Look inside the book | Get the E-book
A man stabs an MP at a Meet-the-People Session. But this is not their story. It is the story of the man’s girlfriend, an Indonesian maid who wants to get married and become a Singaporean citizen. It is the story of the MP’s wife, who tries to cope with her husband’s injury and the media spotlight. It is the story of the maid’s employer, who is also struggling with her own tragedy. These three women may mean nothing to each other, but they need one another to survive. The maid, the employer and the MP’s wife. Are they all model citizens? Written by veteran Singaporean playwright Haresh Sharma, Model Citizens won Best Director (Alvin Tan) and Best Actress (Siti Khalijah Zainal) at the 2011 The Straits Times Life! Theatre Awards.
“Model Citizens is simultaneously epic and intimate. It’s rich and complex, hitting you both at the level of gut and intellect.”
—Mayo Martin, TODAY
“As a piece of theatre, Model Citizens has both power and veracity. It pulsates with a seething, palpable rhythm of resistance.”
—The Flying Inkpot
“A penetrating look at the price of citizenship and the fragility of trust.”
—Clarissa Oon,The Straits Times
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.
