Kuo Pao Kun (193910 September 2002) () was a playwright, theatre director, and arts activist in Singapore who wrote and directed both Mandarin and English plays. He founded three arts and drama centres in Singapore, conducted and organised a number of drama seminars and workshops, and mentored Singaporean and foreign directors and artists.
Kuo is acknowledged by both locals and foreigners as the pioneer of Singapore theatre, and was awarded the Cultural Medallion in 1990 for his contributions to Singapore theatre. His plays are characterised for their dramatic and social commentary, use of simple metaphors and multiculturalism themes, and have been staged locally and internationally.
Early life
Kuo Pao Kun was born in Hebei Province, China in 1939 to Kuo Fung Ting and Zhou Qiao. He moved to Beijing with his mother in 1947, and spent nine months in transition in Hong Kong before being called to Singapore at the age of 10 by his businessman father.
Kuo lived with his father in High Street, and first attended Catholic High School's primary section. Due to various circumstances, however, Kuo transferred between both Chinese and English-medium schools many times. At one point, when he attended the Chinese High School in 1956, his father transferred him to Kallang West Government Chinese Middle School (now Dunman High School) before moving him to Hong Kong due to the student unrest generated by politically activist Chinese high school and middle school students, largely out of concern for the political expedience of the unrest. When the student unrest ended in 1957, Kuo returned to Singapore to attend the English-medium Pasir Panjang Secondary School. Kuo attended a total of six schools in six years.
In 1955, Kuo joined Rediffusion's Mandarin radio play section at 14 years of age, (Lo) and worked as a broadcaster, in addition to performing and writing radio dramas and Chinese xiangsheng. His early years in Hebei and Beijing had led to his acquiring of his trademark Beijing-accented Mandarin, which he once described as "like having a BBC accent in English", and which advantaged him as a broadcaster. After Kuo finished high school in 1959, his experience in broadcasting and bilingual advantage from his education enabled him to secure a job as a translator/announcer in Melbourne with Radio Australia, where he worked for three and a half years. In 1963, he took up an intensive, two-year drama programme with the National Institute of Dramatic Arts (NIDA) in Sydney, while working in technical theatre at the Old Tote. The course gave him a "strong, solid grounding" in many aspects of contemporary Western theatre and introduced him to Western classical theatre. During his studies in NIDA, Kuo also became engaged to choreographer and dancer Goh Lay Kuan.
Career and works from 1965 to 1976
Upon returning to Singapore in 1965, Kuo and Goh founded the Practice Performing Arts School (PPAS) on 1 July that year, providing professional dance and drama courses. The founding date was also the day that Kuo married Goh. As public perception of Chinese drama during that era was that it had always been a part of cultural and mass political movements, many were unreceptive towards the charging of fees to teach drama. For many years, the dance wing subsidised classes in the drama wing. Despite the fact that the idea of professional theatre was not widely accepted then, Kuo noted that young people from all walks of life devoted themselves to theatre courses and remained highly involved in PPAS productions even after they had completed the drama course.
In 1966, Kuo translated and produced The Caucasian Chalk Circle in Mandarin, the first Brecht play performed in Singapore. Kuo and Goh's first daughter Kuo Jian Hong was born in 1967, followed by their second daughter Kuo Jing Hong in 1971.