Stella Kon: Beyond Emily of Emerald Hill

Stella
In a musical, the songs carry the emotion. So you must craft all the script and dialogue to bring it to the point where it is the character's need to sing. He cannot contain his spoken emotion anymore. He must express it in a song so that you get all the wonderful songs. In a play, it's not such a focus on emotional love. You’d have in a musical to interpret love means not only emotional love but also the desire for self-fulfillment, self-recognition. There are those differences. 

[Music playing]

Jimmy
You're listening to BiblioAsia+, a podcast produced by the National Library of Singapore. At BiblioAsia, we tell stories about Singapore's past, some familiar, others forgotten, all fascinating. 

2024 is the 40th anniversary of the first production of the monodrama Emily of Emerald Hill, which was written by Stella Kon. The powerful story of a Peranakan matriarch, reflecting back on her long life, has struck a chord with audiences here and around the world. According to one estimate, the play has been performed almost 1,000 times in the last four decades. 

My name is Jimmy Yap and I'm the Editor in Chief of BiblioAsia, a publication of the National Library of Singapore. With me in the studio is Stella herself. While best known for Emily of Emerald Hill, Stella has written something like 30 plays, at least 15 scripts for musical theatre, and a whole bunch of short stories and novels. In fact, her most recent novel is called 4 Pax to Emptiness and was published by Penguin Southeast Asia in 2023. Welcome to BiblioAsia+, Stella. Thank you for coming on this podcast.

Stella
Thank you for having me, Jimmy. This is very exciting. 

Jimmy
Before anything else, can I say a very happy and belated birthday to you. Eighty is an amazing milestone. How do you feel about reaching your eighth decade? 

Stella
Well, it's a time to take a pause and perhaps reflect and recalibrate. Perhaps see what new challenges lie ahead. 

Jimmy
You're an inspiration. I know you're probably tired of talking about Emily of Emerald Hill, so I promise that we won't only talk about that play. But can I ask though, which was the very first version of the play that you watched, and how did you feel watching it come to life? 

Stella
The first version I watched was oddly not in Singapore, but in Edinburgh. 

Jimmy
Oh!

Stella
I was living in Edinburgh. My mom rings up and says, you know your play coming to Edinburgh for the Commonwealth Festival. I said, don't bluff. It really was. Margaret Chan came to Edinburgh. She visited me and did the play to an audience of the Commonwealth Festival, which means these are not just random off the street people, but people selected to, self-selected to be involved in foreign literature, foreign tropes, and so on. 

It was, for me, really marvellous. I had the opportunity then to see, as every playwright wants to, to see how you are affecting the audience. And these are people who are not like our Singapore audience, sensitised to the Peranakan, that they're going to laugh whenever the matriarch comes on stage and opens her mouth. They are really following the story. They are open minded to the dialect that they hear, which at that time, Margaret wanted to turn down the Peranakan talk. You give it to them just as it is, which they were, as a foreign audience, they were totally ready to accept. So you, I watch, I watch, will they laugh in the right places? Do they look very absorbed? Do they smile when they're just a small little joke? Do they seem to feel the sorrow and the emotion? And yes, they did. And that is the most satisfying thing ever for a writer of plays. 

Jimmy
That's amazing. That's such an amazing story. Do you remember when this was? 

Stella
Early, very early, ’85 maybe? Or more like ’84. 

Jimmy
In addition to being staged so many times, like, you know, almost like 1,000 times, right, the play has become a landmark in Singapore's literary landscape. It has inspired at least one poem, Theodore Lim's Emily of Emerald Hill, and another play on this Emerald Hill, which is a monologue by Jonathan Lim.

And we also have a character in Harish Sharma's Off Centre who thinks that she is Emily Gan. So, now did you have an inkling that Emily would become so popular? You know, why do you think it's become so beloved? 

Stella
Oh, well, I have no idea at the time, but of course some of it is simply due to the fact that it hit on this whole series of tropes which were just coming to the consciousness of Singapore. 

