Haresh Sharma, the Resident Playwright of The Necessary Stage (TNS), has received the Honorary Doctor of Arts awarded by Bath Spa University in the United Kingdom.
Responding to his being conferred the accolade, Sharma says, “I’m deeply grateful to be awarded the Honorary Doctor of Arts as a recognition of my 37 years of work and dedication to growing and developing Singapore theatre.”
He also acknowledges his collaborators and company for their role in his journey.
“As Resident Playwright of The Necessary Stage, I’ve had the opportunity to devise, write, and direct original Singapore plays, and to teach and mentor generations of younger artists. The support I’ve received from TNS, from fellow artists, and the audience has been instrumental in my development as an artist.”
Bath Spa University’s Chancellor, Sharanjit Leyl, shares more about the institution’s decision to award the Honorary Doctorate to Sharma.
“For over three decades, Haresh has been a singular voice in Singaporean theatre, giving voice to the everyday, the marginalised, and the unseen. His works are celebrated for their honesty, empathy, and social insight, and he has addressed a myriad of issues, including mental health, identity, class, race, and belonging with intellectual and emotional depth. Equally remarkable is his dedication to nurturing young talent, having mentored generations of writers, directors, and performers.”
Leyl concludes, “Haresh Sharma is not just a playwright—he is an architect of empathy and a fearless advocate for the transformative power of art.”
Leyl, the first Singaporean to become a Chancellor of a UK university, is also a current Board member of TNS and resides in both Bath and Singapore.
She reveals that one of the reasons for her initial nomination of Sharma for the accolade is to celebrate the spirit of SG60.
“60 years of independence have created a distinct Singaporean culture and identity of which Haresh is an exceptional voice,” Leyl says.
Reflecting on his career trajectory, Sharma muses, “I started writing at a time where theatre in Singapore was still an empty space to be filled by imagination, creativity, and invention, where I could find my own voice while remaining rooted in my identity and beliefs.”
He continues, “This award is the affirmation I need to continue creating Singapore stories that uplift ordinary people, especially marginalised voices. It is a reminder to have courage to know what I believe in, what I stand up for, and what I stand up against—while connected to and engaged with the world around me.”
To date, Sharma has written more than 130 plays, which have been staged in over 20 cities, and has 13 publications of plays.
In 2021, he published Reading the Room: A Playwright’s Devising Journey, which details his devising process developed over his career at TNS.
His play, Off Centre, was the first Singapore play selected by the Ministry of Education as a Literature text for GCE N- and O- O-Levels in 2006.
Subsequently, his play Don’t Know, Don’t Care was also selected to be part of a Singapore anthology of plays being taught in schools to lower secondary school students.
Sharma’s works have been translated into Malay, Mandarin, Greek, and Italian. He was awarded Best Original Script for Fundamentally Happy, Good People, and Gemuk Girls at the 2007, 2008, and 2009 The Straits Times Life Theatre Awards, respectively.
He has participated in several writers’ festivals, including the inaugural Singapore Literature Festival in New York (2014), New Delhi World Book Fair (2015), Ubud Writers and Readers Festival (2015), Hong Kong Literary Festival (2015), and Neilson Hays Bangkok Literature Festival (2019).
Sharma has previously been awarded the Cultural Medallion, Singapore’s pinnacle art award, in 2015. The year before, he was conferred the Southeast Asian Writers (or S.E.A. Write) Award (Singapore), which recognises and honours literary excellence in the ASEAN region.
Sharma is the first non-American to be awarded the prestigious Goldberg Master Playwright by New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2011. He also had the honour of having a selection of his works featured at Esplanade’s first playwright-centred season at The Studios in 2017.
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