Bollywood spice in culture shock play

HE was just a bright-eyed engineering student when he wrote his first play and performed in it in 2010. Even after graduating from the National University of Singapore in 2013, Shiv Tandan is still immersed in theatre and film. But this time, he's making his professional directing debut with The Good, The Bad and The Sholay - a semi-autobiographical play about the culture shock he experienced after leaving India to study in Singapore.

When he enrolled in NUS, he joined its theatre programme, which had a playwriting project mentored by Checkpoint Theatre. The play first premiered in 2011, during the NUS Arts Festival, where it subsequently received three nominations at The Straits Times Life! Theatre Awards for Best Original Script, Best Director, and Production of the Year - not a small feat as the competition com prised professional theatre companies.

"Besides writing the play, I acted in it. But this is only the second time it's been produced and now I'm co-directing it with Huzir Sulaiman (Checkpoint's joint artistic director)," he explains. Earlier this year, the play was also one of the 50 selected for readings as part of The Esplanade's SG50 celebrations. While there's hardly any change to the script, for Tandan, the biggest difference is his own growth since 2010, now that he's 25 years old compared to 19 which was when he first wrote the play.