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The Necessary Stage celebrates its 30th anniversary with the return of Those Who Can’t, Teach!

First staged in 1990 and subsequently in 2010 to full houses at the Singapore Arts Festival, Those Who Can’t, Teach is a Singaporean theatre classic by Cultural Medallion winners Alvin Tan and Haresh Sharma.

Set in a secondary school, the play looks at the madcap lives of teachers and students—with often hilarious results. As the teachers struggle daily to 'nurture and groom', the students prefer to hang out and chill. In the meantime, they all have to deal with the dreaded 'parents'.

With upskirting and texting, teaching and politicking, school has never been the same. Join the rambunctious cast of characters as they struggle to prove that Those Who CAN, Teach.

This interactive theatrical experience will feature excerpts of Off Centre that traces the friendships that the protagonist, Vinod, forges—one with Charlie, his ex-classmate from Junior College, and another with Saloma, who—like Vinod—struggles with a mental health condition.

Can Vinod draw support from his friends, in the face of social prejudices against those suffering from mental illnesses? Will their friendships be able to withstand the personal conflicts that each of them experience?

Off Centre is a landmark play in the history of Singapore theatre, best remembered for presenting an honest and unflinching look at mental illness and the stigma surrounding it. Selected in 2007 by the Ministry of Education (MOE) as the first Singaporean play to be offered as a GCE O- and N-Level literature text, Off Centre is once again back on the syllabus since 2018.

Off Centre will be presented live via Zoom. To support teachers through this new format of presentation, there will be a teachers’ briefing session prior to the performance. Attendance is compulsory.

Learning Objectives


Explore issues related to mental health conditions, its challenges and stigmas
Gain a better understanding of the experiences and feelings of people who live with mental health conditions
Be empowered to effect changes in their own lives and friendships

Being in Singapore
Being a model citizen in Singapore
Being a dementia patient in Singapore
Being censored in Singapore
Being a political detainee in Singapore
Being off centre in Singapore
Being Malay in Singapore
Being a teacher in Singapore
Being an Indonesian Maid in Singapore
Being in a hospice in Singapore
Being fundamentally happy in Singapore
Being a Chinese MP in Singapore
Being a young person in Singapore
Being a suicide victim in Singapore
Being an artist in Singapore

Over three decades, The Necessary Stage and actors-collaborators who have been partners in the making of the company’s devised plays have revealed to us over and over again—in profound, heartbreaking and funny ways—what it means to ‘be’ in Singapore.

Vinod | Radha Krishnan | Eric Sim | Noorhayati Yusof | Sergeant Mok | Jali Bin Mohd Fariz | Mrs. Chua | Mrs. Phua | Alisha | Melly | Saloma and many more

Away from the buzz of the rehearsal room and in the alone space where a playwright for a time dwells, Haresh Sharma forms up direct, powerful, honest, smart, funny words that enable these characters to speak into the very soul of our city.

Being Haresh Sharma is a work that looks at Haresh’s body of writing over 30 years. It makes bold, unexpected links and associations, mapping stories and characters in ways that surface the social, political and spiritual aspects of life here; bringing it all together with unexpected and exciting performance energy, sparking new ways of looking at his words and of experiencing performance and theatre.