Kuo Pao Kun

Kuo Pao Kun was born in Hebei Province, China in 1939 to Kuo Fung Ting and Zhou Qiao.

He moved to Beijing with his mother in 1947, and spent nine months in transition in Hong Kong before being called to Singapore at the age of 10 by his businessman father.

Kuo lived with his father in High Street, and first attended Catholic High School's primary section.

Due to various circumstances, however, Kuo transferred between both Chinese and English-medium schools many times.

In 1955, Kuo joined Rediffusion's Mandarin radio play section at 14 years of age, (Lo) and worked as a broadcaster, in addition to performing and writing radio dramas and Chinese xiangsheng.

His early years in Hebei and Beijing had led to his acquiring of his trademark Beijing-accented Mandarin, which he once described as "like having a BBC accent in English", and which advantaged him as a broadcaster.

At one point, when he attended the Chinese High School in 1956, his father transferred him to Kallang West Government Chinese Middle School (now Dunman High School) before moving him to Hong Kong due to the student unrest generated by politically activist Chinese high school and middle school students, largely out of concern for the political expedience of the unrest.

When the student unrest ended in 1957, Kuo returned to Singapore to attend the English-medium Pasir Panjang Secondary School.

Kuo attended a total of six schools in six years.

After Kuo finished high school in 1959, his experience in broadcasting and bilingual advantage from his education enabled him to secure a job as a translator/announcer in Melbourne with Radio Australia, where he worked for three and a half years.

Singaporean Chinese contemporary theatre in the 1960s and 1970s was highly politicised, given the field's roots in social movements, the turbulent state reforms of the local social and political environment after Singapore's independence, and the increasingly political and revolutionary environment internationally.

Kuo's first plays, written from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s, were also "highly politicised" and "critical of social issues."

In 1963, he took up an intensive, two-year drama programme with the National Institute of Dramatic Arts (NIDA) in Sydney, while working in technical theatre at the Old Tote.

The course gave him a "strong, solid grounding" in many aspects of contemporary Western theatre and introduced him to Western classical theatre.

During his studies in NIDA, Kuo also became engaged to choreographer and dancer Goh Lay Kuan.

Upon returning to Singapore in 1965, Kuo and Goh founded the Practice Performing Arts School (PPAS) on 1 July that year, providing professional dance and drama courses.

The founding date was also the day that Kuo married Goh.

As public perception of Chinese drama during that era was that it had always been a part of cultural and mass political movements, many were unreceptive towards the charging of fees to teach drama.

For many years, the dance wing subsidised classes in the drama wing.

Despite the fact that the idea of professional theatre was not widely accepted then, Kuo noted that young people from all walks of life devoted themselves to theatre courses and remained highly involved in PPAS productions even after they had completed the drama course.

In 1966, Kuo translated and produced The Caucasian Chalk Circle in Mandarin, the first Brecht play performed in Singapore.

The Cultural Revolution in China, which began in 1966, impacted local Singaporean Chinese in the 1970s.

Many were influenced by its trend of thought, viewing art, literature and drama as weapons of struggle and tools of social change.

Kuo and Goh's first daughter Kuo Jian Hong was born in 1967, followed by their second daughter Kuo Jing Hong in 1971.

One of the plays, titled The Struggle (1969), was written by Kuo to reflect the social turmoil resulting from rapid urban reconstruction and inflow of multinational investment, but its performance was banned by the authorities.

Critics also noted that Kuo's early plays characteristically displayed a clear-cut distinction between the "good" (tradition and class unity) and the "bad" (exploitative capitalists).

In 1972, Kuo and his students and ex-students from PPAS launched the "Go into Life Campaign" to experience life of labouring masses in Singapore and Malay Peninsula.

Their guiding ideology was that "art came from life. Without knowing life firsthand and deeply, especially the life of the labouring masses, it would be difficult to write good artistic work".

The campaign resulted in the proliferation of original works based on real-life stories of labouring people, including The Fishing Village.

The growing force and increasingly political nature of Chinese theatre culminated into the 1976 massive leftist purge, where hundreds, including Kuo, were detained without trial under the Internal Security Act.

Kuo spent four years and seven months in detention, during which the state revoked his citizenship.

Kuo described the detention as "a moment of humbleness" and "a very sobering experience– you get cut down, you know that you don't know enough."

The incident caused Kuo to undergo a major re-evaluation and reflection of his perceptions and thoughts.

He was released in 1980 under restrictions in residence and travel, and resumed teaching drama at PPAS in 1981.

The restrictions were lifted in 1983, and his citizenship reinstated in 1992.

Kuo resumed directing, producing and writing plays immediately after his release.

Kuo is acknowledged by both locals and foreigners as the pioneer of Singapore theatre, and was awarded the Cultural Medallion in 1990 for his contributions to Singapore theatre.

His plays are characterised for their dramatic and social commentary, use of simple metaphors and multiculturalism themes, and have been staged locally and internationally.

Kuo Pao Kun (1939 – 10 September 2002) was a playwright, theatre director, and arts activist in Singapore who wrote and directed both Mandarin and English plays.

He founded three arts and drama centres in Singapore, conducted and organised a number of drama seminars and workshops, and mentored Singaporean and foreign directors and artists.