Ong Keng Sen

Artistic director of TheatreWorks in Singapore for the last fifteen years, Ong Keng Sen is an active contributor to the evolution of an Asian identity and aesthetic for contemporary performance in the 21st century.

Keng Sen studied intercultural performance with the Performance Studies Department at Tisch Schools of the Arts, New York University, and holds a law degree. His belief in the juxtaposition of different art forms and cultural styles has helped him create his own epic performance style of directing. In 1994, Keng Sen conceptualised his most important work, The Flying Circus Project, a laboratory project that brings together traditional and contemporary Asian artists from the fields of theatre, music, dance, video, visual arts and ritual who work together on projects that explore the concepts of reinvention, cultural negotiation and the politics of interculturalism. From this experience, he initiated a new network for Asian artists to dialogue and engage with each other in 1999, known as the Arts Networks Asia (ANA). The Arts Network Asia has held major regional Asian artist meetings in Shanghai (2000) and Hanoi (2002). In 2002, he has embarked on a new Asian arts exchange project in Laos engaging with the local youths, elder artists and international Asian artists called The Continuum Asia Project (CAP).

Notable Keng Sen productions in Singapore include Destinies of Flowers in the Mirror, an interdisciplinary production that brought 300 audience members into a large fountain for each performance and the Descendants of the Admiral Eunuch which explored political castration in Singapore. His "docu-performances", pieces that explore today's Asia through history and confrontation of self include Broken Birds, Workhorse Afloat, and The Spirits Play-6 Movements in a Strange House (retitled Dreamtime in Morishita Studios for its November and December 2001 Tokyo stagings).

He directed the Tokyo premiere of Lear in 1997, which then went on to tour eight cities in Asia, Europe, and Australia, including a performance at Berlin's Theater der Welt 1999. His Shakespeare-inspired trilogy include Desdemona premiering at the Adelaide Festival, Australia in 2000 and Search:Hamlet (Denmark, 2002) at the Kronbourg Castle in Elsinore, and Copenhagen for the Asia-Europe Forum.

Directing credits in the United States include The Silver River (Spoleto Festival, Charleston, 2000; New Music Theatre Festival, Philadelphia, 2001, Singapore 2001) for the Lincoln Center Festival in New York City in July 2002; A Language of Their Own, which he directed at the Joseph Papp Public Theatre (New York Shakespeare Festival, 1995), and The Continuum: Beyond the Killing Fields, a docu-performance about a 70 year old classical dancer, Em Theay, from Cambodia who survived the mass killings of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge (International Festival of Arts and Ideas, New Haven, 2001; Singapore, 2001; Berlin 2002).

Keng Sen is presently developing two projects concurrently, the first in Vienna entitled The Myths of Memory, which includes The Continuum; and a new piece with Austrian and German performers based on the ongoing Milosevic trials. The second is the The Global Soul, which will premiere this June in Berlin at the IN TRANSIT festival and in Singapore.

A Fulbright Scholar, he was recently artist-in-residence at the New York University Asian Pacific and American Studies Program/Institute. In addition, he serves on the International Council of The Asia Society of New York and has been the recipient of fellowships from the Japan Foundation, the British Council, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in Berlin and the Asian Cultural Council (New York). [top]

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