Salon: Art and Dialogue, Art is Dialogue – A Look Back on The Studios 2023–2025

Claire Wong is the co-founder, Joint Artistic Director and Producer of Checkpoint Theatre. Trained in both Asian and Western performing arts, Claire obtained her Master of Fine Arts (MFA, Theatre Arts) from Columbia University. She graduated with a Bachelor of Laws (Hons) from the National University of Singapore and was formerly a litigation and corporate lawyer.

Claire’s recent directing credits include Statement Piece (2025), Hard Mode (2024), Playing With Fire (2024); Recalling Mother: Her Lines, My Lines (2022), which she co-directed and also co-wrote and performed in; Faith Ng’s The Fourth Trimester (2022); Occupation as part of Chamber Readings: Plays by Huzir Sulaiman (2022); Adib Kosnan's Keluarga Besar En. Karim (The Karims) (with Joel Lim, 2021); Lucas Ho’s The Heart Comes To Mind (2020); Zenda Tan's Eat Duck (2019); Huzir Sulaiman’s Displaced Persons’ Welcome Dinner (2019), a commission of Singapore International Festival of Arts; Dana Lam’s Still Life (2019) and Faith Ng’s Normal (2017, 2015). As an actress, Claire has performed in landmark Singapore productions and international arts festivals.

Heng Leun is a prominent theatre director, playwright, dramaturg, and educator, known for engaging the community on various issues through the arts, championing civic discourse across different societal segments.

As Founder, Artist of Drama Box (Singapore), notable directorial works over his three-decade career include Drift, Trick or Threat, and Underclass; site-specific theatre ubin and Project Mending Sky; Both Sides, Now, which explores end-of-life conversations, and most recently Air, about the dispossession of the indigenous Malays and Orang Seletar of Singapore.

National awards received include the Young Artist Award, Cultural Fellowship, and Cultural Medallion. He also served as a Nominated Member of Parliament (2016 – 2018), representing the arts sector. In 2024, he received an honorary doctorate from the National University of Tainan, for his achievements in the fields of academia, arts and education.

Haresh Sharma is the Resident Playwright of The Necessary Stage. He has written more than 130 plays which have been staged in over 20 cities. His play, Off Centre, was the first Singapore play selected by the Ministry of Education as a Literature text for GCE N- and O-Levels. Haresh also had the honour of having a selection of his works featured at Esplanade’s first playwright-centred season at The Studios in 2017.

In 2014, he was conferred the Southeast Asian Writers (or S.E.A. Write) Award (Singapore), which recognises and honours literary excellence in the ASEAN region. He was awarded the Cultural Medallion in 2015. In 2021, Haresh published Reading the Room: A Playwright’s Devising Journey, which documents his journey as a playwright and theatre-maker in Singapore. He was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Arts by Bath Spa University (UK) in 2025.

Charlene Rajendran is a theatre educator, writer and dramaturg. She is interested in issues of difference, interdisciplinarity, play-based pedagogy and thought-leadership in urban multicultural contexts. Her work as dramaturg includes interdisciplinary and community arts projects such as AIR (2024) ItSelf TerJadi (2023), Kepaten Obor (2022), In the Silence of Your Heart (2018) and Both Sides, Now (2013-2018). Publications include (Asian) Dramaturgs’ Network: Sensing, Complexity, Tracing and Doing (lead editor, 2023) Changing Places: Drama Box and the Politics of Space (lead editor, 2022). She works as Associate Professor at the National Institute of Education – Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.