Benny Lim

Benny Lim
Born	(1980-04-25) 25 April 1980 Singapore
Occupation	Theatre Practitioner and Educator
Nationality	Singaporean
Education	Doctor of Philosophy, University of Glamorgan

Benny Lim (born 1980, in Singapore) is the Artistic Director of the now dormant The Fun Stage, Singapore. He obtained a Doctor of Philosophy from the Division of Drama, University of Glamorgan (now known as the University of South Wales) in 2012.

Biography

Since 1996, Benny Lim has produced and directed over 70 arts projects in a non-profit environment. In 2001, at the age of 21, he founded The Fun Stage, and has since held on to the record as the Youngest Artistic Director of a theatre company in Singapore. Benny has also taught in various institutions of higher education in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. In 2006, one of Benny's play, Existence, was published in Singapore. Existence was written in 2003, inspired by the poetry of Cyril Wong, as a response to Hong Kong's Leslie Cheung's suicide. The play was mentioned in TIME Magazine (10 August 2003) as a story that 'portrays the love of two young Singaporean men for each other as doomed'. In 2015, Benny curated Umbrella Festival, an arts festival in Hong Kong, in response to city's Umbrella Movement.

Censorship

Benny's works often deal with social-political issues within a postmodern society. In 2004, Benny organized the Lovers' Lecture Series, a series of talks on the topic of same sex literature. The entire series was not given a go-ahead by the Public Entertainment Licensing Unit (PELU), which is under the Singapore Police Force. In 2005, Benny collaborated with artist Brian Gothong Tan and they devised a play, Human Lefts. The content of the play, which was on the issue of the death penalty, was given a total ban by the Media Development Authority of Singapore (MDA).