I wrote and submitted a play about Pulau Ubin to Goh Boon Teck, artistic director of Toy Factory Theatre Ensemble, and instead of working on that he asked me to design a set for Hong Kong playwright Raymond To’s 1992 work. The challenge was to recreate the cabaret scene in strife-ridden 1960s Hong Kong, at the old Drama Centre on Fort Canning. We had to use a rotating stage, which was divided into the “front stage” and “back stage” to depict the lives of the four protagonist “sisters” (one of whom was Sharon Au making her first stage appearance). I had to play with several optical ideas including vertical louvres. Together with Wong Kar Wai’s movies, this play informed me about the interconnectedness of Southeast Asia to East Asia through extant pop cultures. It was the first Chinese language musical to be staged in Singapore.