New voices groomed for stage

YOU can't have local theatre if you don't have enough local plays to produce. But where do you find them? Through programmes such as TheatreWorks' Writer's Laboratory, for one.

After putting about two dozen amateur playwrights through a one-week workshop with an internationally renowned playwright Tony Perez, eight works were finally selected for a dramatised reading this weekend, which is open to the public.

The topics cover a diverse range of personal and public issues. A mother's promise, the National Library controversy last year, the healing power of pets, a father with a degenerative neurological condition and a bride planning her wedding are just some of them.

The Business Times' Helmi Yusof, 40, who has two plays selected for the dramatised reading, was galvanised by the "family values" debate that stemmed from the National Library controversy in July 2014, when three children's books that contained LGBT and single mother characters were wit…