? And when I encounter Chinese Malaysians whose Malay is more powerful than mine, when I hear one of them say words like 'rindu' (and I'm sure you know Malay is a very affective language, as a matter of fact, languages that were agrarian and pre-literate have that kind of cognition), and he says it with that same emotional charge that strikes me to the heart, I'm flabbergasted and humbled. I get angry also because I can't understand how much further Chinese Malaysians have to go to prove themselves. These people are not guest people. They know the cultural inflections, they've embodied the nuances of the soil, and they speak the language not just to do business with the majority but also to speak to them on equal terms. What do you do your Merdeka play for and insist on 'reminding the minorities that they are where they are due to the grace and accommodating nature of the Malays?' It's such an insecure mak tiri complex.
Am I sounding self-righteous? But it's something I feel strongly about because in Singapore, there are many, many (non-Malay) people who call me Mr Sa'at. And you dare talk about growing up in a multiracial society. To the point where I changed my name on my books from Alfian Sa'at to Alfian Bin Sa'at, and for my next book I'll screw up the picture some more by putting it down as Alfian Bin Haji Sa'at. Then we'll see lah which Singaporean journalist will call me Mr Haji. Or Mr Bin. Or whatever.

Someone (a Malaysian) said he feels the play did not live up to its claim: to be a play examining the relationship between Singapore and Malaysia. For example, the scenes involving the two families who visit one another looks more like a standard country mouse/city mouse story rather than a story about national differences. Any comments?
I think that was the point of it: to work from certain dichotomies and expand from there. I don't deny that there are many many Malaysian urbanites, with the cigar-chomping bumigeois, the children of the aristocracy zipping around in sports cars. And people might say that I'm engaging in stereotyping by positioning the Malaysian family as the rural one. But then again I couldn't have had it reversed and expect it to come off as realistic, because Singapore really got no more kampongs left. So working from this Singapore/ urban/ modern/ liberal and Malaysia/ rural/ backward/ conservative typology, it was interesting to see what kinds of tensions could be explored. But I don't think it was all two-dimensional – the Malaysian family, for example, sent their son to the same UK college attended by the Singaporean family. So, working from certain strategic stereotypes, we move towards breaking some of them down, undermining various readings and expectations. Or we reinforce some of these stereotypes, because real life is like that, people exhibit traits that often frustrate attempts to classify and systematise them.
But the lesson is you can't just conclude the whole Malay race is lazy because a few Malay men don't want to work in your tin mine or your plantations. As you can't conclude that Singaporean Malays are less Muslim because you've seen one drinking alcohol, or Malaysian Malays are more Islamic because they have PAS. And maybe some time in the future I'd like to work at more radical and slippery representations of Malaysians and Singaporeans. Because I think Causeway is an unfinished project. I'm quite certain I'll be making a lot more trips to the North in the future. Insya Allah.

What are you working on next?
I have a play up in November at the Esplanade Studio Theatre, which I co-wrote with Ng How Wee. It's going to be in Mandarin (translated lah), and it's called 'Fugitives'. It's a play about a Singaporean Chinese family. Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-Hsien are guilty as charged in attracting me to the intricate dynamics of Chinese families. And I'm also compiling some short prose material for a book called 'Truant Tongues'.

Do you seriously plan to practice medicine when you graduate? And if so, which of its icky capillary? What's your favourite part of the human anatomy?
Yah lah, become a doctor for a while, though I doubt I'd specialise in anything. And I'll see how it goes. If writing medical certificates doesn't give me the emotional satisfaction I crave, then I'll go back to writing books and plays. Then maybe emigrate to KL. It's getting more painful living in Singapore.
As for my favourite part, hmmm... I think the stray eyelash on the cheek. Because according to superstition, it's a telepathic messenger, like a feather alighting on your open book from the window, the petal fallen in your hair – it means someone loves you.

Please share with us your thoughts on the passing of the great Kuo Pao Kun.
Of course it's an inestimable loss. I can only paraphrase Marquez on the death of Octavio Paz: now a tremendous torrent of beauty has ceased. His was a theatre of possibilities – bazaar Malay colliding with fast-extinct Chinese dialects in Mama Looking for Her Cat, the evocation of a marketplace in pre-colonial Singapore filled with ecstatic sounds and sights in Descendants of the Eunuch Admiral. His works on multiculturalism resisted any kind of codification from the state, and what strikes me as most interesting about them, as illustrated by the examples above, is that he located a Utopia based on the past. But it is not a past that is irrecoverable – by portraying them on stage, he brings them to our immediate presence, and also nudges them towards a possible future. The irony is that this man, who exemplified in many ways the ideal Singaporean, only had his citizenship restored 8 years ago.

That said, I believe I have to make a comment on the swiftness at which the local papers cranked out their obituaries. It is obscene, that he passed away a night before and the news was carried in the papers the morning after, complete with two tribute pieces. And much of the deep contemplation required for such an exercise was sacrificed for 'newsy' deadline urgencies; the reporting, regrettably, was slipshod. It sickens me to think that the press was hovering over news of his sickness like a pack of vultures. It sickens me as well to think of the PAP dignitaries who offered their condolences, as if detached from the stain of having once detained him in prison for 4 and a half years for his leftist beliefs (I refuse to use the word 'communist' as the local press has done because of its tragic associations and semantic distortions – with violence and insurgency, guerillas hiding in jungles). I think one of Pao Kun's most enduring legacies would be in showing us how to look through and more importantly, to look beyond such hypocrisies. Because one thing about him, despite his uncompromising nature, was his capacity for forgiveness, and for empathising with the oppressor.

Photos in black & white by Danny Lim.