{"id":4766,"date":"2018-06-03T23:00:03","date_gmt":"2018-06-03T15:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/wr\/ruth-tang-fills-in-the-blanks\/"},"modified":"2019-12-09T16:20:25","modified_gmt":"2019-12-09T08:20:25","slug":"ruth-tang-fills-in-the-blanks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/ruth-tang-fills-in-the-blanks\/","title":{"rendered":"Ruth Tang Fills In The Blanks!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I write poetry because<\/strong> I was bored at recess and had run out of ideas for X-Files<\/em> fanfiction. Now I write poetry because it\u2019s a way of working things out for myself. Like laying out an argument without knowing what its premise, or conclusion, or starting point is \u2013 with only the vaguest sense of what the shape of it is. Poetry, to me, is a place where you break language and it comes back grateful to you for it. Or it slaps you in the face. Either way, it\u2019s exciting.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right now, I’m<\/strong> working on<\/strong> an MFA in Playwriting at the New School, which is my way of figuring out what I want to do. I mean, I know what I want to do, but I haven\u2019t yet figured out the other half of the doing, which is about the practical and about money, and what people usually mean when they ask: \u2018What do you do?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I first met Alfian Sa’at<\/strong> when he became my mentor under the National Arts Council\u2019s Mentor Access Project. We started working on Building A Character<\/em> because he\u2019d written An Actress Prepares<\/em> \u2013 based on Konstantin Stanislavski\u2019s first book in the series \u2013 for Siti Khalijah Zainal, and proposed that I write a sequel of sorts. Alfian wanted me to work through my tendency to shy away from autobiographical material by working on someone else\u2019s biographical material.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"ruth
Character-building with Alfian, Sangeetha and Ruth!<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Building A Character<\/em><\/strong> was inspired by<\/strong> Rebekah Sangeetha Dorai\u2019s life<\/a>, and sense of self, and my suspicion of confessional narratives. There\u2019s something that I keep coming back to \u2013 what Anne Boyer says about the confessional and the ostensibly \u201cempowered telling\u201d: our whole lives could be turned into \u201cit happened to me\u201d if we allowed it. But, also, it did happen to me. What are we supposed to do about that? The confessional narrative is often sold as something that provides emotional catharsis, and it often is \u2013 but it also seems to demand disclosing every terrible thing that has ever happened to you. And you have to do this to be authentic or to be taken seriously. With Building A Character<\/em>, I wanted to resist that impulse to tell all, to pretend that everything begs to be told.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Working with Sangeetha is<\/strong> exhilarating \u2013 the temptation to turn the play into a showcase for her many impressive skills\/accents\/imitations nearly derailed the writing! A great deal of the script actually emerged from Sangeetha’s improvisations and accent-play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writing for the theatre<\/strong> has taught me<\/strong> how to make art with other people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Theatre is<\/strong> a living thing that knows it is artificial and constructed. Like a self-aware robot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building A Character<\/em> plays at the Singapore Theatre Festival from 5 to 8 July 2018. Visit www.singaporetheatrefestival.com<\/a> for more information!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A published poet, Ruth Tang is making her playwriting debut with Building A Character at the 2018 Singapore Theatre Festival. Why does she write poetry? And what inspired her to start writing plays?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4764,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26,128],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4766"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}