It's the Peranakan-ness. And I didn't choose to make her Peranakan, it's just my grandma is Peranakan. Had she been a Hakka matriarch, it would've had a rather different play, with a Hakka feel to it. What made it take off so well is its simple compactness, being made for one actor and a small backstage crew. Almost low risk for the production team. Because they can do it anywhere. They can set up upstairs of a bar. Or in the Peranakan restaurant; anywhere can do.

Jimmy
And, but it's not just simple, it's so powerful. I'm sure you've watched many different versions of the play. Which is your favourite? Or, or maybe if I put it another way, who is your favourite Emily? 

Stella
Yeah, I mean, I'm never going to judge which actor is better than others because each of them has their strengths. Each of them often touches the audience's hearts in a different way. But the one that is my personal favorite, for very personal reasons is Neo Swee Lin, because her Peranakan accent is the closest to the accent that my grandmother had. There are slight differences between clans and between families. And when Swee Lin opened her mouth – that's my grandmother's tribe. 

Jimmy
You donated the early drafts of Emily to the National Library a few decades ago. And because of that, the writer and academic Eriko Ogihara-Schuck was able to put together a wonderful piece in BiblioAsia about how the play evolved from a draft to a final product. And what was particularly interesting to me is to see how, you know, key elements change. Namely the, the way in which a key character meets an untimely demise. In the early draft, that person dies for one reason. In the final version, that person dies for another reason. So why did you change the manner of death? 

Stella
I think we made it less specific. We made it almost more generic, because it's not very clear why resulting from being thoroughly taken to task, but was it enough to push this guy over the edge into seaside? Maybe not. So then you ask yourself, what's the backstory? What happened? And I don't want to tell you. 

Jimmy
Okay. Tell us a little about Emily the Musical, I think, which was staged in 2016. In many ways, it's a, it's a very different work from, you know, Emily of Emerald Hill. For one, it's a musical. It's not a monologue. There's more than one character on stage, and you've had to write new material. And this time you know, you're writing it when you're a little bit older, right? I think you, when you wrote the original play, you were probably in your late thirties, maybe? 

Stella
Exactly 40. Mainly, what changed was that I'd learned to write musicals. So the format of a musical, the demands are very, very different. For one thing, there's more emphasis on feelings, which in a play you do it by some piece of dialogue, which the audience will have to listen to very carefully. 

And in a musical, you do some music, and she sings big belting song, and the audience is seized and carried away. That's the main difference. And also the main theme of the song in the musical is, "Love Was All I Wanted". In a play, it's not such a focus on emotional love. You'd have in a musical to interpret love means not only emotional love, but also the desire for self-fulfilment, self-recognition. So, there are those differences. 

Jimmy
And it's a beautiful song, by the way. I really love it. What's the song about? Was it hard to write? 

Stella
Well, let me tell you, the first thing is, the music comes first. I work with composer Desmond Moey. I tell him, I'm writing a song, and the hook line is, love is all I wanted, in which Emily looks back on her life. Please give me some music. And he writes all the music. 

Jimmy
Oh, I, I thought it was the other way. So he gives you the music and then you write the words for it. 

Stella
Because he’s very fussy about his tempos and timing, so I must fit my dialogue to his notes. I cannot simply play fast and loose with his melody. 

Jimmy
That's amazing. 

Stella
I always felt that my job is to give the musician the creative space and produce his best work. Rather than that, I would impose a certain form on him. So it's like that. And I think you've heard it. You like the result. 

Jimmy
I love it. I love it. In the mid-1980s, you helped to found a theatre company that specialises in musicals called Musical Theatre Ltd. Surprise, surprise. And you've written also at least like 15 scripts for, for musical theatre. And of course the librettos for them. You know, what draws you to this genre? 

Stella
Yes, when I first was introduced to musicals, I was like going, “Wah, I'm like someone who's been working in pencils and crayons, suddenly introduced to oil paints.” 

Jimmy
Is it the music, that the ability of music to move people that appeals to you? 

Stella
Yes, you're, of course, you're quite right. The music carries the whole emotion. You can see there's so many musicals. It's certainly the most popular event that can fill up Marina Bay Sands. People go there to be swept away by the music. And yes, there are all kinds of music. There's big music and small, small chamber orchestra music and anything can happen. 

