I think I’ve always enjoyed autobiographical work. I’ve kept a diary for as long as I can remember. I’ve always found writing a way to be the most unfiltered and honest with my inner thoughts. A lot of female-presenting people are taught to mask in order to fit into certain moulds.

I even had an emo writing tumblr! I always enjoyed the idea of writing that illuminates the darkest, funniest, honest, truest parts of yourself. Although, where my practice is going right now, when I was doing my slides and crystallising my ideas for Singapore Writers Festival 2024, I realised that my career started with doing all these one-woman shows talking about my life.

There were a lot of things I felt very alone with—being a fat actress, or someone whose mother tongue was considered "bad” in Singapore. But as I’ve grown and allowed myself to open up to other people or theatre practitioners, I get a lot of feedback from the shows saying, ‘Thank you for making me feel less alone.’

I think it’s a very exciting space because it’s so horizontally structured, with a bunch of multi-hyphenates who are ready to help each other out with our different skills. I quite like the nomadic-ness of it. We’re not a bunch of collectives waiting to be heard; we are a whole industry of the fringe waiting to be seen, given time and space. I see so many younger theatre practitioners paving way for very deliberate practices of care, practices of inclusivity and intersectionality that I have always been wanting from the theatre scene on a global level too.

I will always shout out to my OGs—Adeeb Fazah, Shannen Tan and Cheryl Tan—who were the first people who agreed to do The Chronicles Of Xiao Ming. People like Alfian Sa’at, who believed in The Other F Word, and Mark Benedict Cheong who got me to Melbourne for the first time for Sunday School Of Hard Knocks. So much generosity all around… It’s so touching, you know? I won’t say it’s misplaced, but they had that much faith in me—even Shannen, who was the first person I did a collaborative autobiographical piece with.

I was actually into prose before, and slam poetry! I watched so much Button Poetry as a kid and was like, 'Oh man, I love this.' My main writing inspirations have to be Ray Bradbury, and I definitely had a Haruki Murakami phase but I read his stuff now and go, 'Girl, you don’t really like women.'

My sense of humour definitely came from reading things like Lemony Snicket and Dav Pilkey, the author of Captain Underpants. My family is full of avid readers, and my uncle used to stay at my grandmother’s house. He had all these interesting books that I felt were also in their way, very multidisciplinary. I think that was where it came from—I don’t just want to write a book; I’d like to be able to illustrate that book, or even perform that book.