Heartbreaking look at the struggles of artists

MANIFESTO is maddening, exasperating, energy-sapping and heartbreaking. But you have to see it. The play tries to encapsulate many of the struggles that artists in Singapore have faced in the past 70 or so years - from being labelled Communists and Marxists to general accusations of being arrogant, self-indulgent wastrels. Yet they persevere because, as they rightly put it, there aren't many other professions in this country that consistently question why society has to be the way it is.

The people behind the play know all about the struggle. Playwright Haresh Sharma and directors Alvin Tan and Kok Heng Leun have been through the worst of it: In 1994, Sharma and Tan were placed under suspicion by the authorities for allegedly practising a Marxist brand of political theatre. Kok was then working for their theatre company The Necessary Stage. Those accusations were later dropped - but not after a nightmarish period of interr…