QUESTION: What's a whitish, milky substance that you can withdraw from a bank?

Stuck? The answer lies in the title of playwright Tan Suet Lee's new work, Sperm, which is about a single career woman who wants a baby.

To be staged next week as part of the OCBC Singapore Theatre Festival, Sperm is one of four plays in Blood Binds, two double-bills by the women-centric theatre group Magdalena.

Tan, 43, says a newspaper article about the rising number of single mothers which sparked off the idea for the play.

'I started thinking about what it means to be a family. The traditional structure is dissolving and changing. What is going to hold us together when we move away from the standard nuclear family? I really don't know the answers but I hope people will ask these questions,' says Tan, who is married with two sons.

'But most of all, the play is about the people who have love in their hearts and will make wonderful families but are unable to do so because they don't fulfil certain requirements.'

The other plays in Blood Binds also explore the issue of family.

Ng Swee San's Bond-age is about two old friends in their 60s who attempt to escape from a hospital.

Dora Tan's Just Late is a bittersweet comedy about an old blind man who ends up celebrating his 70th birthday with two robbers.

Tan, who is in her 40s, says reading and hearing stories about elderly people dying alone in flats piqued her interest in the relationship between parents and their grown-up children.

Read the full story in Thursday's edition of The Straits Times' Life!