Section 01 of 14 · Rome, relocated to the pasar malam
Our Adaptation
Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, transposed to a Singaporean pasar malam newly moved to a prime spot at Marina Bay Sands. Jalil — the stall-owners' leader who secured the location — is our Caesar; his raised rents breed resentment, a conspiracy forms among fellow hawkers, and the play's great beats (the celebration, the plot, the assassination, the funeral speech) unfold between the stalls, in Singlish.
In this section
Our Script|Shakesphere
From the adapted script (Marco, Scene 5) "Is this just a desperate attempt to validate your importance? Or are you the power-hungry devil that you portray others to be? I shall be the mirror for our stall owners." From the source (Antony, Act III Scene 2) "I only speak right on; I tell you that which you yourselves do know; Show you sweet Caesar's wounds, poor poor dumb mouths, And bid them speak for me."
Concept Notes
Rome in Julius Caesar is a republic terrified of a king. A pasar malam is a community of small stall owners terrified of rent. It's the same fear at a smaller scale: one person gets too big, and everyone else pays for it. Once we saw that, the substitutions mostly made themselves. The crown became a prime spot at MBS, the thing Jalil reaches for that the others can't afford. The Senate became the EC. Cassius's forged letters became post-it notes pasted on Bao's stall, because that's how a hawker would fake a petition. The daggers became loan sharks, summoned by the conspirators withholding rent, which lets the conspirators keep their hands clean the way Brutus never could. The Forum became a press conference, and the Roman mob became six stall owners with declining sales. Some things wouldn't transpose. Nobody dies in a night market, so Jalil is dragged off and detained instead. There's no Philippi, so the police close the play. The soothsayer became Soo, an adviser we hear about but never meet, which is roughly what happens to warnings anyway. The language changed to Singlish, Mandarin and Malay because the setting demanded it. Nobody at a pasar malam speaks in proper English, and the moment they did, the market stopped feeling like a place. What we didn't change is the argument. Tradition or progress, and who gets to decide. Singapore has that argument about hawker centres, old estates and rent every year. It was already ours.