My teaching philosophy

In this 3-hour masterclass, I worked with a group of arts management students in LASALLE College of the Arts to consider why and how digital dramaturgies are vital for their future careers. We explored what it means to tap into the affordances of digital platforms, whatever they are, in order to structure an experience for others.

This introductory course explores the ways we make meaning in theatre, performance and everyday life, including the domains of technology and design. We will consider closely how ‘sign-systems’ – spatial design, lighting, sound, multimedia, movement, objects and other production elements – guide the process of meaning-making and shape any performance’s dramaturgy. Importantly, this process is also embodied. This course ultimately brings semiotic methods of analysis (interpreting signs and symbols) into dialogue with phenomenological perspectives (being aware of embodied experience). These tools and skills enable one to understand how meaning is created, communicated, and felt in both art and life. We will explore how they can be used in myriad design and technology contexts within and outside of the theatre: engineering user interfaces, human-machine interactions, gaming dramaturgies, robotics, AR/VR experiences, and more.

(Photo is by me of Mali Bucha: Dance Offering by Kornkarn Rungsawang (Thailand))

This is an undergraduate elective I designed for SUTD’s Sustainability Minor and Design, Technology, and Society Minor. Across three arcs we explore urbanisms across Southeast Asia, and the key challenges towards the region achieving their Sustainability Development Goals. Topics include urban governance, creative placemaking, urban disaster risk and resilience, contagious disease and pandemics, and communities and the commons.

This is a new module I designed for the Masters in Applied and Public History program in NUS’ Department of History.

This module surveys how societies gain new understandings of the past through performances in the public sphere. A broad spectrum of performance contexts will be explored, including theatre and dance, historical re-enactments, public rituals, immersive exhibitions, storytelling, and digital sites such as video games and social media. This module equips students with a toolkit with which to interpret, analyse and reflect on the dramaturgical strategies and techniques that shape the stories told in these performances, examining how they enhance historical consciousness and negotiate the distance between past and present for the communities involved.

This is a core undergraduate module for SMU’s Global Asia major, which is “an area-focused, interdisciplinary second major devoted to humanities scholarship that studies Asia within a global context”. My role as the principal instructor involves updating the curriculum, assessment design and planning and conducting weekly three-hour seminars for a medium-sized cohort (50).

Themes explored include: urbanisation; transnational migration; civil society and social movements; religious politics; digital and mobile media; environmental degradation and climate change; heritage practices; economic development; geopolitics; as well as COVID-19’s impact on the region.

This is a core module for all SUTD Freshmore students which equips them with a foundational understanding of the Humanities through a wide range of global texts, including the Malay Annals, Plutarch’s Lives, and Thomas More’s Utopia.

In this three-hour workshop I offer an introduction to what my experience of dramaturgy has been, shedding light onto an area that is gaining prominence in the Singaporean theatre scene, yet remains difficult to grasp for many. I will give a broad overview of dramaturgical theory and practice across various contexts, before leading participants in a hands-on exercise to apply dramaturgical techniques and thought-processes to a local Singaporean play.

This is a second-year Asian Studies course on the culture, history, geography and politics of Southeast Asia taught entirely online through Canvas. I was responsible for tutoring all the students (a large-sized cohort of 130), which included marking their weekly quizzes and giving individual feedback for their weekly reflections on the subject, on top of marking their main assignments. I was responsible for processing all results and responding to all student requests and queries.

This is a five-week intensive third-year course culminating in a two-week field school where students conduct fieldwork in Singapore for an interdisciplinary research project concerning ‘Water’. In 2018 I was hired by the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre to help design the curriculum, including its core modules, timetable and reading list. In December 2019 I accompanied the 11 selected students as co-leader through this field school in my capacity as local expert. Image: Students experience an exhibit at the Marina Barrage Sustainable Singapore Gallery. Photo by me.

This is a three-week intensive summer school covering a second-year compulsory unit of study in Sydney University’s Department of Theatre and Performance Studies. As course co-ordinator I set up the Canvas webpage and was responsible for updating and re-designing the course to fit new content into the three weeks for an intimate group of students. The course included theories of Erving Goffman, Pierre Bourdieu, Victor Turner, Richard Schechner, Clifford Geertz and Judith Butler. Students had to apply these theoretical frameworks onto a performance event of their choosing, such as parades, festivals, weddings, protests and sporting matches. I also designed and conducted a workshop on ethnographic writing.

This is a second-year compulsory unit of study on theatre analysis techniques, namely that of semiotics and phenomenology. As instructor I also had to facilitate the students’ creation of their own performance piece. As course co-ordinator I set up the Canvas webpage and was responsible for all administrative duties, results processing and student requests. I made decisions on what live productions to assign for the students for their final essay. I lectured eight out of thirteen weeks and held weekly meetings with my fellow tutors to debrief and plan for the following week.