Postcolonial Predicaments in Malaysian Theatre: The Work of Ghulam Sarwar Yousof, Krishen Jit, and Faridah Merican

Choices by Anglophone educated artists in developing Malaysian Theatre from the 1970s have defined three major directions that persist in theatre education, writing, and production: (a) a heritage, scholarly, and literary focus exemplified by scholar-writer Ghulam Sawar Yousof working from a University platform; (b) performance as socio-political critique exemplified by director Krishen Jit who began in academia but manifested his political activism in journalism collective creations at Five Arts Centre in Kuala Lumpur and beyond; and (c) urban professional repertory producing as exemplified by Faridah Merican whose economic realism and fund raising as a producer-actress-director at KLPac (Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre) helped develop a repertory model for developing contemporary Malaysian Theatre in Kuala Lumpur and Penang. The current generation of theatre leaders carry forward the hybridity forged by these three ethnic “outsiders”—all Malaysians of South Asian descent. These artists developed the postcolonial model of urban and academic theatres that persist to the present.