SINGAPORE – Two home-grown theatremakers are making their writing debuts in April with shows which explore themes of intergenerational dynamics.

Secondary: The Musical is Checkpoint Theatre’s associate artist weish’s first foray into writing a musical, while The Last Gardener is The Theatre Practice’s associate artist Isabella Chiam’s first venture into co-writing a monodrama.

Multi-hyphenate artist weish is best known for her hypnotic vocals and, as one half of the on-hiatus indie electronic duo .gif, is no stranger to composing harmonic gold in albums like Hail Nothing (2020). She also served as musical director of Checkpoint Theatre’s multidisciplinary theatrical work Displaced Persons’ Welcome Dinner (2019).

Double-hatting as both playwright and composer for a full musical for the first time, the 33-year-old confesses that she “struggled with it at the start”, but she has found this “intensively collaborative” process – with director Huzir Sulaiman and the cast of 12 actors – meaningful.

She says: “I’ve let Huzir, (independent production house) PK Records, the cast and their voices affect my process in various ways and inject their lives into it – and make it larger than it would have been on its own.”

The musical, set in a fictional Huxley Secondary School, follows a young teacher trying to make it through another term while three students face challenges of the education system and at home. It is partially inspired by weish’s six years as a literature teacher in various secondary schools and features 15 original songs.

Secondary: The Musical plays at Victoria Theatre from April 19 to 28 and is Checkpoint Theatre’s biggest show yet.

“It’s moved me a lot. Writing it, I thought that these were very specific stories. Then, one day in workshop, Huzir opened the floor for everybody to talk about their own relationship to their secondary school memories,” says weish, who recalls an anecdote by a cast member who, even in her late 20s, continues to have nightmares over a single mathematics examination in school.

The name Huxley brings to mind the English writer Aldous Huxley, best known for his science-fiction novel Brave New World (1932).

Weish says: “Spoilers aside, a central tenet of my investigation through this play, and something that has haunted me long after I stopped being a teacher, was the way society is organised and looking at all my students from 2014 to 2016 – where they’re at now, what doors have been open to them due to circumstances from their childhood, how long that has been predetermined.

“Without talking very politically about it, I just wanted the story to capture this small moment of their lives – what it really looks like on the ground day to day – while interrogating these big questions.”

Equally intimate in focus is Chiam’s The Last Gardener, which was staged in 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic as an interactive theatre workshop with 10 public shows and an audience of just two for each run.

The show, which runs at The Theatre Practice’s Practice Space from April 10 to 14, has been expanded into a monodrama exploring how “a father uses the language of gardening as a way to connect with his daughter and what he leaves behind when he passes on”.

While the story is fictional, Chiam draws from her life. She picked up gardening during the pandemic and found it was another way to bond with her father. “You know, that generation doesn’t really express themselves a lot in terms of care. That’s the way they try to strike up a conversation. It was just nice for him to have one more thing to bond with me over.”

With more acting and directing credits to her name, Chiam admits she does not see herself as a writer.

“Obviously, I’m not a writer. I can still bluff my way through a piece of intimate theatre where I am more of a facilitator and there is more improvisation going on, but in a monodrama, I definitely need someone who is in their element.”

Chiam, who started by writing “snippets, paragraphs, vignettes inspired by plants”, roped in writer Cheyenne Alexandria Phillips, who organised her writing, modified her language and added motifs that brought a stronger through-line to Chiam’s ideas.

“It’s like a work in progress as we go along,” says Chiam.

When asked if she intends to write more for the stage, she laughs and says: “Not easy.”

While not discounting the possibility, she adds that the process has helped her understand the working of a writer’s mind and that she has found collaborating with Phillips and director Tan Shou Chen to be a “precious” opportunity.

Weish jokes that she “won’t even have the stamina to do it again”, but swiftly adds: “It’s been joyful. Ask me again in August, maybe I will have sprung back to life.”

Book It/Secondary: The Musical

Where: Victoria Theatre, 11 Empress Place
When: April 19 to 28; Tuesdays to Saturdays, 8pm; Saturdays and Sundays, 3pm
Admission: $45 to $115
Info: str.sg/GoKc

Book It/The Last Gardener

Where: Practice Space, 54 Waterloo Street
When: April 10 to 14; Wednesday to Saturday, 8pm; Saturday and Sunday, 3pm
Admission: $40, excluding $3 booking fee
Info: str.sg/jxWf