Life and death by a promising playwright

READING about the religious conflicts that have dominated headlines in recent years so fascinated 17-year-old Jovi Tan that he read as much as he could on the subject and even wrote a play about it.

Titled Marco Polo, the play deals with the afterlife and he finished writing it in 24 hours, winning the Student Category of TheatreWorks' long-running 24-hour Playwriting Competition last year. Written as an absurdist piece of theatre influenced by Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett, Marco Polo is about two blind friends who meet up after death, and try to figure out if they ended up in heaven or hell. Amid the uncertainty, they begin to understand what it is to be lonesome, fearful and utterly lost, and try to recapture emotions they had when they were alive.

The Raffles Institution student had only written one play for school before, and likes writing poetry in his spare time. He adds: "The plays that strike a chord with me are Singapore plays, that tell the Singapore story."