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Off Centre (Student’s Edition)


Publisher: The Necessary Stage
S$14.95
  • Description
  • Praise
  • About the Playwright
  • Student’s Edition includes resource notes

    Off Centre was first staged by The Necessary Stage in 1993, under the direction of Alvin Tan. Despite some controversy on funding and censorship, the play was eventually performed to public and critical acclaim.

    Over the past 13 years, Off Centre has been made into an experimental feature film, published as part of a one-play series, adapted into a television movie, given a full reading in the UK, taught at a University in Kuala Lumpur and translated and staged as Otak Tak Centre in Kuala Lumpur. As one of The Necessary Stage’s landmark works, Off Centre is part of the Singaporean canon of literary works, and now and “O” and “N” level Literature text.

    Off Centre is also the first ever Singapore text to be offered at “O” levels. The creation of Off Centre owes much to a methodology and process that allowed a group of dedicated and passionate artists to research into matters beyond their life experiences, to build a body of emotional and psychological knowledge to draw from, and sufficient time to nurture the maturity of character, relationships and themes.

  • "Off Centre marks a new maturity in Singapore theatre, addressing an audience prepared to be challenged."
    Hannah Pandian, The Straits Times, 3 Sept 1993

  • 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.

ISBN: 9789810817466
Cover Type: Softcover
Page Count: 194
Year Published: 2006
Size: 210mm x 135mm