I am pleasantly surprised by the range of local work addressing complex issues in Singapore. Michael Chiang’s Private Parts is a Singaporean treasure, covering topics of transgender acceptance, gender normativity and overall social moral policing. Staged at the Drama Center, this piece is a bold and relevant profile of Singapore in the 1990s  in its heydays as a center for gender-switch treatments. What is slightly unfortunate is that while the screenplay itself is not recent, its portrayal of the everyday Singaporean being quick to judgment is still appropriate. 

Private Parts follows Warren (Jason Godfrey), a TV personality who switches to live talk-show broadcast and is looking to prove his chops. As a result of an unfortunate accident, he finds himself in a clinic in Batam to get work done on his private parts. It is here that he meets the rest of the key ensemble – Mirabella (Chua Enlai), Lavinia (Shane Mardjuki) and Edward (Zee Wong) who are themselves here to undergo surgery on their sexual organs to embolden their transition to their desired genders. Warren develops a close affinity to his companions and ends up building a deep sense of empathy with the struggles and hopes of both the characters as well as the transgender community in Singapore. The plot becomes complex when Warren attempts to bring these new friends into the spotlight on his TV show, putting glaring eyes on their private lives.

The play is a slow burn, with points of extreme tension and the occasional comic relief, but it is a sensitive and honest look at Singapore’s relationship with the transgender community. Set against the fictional backdrop of the announcement of Bugisworld, an adult entertainment center, Private Parts is a harsh critique of the moral policing of Singaporeans who themselves fall short of their own moral standards. The stage set is surrounded by translucent panels, behind from which anonymous Singaporeans will appear and condemn the presence of transgender entertainers and dancers. Yet, these same people will rarely engage in the honest conversation of building inclusiveness and acceptance in public. The method of the TV talk-show also forces us to confront our fetishization of the transgender community, treating them as “freaks” or “entertainment” rather than real people who themselves share the same fears of never being “fully men” or “fully women”. Warren himself recognizes this after the show, in how he was always able to distance himself from the true emotional vulnerability necessary to accept Mirabella as a person in her own right.

I loved the cast in this performance. Enlai shines as the character of Mirabella and her intensity is balanced by Shane’s Lavinia, a light-hearted and slightly more indulgent character. Zee Wong as Edward comes off as bit too much of a caricature but still carries the punches in some of the play’s most important scenes. I read Michael Chiang’s decision to cast cis-gendered actors in an effort to elevate the performance, as a difficult one but I can appreciate how much work the cast put into honoring the lives they represent in their characters. Perhaps soon we will be able to cast actual trans-gendered actors to represent their own stories. A good respite is the regular interludes with the Dreamgirls, a performance troupe that dances along to some great hits. They should definitely get their own show.

I also found it interesting how the play maintained its 1990s timeline, with the retro machinations and lingo. I think it reinforced how unfortunate it is that we haven’t progressed much as a society in our institutional acceptance and respect of the transgender community in Singapore, because the same lines spoken in the play, those of fear, hatred, and self-righteousness, are very much repeated today. 

I’m glad I got to catch this play in its limited run this year. It’s one of those things that give me hope that we can engage in these difficult conversations with maturity and open-mindedness.

Here are my ratings:

Script: 4.5/5

Performance: 4.5/5

Production: 4.5/5

Overall: 4.5/5