Jimmy
A libretto has a composer and you have to write it to music, but is writing a libretto very different from writing like a normal play? 

Stella
The consideration is you must know where the music is coming in. You must shape the whole play such that the song fits in nicely. It's no longer the case that the character, somebody says, “Oh yes, it's a beautiful day. Oh, what a beautiful morning.” In a musical, the songs carry the emotion. So you must craft all the script and dialogue to bring it to the point where it is the character's need to sing. He cannot contain his spoken emotion anymore. He must express it in a song so that you get all the wonderful songs. My all-time favourite is Les Mis, Les Miserables. 

Jimmy
I love Les Mis. 

Stella
Yes, and each one you look at the emotions. Boy, that's why the stand-alone songs also are such favorites everybody want to see. 

Jimmy
So your favorite musical is actually Les Mis? 

Stella
Yes. 

Jimmy
What about the musicals that you've written, you know, which are you proudest of? Would it be Emily or would it be maybe... 

Stella
Well, proudest is always the most recent, you know. The youngest baby is the favourite always. 

Jimmy
Which was? 

Stella
Lim Boon Keng. 

Jimmy
Lim Boon Keng. That was about one of your great-grandfather? 

Stella
Yes, my great-grandfather. The writing of Lim Boon Keng has been ongoing for more than 20 years. 

Jimmy
20 years! 

Stella
Before I really know how to write musicals. I’d just write a play and fling in some songs that isn't a musical. It was very difficult to shape the man's life, which has so many twists and turns and ups and downs.

But from early on, I knew it starts about this man was condemned by the Singapore population for his role in so-called collaboration with the Japanese in World War II and spent his final years under a cloud. So he died, as it were, rejected by his Peranakan society. And that was what I really wanted to write about, was in a way, to rehabilitate him. 

Around somewhere in the mid- 90s, Lee Kuan Yew spoke about Lim Boon Keng as the great bilingual communicator, a proponent of speaking Mandarin, and also a great civil servant in Singapore. And Lee Kuan Yew did rehabilitate him from the accusation that he had collaborated with the Japanese. So that was fine, and after that, my need was not so burning lah. So I think he has been rehabilitated. But anyway, it took a long time for another 15 years to bring up the musical. 

Jimmy
You've just had a new book published, and by Penguin no less. At the ripe young age of 79. Tell me about 4 Pax to Emptiness. What's it about? 

Stella
To begin with, I wrote it in 1997. I was much younger then. To tell the truth, I've been carrying it around and offering it to various Singapore publishers. They said, “Very interesting, but it's such a niche interest.” They are not sure whether they can make the sales that will make it viable. They tried to even look for ways and means to do, but in the end, Penguin being a big guy who can have the margins to take a chance on something like this. 

Jimmy
So without giving too much of the book away, you know, and of course we want everyone to buy the book, or borrow it from the library, what's the book about? 

Stella
It's about four Singaporeans who discovered that there was a terrible, bad famine in China, some 30 years before the book opens, but the echoes of pain, the psychic reverberations, the spirits, in fact, of the hungry ghosts in China are, to some way, affecting people in Singapore who know nothing about that situation. They finally decide what they have to do is to go to China and make offerings at like funeral offerings at one of the sites which is a focal point of the famine and they get to do this. And which is what the book is really about. 

Jimmy
All right, you know, you've written plays, you've written scripts for musical theatre, you've written short stories, you've written poems, and of course, novels. What are some of the common themes in your work? 

Stella
Consciously, one of the earliest themes was Singapore nationalism. Because as a person coming of age around the early ’60s, it was almost like, well, your national service duty to write about Singapore’s national subjects. So, The Trial is about that. Emily, as well, with its Peranakan roots. It's about that. And in other ways, it's permeated everything I've written. I think you could say the people in 4 Pax to Emptiness have very Singaporean profiles. 

Jimmy
They do! I was reading it and recognising a lot of the characters. 

Stella
I hope you laughed once or twice. One of the other themes is the quest for personal redemption. 

