Celup and A Lesbian Love Story: The Musical – Two more acts at Singapore Fringe Festival 2026

Celup

Six years ago, a 19-year-old Sofie Buligis had a realisation she is still reckoning with today. She reads a line from her Notes app after some rapid scrolling: “Race doesn’t mean anything.”

The hard-earned nugget has been marinating in her brain, but is finally given voice in her one-woman show at the

Singapore Fringe Festival

2026

from Jan 22 to 24. Celup, literally “to dip” – and so mixed, is the first work written by the singer-actress, about what it means to feel insufficiently Malay in Singapore.

Sofie, whose family has Javanese and Boyanese roots, and whose grandmother is Chindian, has struggled with the parameters of the artificially flattened race category more than others. 

Taking Malay in primary school, all her classmates knew C was pronounced ch and not k in Malay – “a moment that boggled me”.

“Everyone in Singapore has this idea of what it means to be Malay, this box in our heads,” the 25-year-old says. “But 98 per cent of Malay people in Singapore don’t feel like they adhere to what that box means.”

Celup turns the question on those who believe they are on surer footing. “People see that I don’t fit into the box, but then I ask, ‘Do you feel like you fit?’ They think they do, but realise they really don’t.”

Audience members at the show, structured as a “Celup support group”, may be asked onto the stage to, for instance, role-play as her relatives. Sofie, an academic at heart, steered away from a more didactic performance lecture because she wants all makciks and pakciks to feel they have a stake in what is going on.

Her own reconciling of her identity has just begun. “Using art as a way to heal is not the best use of art, nor is it the healthiest coping mechanism, but this work has definitely set me on a journey of wanting to feel more comfortable in my skin.”

A Lesbian Love Story: The Musical

A teasing tune spontaneously sung between two friends is the seed for an hour-long musical about queer love.

In 2023 at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Singapore-based theatremaker Rosie McGowan was being teased by long-time friend Kluane Saunders about returning to dating in her 40s, when she decided Saunders’ riff, “Oh, it’s a lesbian love story”, had to be turned into a musical.

By the end of the train ride back to London, the duo had come up with the rough outline of the story.

The tale of a woman’s mission to write the “happiest, shiniest, most magical love story the world has ever seen” stars Coco Wang Ling, hot on the heels of her pulsating performance in

Wild Rice’s The Serangoon Gardens Techno Party Of 1993,

Melissa May Garcia, Mitchell Fang and Natalie Yeap. It plays from Jan 15 to 17, with music by Australian composer Henry Allen.

McGowan’s first musical is a way for her to take aim at restrictive tropes of queer characters in popular media.

“There’s a website that is a collection of all the ways lesbian characters have died almost as soon as they have either established a relationship that people are rooting for, or as soon as they come out,” she says.

“There isn’t enough stuff out there that’s just fun, where actually characters’ sexuality is not a big deal and it can be made fun of in a fun, gentle way.”

If all goes according to plan, the musical will return to Scotland where it was born, for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 2026, probably with a British cast. Though McGowan dreams of funds for an international cast and an opportunity to expand the show to a fuller 1½-hour runtime.

The community is excited for its premiere at the Esplanade in Singapore. McGowan says: “Here is something that is unapologetically queer, with ‘lesbian’ in the title, and it’s just talked about like it’s no big deal. Somebody told me they thought it would be in a backyard or underground club. One of the things that has been so lovely for me is how much it matters for the community to see this.”

Book It/Celup

Where: Practice Space, 54 Waterloo Street
When: Jan 22 and 23, 8pm; Jan 24, 5 and 8pm
Admission: $38
Info:

str.sg/HMw2

Book It/A Lesbian Love Story: The Musical

Where: Esplanade Theatre Studio, 1 Esplanade Drive
When: Jan 15 and 16, 8pm; Jan 17, 3 and 8pm
Admission: $38
Info: 

str.sg/qHeU