Multicultural play as ‘Open Culture’ in ‘safe precincts’: making space for difference in youth theatre

Abstract

ABSTRACTMulticultural societies in the twenty-first century grapple with increasing tensions of difference, amid rapidly changing global conditions that reiterate reductive norms. Young people engaged in developing inclusive alternatives, particularly in the arts, are important players in the process of shifting towards more empowering options that incorporate cultural mix and permeability. Even if these do not become part of a mainstream imagining, they provide significant expressions of how young people grapple with critical questions related to living in pluralist contexts polarised by official policy. In some postcolonial multicultural societies, such as Malaysia and Singapore, the spaces to play with culture and experiment with crossing boundaries are rare, due to acute sensitivities about race, religion and language. Youth theatre, which is largely school-based and thus restrained by institutional goals and expectations, seldom offers young people a chance to reflect openly about issues that affect them. Thus, questions arise about how theatre-making for and with young people can be pushed towards meaningful cultural engagement, that empowers participants, and those who facilitate these programmes, with frameworks that help youth enact and embody bold, critical and empathetic envisionings of cultural difference.This article examines the importance of play as a dynamic that produces inclusivity, particularly in culturally complex terrains that struggle to deal with multicultural negotiation. It advocates the importance of playful encounters with difference, and argues for multicultural play as an important foundational process in working across lines of difference. It draws on the work of Krishen Jit and Kuo Pao Kun, pioneering contemporary theatre directors, writers and educators in Malaysia and Singapore, whose theatre practice and philosophy underlined the importance of multicultural play, and thus provided critical examples of how difference could be engaged as a positive dynamic through ‘Open Culture’ (Kuo, P. K. 2005b. “Contemplating an Open Culture: Transcending Multiracialism.” In The Complete Works of Kuo Pao Kun: Volume Seven – Papers and Speeches, edited by B. L. Tan, 248–257. Singapore: World Scientific.), and an understanding of theatre as a ‘safe precinct’ (Jit, K. 1984. “Children's Theatre Growing Free from Orthodoxy.” New Sunday Times, March 3, 1984.).