Jimmy
Ah. 

Stella
And that is why you'd find in Emily of Emerald Hill, Eriko pointed out that Emily, has a moment in which she shows unexpected kindness to her old friend. She shows a softer side of Emily you never knew she had. That's her moment of redemption. Most of the characters have that moment of redemption, except the main character in Trial who sort of turns his back on it. He has his chance to, or he's offered it and he turns away from it. So, that is some of it. 

Jimmy
That is a possibility of redemption. 

Stella
There's always a possibility, yes. 

Jimmy
Right. Okay, that's very interesting. You're, you're an amazingly productive writer, I mean. 

Stella
Forty years can build up quite a stack of work. What the layperson doesn't realise is that is the tip of the iceberg. The pile of rewrites, rejects and sheer projects that collapse is much higher than the pile of what you see here. 

Jimmy
I can absolutely believe that, but that only underlines the fact, you know, that you are incredibly productive as a writer. Tell us about your writing process. Do you have certain, practices or rituals? Do you force yourself to write 1,000 words a day? 

Stella
Aiyo, aiyo! I usually did try to, save the earliest hours of the day after breakfast immediately to do any writing before you get sidetracked into the rest of the day's business. I know today I'm going to have this long, difficult scene to write, and I usually do drafts in pencil, not on a computer. What I do is I take a long, long bus ride on my senior citizen pass, go on the bus to the far end of one of the bus rides, and come back. Do you know the number 36? It's a very nice one. It goes up the sea all the way to the airport. Turn around, you can even get down and have coffee at the airport, and then come back again. And it's like the world is passing by every time you need a bit of break from the work, you look up, you see nice scenery passing by. Nobody bothers you. You sit in your seat in air-conditioned comfort. It's very fun. 

Jimmy
And you use that as a break from work? Or when you need to think?

Stella
It's actually a writing break. Sometimes I go for a walk while I'm thinking. 

Jimmy
Do you ever get like writer's block? 

Stella
I'm sure I did. When I was writing Dragon's Teeth Gate, it was so blocked. I would walk around in sheer frustration until I actually had a sort of breakdown and had to go to bed for three, for three weeks till I recovered. Meanwhile, the children had to fend for themselves, give them money, go and buy fish and chips. 

Jimmy
I'm sure they didn't complain about that. 

Stella
I managed to keep them, surviving till then. But the most annoying thing was after that, they pushed me for deadline. When I delivered it a little bit behind deadline, nothing happened. No producer wants to take it on for ages and ages. Annoying. And then, well, you know, after that, in the end, that script never did get produced. But that'sanother story. 

Jimmy
That is another story. Who has influenced you in your writing? 

Stella
First and foremost, from the very beginning is the great, the one and only J. R. R. Tolkien. 

Jimmy
Oh, okay, you're a Tolkien fan. 

Stella
14 years old when I first read it. 

Jimmy
Which one? The Hobbit or...? 

Stella
No, no. Hobbit was 12 years old. I barely counted. Lord of the Rings beginning to end.
When I finished out that night, I cannot sleep. Got up, sat at typewriter and bashed out a very derivative pseudo kind of, dragons and guys in armour kind of story, but that was it. With poetry in it. 

Jimmy
Oh, so Tolkien. Anyone else? 

Stella
Stephen King, because his writing skill is amazing. He is, you see all the tricks and types of a good writer are in Stephen King. And others la. 

Jimmy
Okay, okay. 

Stella
Actually, all pulp fiction. The ones I read, favourite writers I read for fun, are John MacDonald, Lois Bujold, Jonathan Kellerman. And the common element of all of them is extreme readability. You can pick up any of their books and just dive in, and you will need not emerge for a long time. 

Jimmy
I love those types of books. 

Stella
It sucks you in. I believe that's what I've been aiming at in my writing too. 

Jimmy
So, you know, what's next for Stella Kon? I mean, you're 80 years young. What else is there to conquer? What are your plans? 

Stella
Well, actually, I'm applying to do a MA degree at LASALLE University. 

Jimmy
Oh, fantastic. 

