Mining a dark past for a new play

IN 1994, theatre practitioners Alvin Tan and Haresh Sharma ran into trouble with the authorities for allegedly practising a Marxist brand of political theatre. A newspaper reporter pointedly asked if The Necessary Stage (TNS) members were "using theatre for a political end". The theatre company categorically denied it.

The year before, their play Off Centre about mental patients lost its funding from the commissioning body Ministry of Health because it "presented a prejudiced view of mental disor…