Drama. As with the short stories, titles of plays in the playwright’s own collections will be given, and both the name of the playwright and the title of the play will also be provided when they appear in anthologies and periodicals. While plays were essentially written to be staged or performed, they are included because play scripts are collected and published, sometimes anthologized and are often studied as literary or school texts. Although most plays staged in Singapore are not published, some exist in typescripts deposited in and catalogued by the National Library which, since 1993, has actively encouraged playwrights and other Singaporean writers to donate their manuscripts. Other play scripts are donated by theatre groups. These sometimes come with production notes or are subsequently attached to the programme notes of the play after it has been staged). Yet others began life as entries to a play writing competition and were subsequently deposited with the Library, but may or may not have been staged. Inclusion of these scripts is meant to alert readers, researchers and those who may wish to stage these plays, to their existence, availability and even to their history. The dates when the plays were staged, directors, cast members and venues are recorded in the “Notes” to each entry, whenever the information can be found at hand from the publication itself, from the programme notes or other sources. But because the sources tend to be erratic, the documentation and information is not comprehensive, complete or consistently included. More research needs to be done and will be. Any relevant new details will be entered as and when discovered and the record will be updated. Since the publication of the print version of the Bibliography in 2008, some of the typescripts have been collected, edited and published. These publications accordingly appear in the updated digital version.
