The guests who came to dinner

WHEN a friend approached him last year to take over a play she was supposed to direct, theatre educator Sazali Othman jumped at the chance to take to a professional stage again.

After all, he had been out of the scene for a while, working at local art schools over the last decade. Taking on American playwright Neil Simon's Rumors would be a welcome change from teaching and directing school productions.

But what he didn't know at that time was that his friend Christina Sergeant, a well-known theatre director and educator based in Singapore, would die this February after a heart attack.