KING
KING tells the story of Geok Yen, a public relations executive who seemingly has it all - a stable job and a boyfriend who is about to propose. But one fateful office party, her safe stable life gets upturned when on impulse, she attends the party in the guise of a man, Stirling da Silva. Emboldened by the alter ego, Yen discovers a newfound confidence to speak her truth, and be whatever she could be without self-judgement. In this one-hander, JO TAN delivers a tour de force performance playing multiple characters, navigating expertly through a host of social stereotypes.
Jo’s experiences as a drag king sparked off an explosion of realisations about her own gender-identity – perhaps she wasn’t a woefully inadequate Asian female, but a possibly non-binary individual with the right to take up space. These in turn inspired the play KING: a showdown between the conflicting voices in the head of a socially-terrified Chinese woman; including the unabashedly sexual and politically-incorrect King she dreams of being, the traditional chauvinist fiancé, the misogynistic drag queen friend, the girl-boss who leans fully into her hypersexuality; the mansplainer colleague… Set against drag numbers of songs by beautiful KPop boys, what resulted was a one-hander where no fewer than eight characters explore gender performance in modern Asia.
by Jo Tan
supported by the National Arts Council of Singapore and BinjaiTree.
