William Teo, a pioneer of English language theatre in Singapore, is best known for his visual style of production. As founder and director of Asia In Theatre Research Circus (later Asia In Theatre Research Centre), Teo's pan-Asian works with the company that drew from both Eastern and Western theatre traditions would distinguish Asia In Theatre Research Centre—and Teo—from the emergent wave of Singapore theatre practitioners. Teo passed away at age 43, but his in-depth research methodology had already touched many, and would go on to influence those who came to embrace his view of “total theatre” as an experience comprising both audience and performers.

Born in 1957, William Teo was the first student in Singapore to take cookery as a subject in his O levels. He went on to work as a cook in Singapore, Indonesia—where he encountered traditional Balinese music and dance—and France, where he met Eugene Miloslavsky, a friend and mentor who introduced Teo to the arts in Paris.

In 1977, Teo took hairstyling courses while working part-time as a hairdresser in London, UK, graduating the next year from the World Federation of Supreme Hairdressing School with a diploma (honours). Thereafter, for the next two years, he worked as a hairdresser in a small town near Barcelona, Spain—commuting between Barcelona and London—before returning to Singapore in 1980 where he eventually opened his own hair salon, Boticelli. Teo also became an artistic director of the Singapore Section at Intercoiffure, organising fashion shows where he would incorporate Western opera and Asian performance elements into his fashion parades.

Teo travelled to Europe in 1982 and became acquainted with the work of renowned theatre directors and Peter Brook and Ariane Mnouchkine. The latter’s avant-garde theatre ensemble Le Théâtre du Soleil would become a major influence on Teo’s own theatre work in Singapore in the years to come.

In 1985, Teo enrolled in the directing course at Practice Performing Arts School, honing his theatre skills as a student of Kuo Pao Kun. During the course, Teo began his involvement with Singapore theatre as an advisor to St. Andrew’s Junior College for their Singapore Drama Festival play Rhinoceros and as an actor in TheatreWorks’ production Fanshen.

Graduating from the directing course in 1986, Teo dove into theatre, making his directorial debut with Jean Genet’s The Maids, which featured Lim Kay Tong, Lim Kay Siu, and Ong Keng Sen, who was a fellow student in the directing course. The next year, Teo founded Asia In Theatre Research Circus (later renamed Asia In Theatre Research Centre), whose members would rehearse in Teo’s living room for the next seven years, often enjoying Teo’s cooking afterwards.

With Asia In Theatre Research Circus, Teo sought to create a new theatrical paradigm for contemporary Singaporean practitioners. This approach married regional visual and narrative traditions with a hybridised, part-Western derived approach towards dramaturgy. Notable productions Teo helmed include the inaugural The House of Bernarda Alba (1987), Medea (1988), The Conference of The Birds (1991), The Mahabharata Part 1: The Game of Dice (1995), Siddhartha (1997), If They Should Come In the Night (1999) and The Painted House (2000).

Teo’s work is marked by its pared down but no-less stunning visual and experiential elements. These integrate textures, atmospheres and music evocative of Southeast Asian storytelling and dance-dramas, and have been variously described as magical rhythmic rituals. Frequently staged in unusual venues—from old forts to disused warehouses—Teo’s theatre aesthetic was more than for mere visual shock-and-awe; rather, the detailed attention to a highly visual focus served to bring the audience into the same world as the characters and actors from the beginning of the play.

Teo is also well known as an “open director” who often did not cast roles to specific actors until later on when the production is well into rehearsals. His distinct form of storytelling, stunning costumes, commitment to in-depth research and actors’ preparation and training, are what made Asia In Theatre’s relatively small output long remembered after the curtains have come down.

In 1994, Teo received the Young Artist Award from the National Arts Council, Singapore.

In 2001, Teo passed away from complications arising from tuberculosis. He left behind a legacy of critically acclaimed cross-cultural artistic research and exploration, which lives on in the work of theatre practitioners in Singapore.