Featuring five plays by Cultural Medallion recipient Haresh Sharma, created over a span of two decades, Abuse Suxxx!!! and Other Plays is an audacious collection that casts a spotlight on LGBT lives and issues explored in The Necessary Stage’s productions. Yet these plays go beyond being simply out, loud and proud. Rather, they deal with a range of topics—from dealing with death in Top or Bottom, to fissures within the community in Mardi Gras, to examining the limits of liberal ideals in ________ Can Change—and advocate tolerance and acceptance of difference in our midst.
The collection also includes a foreword by Artistic Director Alvin Tan and an introduction by researcher Shawn Chua.
Haresh Sharma is Resident Playwright of The Necessary Stage and co-Artistic Director of the annual M1 Singapore Fringe Festival. To date, he has written about 100 plays. One of these, Off Centre, was selected by the Ministry of Education as a Literature text for ‘N’ and ‘O’ Levels, and republished by The Necessary Stage in 2006. In 2008, Interlogue: Studies in Singapore Literature, Vol. 6, was published by Ethos Books. Written by Prof David Birch and edited by A/P Kirpal Singh, it presents an extensive investigation of Haresh’s work over the past 20 years. A collection of Haresh’s plays was also translated into Mandarin and published as <<哈里斯·沙玛剧作选>> by Global Publishing. In 2010, Epigram Books published Those Who Can’t, Teach.
Haresh was awarded Best Original Script for Fundamentally Happy, Good People and Gemuk Girls during the 2007, 2008 and 2009 Life! Theatre Awards respectively. In 2010, the abovementioned plays were published by The Necessary Stage in the Trilogy collection. Most recently, two collections of short plays by Haresh, Shorts 1 and Shorts 2, were published as well. In 2011, Haresh became the first non-American to be awarded the prestigious Goldberg Master Playwright by New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. In 2014, Haresh was awarded the prestigious S.E.A. Write Award.
