Benny Lim


Benny Lim is the Artistic Director of the now dormant The Fun Stage, a non-profit theatre group Singapore. He obtained a Doctor of Philosophy from the Division of Drama, University of Glamorgan in 2012.

Biography

In 2001, at the age of 21, he founded The Fun Stage. Since then, he has held on to the record as the Youngest Artistic Director of a theatre company in Singapore. Benny is also an educator, and has also taught in various institutions in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. In 2006, one of Benny's plays, Existence, was published in Singapore. Existence was written in 2003, inspired by the poetry of Cyril Wong, as a response to Leslie Cheung's suicide. The play was mentioned in TIME Magazine as a story that 'portrays the love of two young Singaporean men for each other as doomed'. In 2015, Benny curated Umbrella Festival, an arts festival in Hong Kong, in response to city's Umbrella Movement.

Censorship

Benny's works often deal with social-political issues within a postmodern society. In 2004, Benny organized the Lovers' Lecture Series, which was not given a go-ahead by the Public Entertainment Licensing Unit under the Singapore Police Force. In 2005, Benny collaborated with artist Brian Gothong Tan and they devised a play, Human Lefts. The content of the play, which was on the issue of the death penalty, was given a total ban by the Media Development Authority of Singapore.