Stella
In creative writing. I did an MA at NTU 10 years ago, in creative writing. Since then, I sort of continued my musicals writing but I feel now I don't have the energy I had last time. And I would really benefit from stimulation with young people, workshop teaching, etc, etc. So I hope, I hope this works out for me. 

Jimmy
It sounds, it sounds very exciting. Okay, we've come to this part of the, of the podcast where we, we sort of, you know, turn away from all these heavy topics and move on to lighter topics. What advice do you have for writers. Or what's the best writing advice you've ever been given? 

Stella
Okay, one was from Rudyard Kipling, who says, always keep on editing and cutting and shortening your work. Take a big marker pen and cut everything you can cut. Put it aside, come back one month's time and cut some more. 

Jimmy
But it's very painful, right? 

Stella
It's nice, you know. You sort of see the bones of your work showing through. So, it ends up with my writing, especially in the book called Eston, coming out as somewhat gnomic, you know? People sometimes don't quite get it. But it's fun to puzzle the people a bit. 

Jimmy
What advice would you give apart from Kipling's advice? 

Stella
The second thing is, when you start off to write your thing, don't start at the beginning necessarily. Start with whatever is the part you see most vividly in your mind, the scene that's the most alive to you. Get that down on paper. Then maybe there's another one that you can string them together much later. 

Jimmy
Oh, that's an interesting idea. I didn't even thought of that. 

Stella
Before the days of computer, I'd have this all on strips of paper and punch hole and put in a ring binder and swap the pieces around and clip and staple and paste the bits into order. 

Jimmy
Wow. Okay. Complete the sentence. Okay. Writing is... 

Stella
Most fun. 

Jimmy
Is it? Some people will say that, you know, it's so painful. 

Stella
Well, on the one hand, if you're doing the part that really comes to your mind, it is cathartic. You're getting it off your chest, and you have a chance to make it as best as you can. It's fun. 

Jimmy
So, you know, Stella, you've, you've reached a stage where you no longer have anything else left to prove. What are you most proud of in your life? Whether it's your writing or parts of your life. 

Stella
I suppose just that I managed to keep the flag flying more or less through thick and thin. 

Jimmy
Is that Stella Kon talking or is that Emily Gan talking? 

Stella
It's certainly not Emily. You know, they say of Shakespeare, you never know which of his characters is really speaking for him. And that's how it is for a playwright. You speak through the mask of characters. On my desk, I had a series of little masks of no characters, the things you bring back as souvenirs. 

Jimmy
Oh yes, yes. 

Stella
Yes, because that's what the writer of plays does. They fit on all the different masks and speak for them. 

Jimmy
Wonderful, wonderful. Stella, thank you very much for coming on BiblioAsia+ It was a real pleasure having you. Read Stella's latest book, 4 Pax to Emptiness. It's available at bookshops everywhere, and of course at libraries all over Singapore. And I also want to urge everyone to read Eriko's amazing article on how Emily of Emerald Hill started out as Betty of Balmoral Road. Thank you again, Stella for coming. 

Stella
Thank you. It's really been a pleasure, Jimmy. 

Jimmy
It is a pleasure and a privilege to have you. I would like to leave all our listeners with the very moving song from Emily the Musical. And the song is "Love was All I Wanted".

Stella Kon, 4 Pax to Emptiness (Singapore: Penguin Random House SEA, 2023).

Stella Kon, Emily of Emerald Hill: A Monodrama (London: Macmillan Publishers, 1989).

Eriko Ogihara-Schuck, "From Betty of Balmoral Road to Emily of Emerald Hill: A New Look At Stella Kon’s Classic Play," BiblioAsia 20, no. 2 (July–September 2024).

This episode of BiblioAsia Podcast was hosted by Jimmy Yap and produced by Soh Gek Han. Sound engineering was done by Doppler Soundlab. The background music "Di Tanjong Katong" was composed by Ahmad Patek and performed by Chords Haven . The song "Love Was All I Wanted" was written by Stella Kon and Desmond Moey. Special thanks to Stella for coming on the show.

The BiblioAsia Podcast by the National Library Singapore tells stories about Singapore history.