Tackling an inconvenient truth in Singapore

A NEW play by Alfian Sa’at looks at an issue that all of us should be obsessing about but aren’t: Climate change. For the past 5 years, the well-known playwright has been researching the topic. He’s interviewed various stakeholders, from a botanist to an activist, from a bird-watcher to… well, a banyan tree and a tiger. (More on this later.) They’ve all culminated in a play titled Pulau Ujong (Island At The End), which is also the ancient name of Singapore as it appears in Chinese records, possibly from the 3rd century.

Alfian makes clear, however, that it’s “not a work that’s hectoring or sermonising. I don’t want it to guilt the audience into action. If anything, I want the work to be about re-enchantment, shifting ways of sensing and feeling, allowing the audience to expand their boundaries of care and empathy to include the non-human”.

Directed by Edith Podesta, the play stars 5 talented actors taking on multiple roles, each giving voice to a diverse cast of (mostly real-life) characters who have been observing, examining and/or feeling the impact of the rise in temperatures, increase in sea level and destruction of natural environments.