SINGAPORE – At least once a month for over a year, playwright Haresh Sharma and director Chong Tze Chien met for coffee, often without any agenda, chatting freely about ideas, literature and what might seem like nonsense to others.

In a scene where it is not unusual for theatremakers to produce or write five plays in a year – or, in Chong’s words, slog like “work horses” – it was a luxury for the local duo to be given two years to realise a commissioned work for the Singapore International Festival of Arts.