The feeling of being watched: lived Confucianism and theatricality in Kuo Pao Kun's mid-1980s monodramas

The first plays Kuo Pao Kun (1939-2002) wrote after being released from detention in 1980 coincided with a concerted effort by the Singapore government to formalise the Confucian basis upon which it claimed that Singapore society and its increasing economic success were built. Kuo was no traditional...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Inter-Asia cultural studies 2020-04, Vol.21 (2), p.225-237
Main Author: Rae, Paul
Format: Article
Language:eng ; chi
Subjects:
Confucianism
Detention
Kuo Pao Kun
monodrama
Parking
political theatre
Singapore drama
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Summary:The first plays Kuo Pao Kun (1939-2002) wrote after being released from detention in 1980 coincided with a concerted effort by the Singapore government to formalise the Confucian basis upon which it claimed that Singapore society and its increasing economic success were built. Kuo was no traditionalist, but The Coffin is Too Big for the Hole (1985), and No Parking on Odd Days (1986) can be interpreted as expressing - and producing - the lived experience of the ordinary in ways that are informed by a Confucian sensibility. In this article, I contextualise these plays with reference to the Singapore government's "Confucian turn" in the 1980s, and then demonstrate how they provided an intermediate domain between the state and the individual for exploring the classical Confucian concerns of moral action and ritual within a rapidly modernising society.
ISSN:1464-9373
1469-8447
DOI:10.1080/14649373.2020.1759885