Benny Lim

Benny Lim (born 1980, in Singapore) is the Artistic Director of the now dormant The Fun Stage, Singapore.^[1] He obtained a Doctor of Philosophy from the Division of Drama, University of Glamorgan (now known as the University of South Wales) in 2012.^[2]

Biography

Since 1996, Benny Lim has produced and directed over 70 arts projects in a non-profit environment. In 2001, at the age of 21, he founded The Fun Stage, and has since held on to the record as the Youngest Artistic Director of a theatre company in Singapore.^[3] Benny has also taught in various institutions of higher education in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. In 2006, one of Benny's play, Existence, was published in Singapore.^[4] Existence was written in 2003, inspired by the poetry of Cyril Wong, as a response to Hong Kong's Leslie Cheung's suicide. The play was mentioned in TIME Magazine (10 August 2003) as a story that 'portrays the love of two young Singaporean men for each other as doomed'.^[5] In 2015, Benny curated Umbrella Festival, an arts festival in Hong Kong, ^[6] in response to city's Umbrella Movement.

Censorship

Benny's works often deal with social-political issues within a postmodern society. In 2004, Benny organized the Lovers' Lecture Series, a series of talks on the topic of same sex literature. The entire series was not given a go-ahead by the Public Entertainment Licensing Unit (PELU), which is under the Singapore Police Force.^[7] In 2005, Benny collaborated with artist Brian Gothong Tan and they devised a play, Human Lefts. The content of the play, which was on the issue of the death penalty, was given a total ban by the Media Development Authority of Singapore (MDA).^[8][9]

References