Mr. KOK Heng Leun (郭慶亮)
Artistic Director, Drama Box
Kok Heng Leun is the Artistic Director of Singaporean theatre company Drama Box, and a prominent figure in both the English and Chinese-language theatres in Singapore. Thus far, he has directed over 80 plays, including Kuo Pao Kun’s Spirit Play, Forum Theatre Trick or Threat!, HERstory (Singapore Arts Festival 2011), Drift (Singapore Season 2008), and It Won’t Be Too Long (Singapore International Arts Festival, 2015)
Heng Leun strongly believes in engaging the community in his works to promote critical dialogues about the world we live in. He is one of the most important theatre practitioners in Singapore advocating applied and engaged arts. Known to be one of the most respectable Forum Theatre practitioners in Asia, he has also ventured into multi-disciplinary applied and engaged arts projects such as Project Mending Sky which deals with environmental issues and PRISM which looks at issues of governance in Singapore. In recent years, Heng Leun has also focused on the issue of end of life. Both Sides, Now is a long-going socially engaged art project (now in its 4th year) using theatre and arts installation, involving healthcare sector and community, to explore what it means to live and die well.
In recent years, Heng Leun has been actively advocating cultural exchanges and dialogues among artists and cultural workers in the region as well as internationally. He has also taken up teaching, curatorial and dramaturgical roles in many projects.
Heng Leun also strongly believes in the importance of research and documentation of theatre and performance. In recent years, he has initiated various projects to document and research on Chinese language theatre in Singapore, including SCENES – Singapore’s Chinese Language Theatre, a curated festival programme of theatre and exhibitions, a published anthology of contemporary Singapore Chinese language plays, and currently a publication on the history of Singapore’s Chinese language theatre.