Checkpoint Theatre’s Hard Mode takes Gen Zers and Gen Alphas on their own terms

SINGAPORE – Skibidi, slay, Ohio. Perhaps like no other generation, Gen Zers and Gen Alphas have been showered with all kinds of attention.

Their nonsensical humour is marketed as of the moment and trendy – countless articles have been churned purporting to explain Gen Zers’ latest obsessions. But for everyone else, it is difficult to not regard them with a mocking tolerance. Who are these entitled neophytes who think their problems are the most important in the world?

Hard Mode, Checkpoint Theatre’s new play opening on Oct 18, seeks to be an exception to this rule, taking on the unenviable task of representing the new generation seriously and on their own terms.

Playwright Faith Ng, who interviewed 30 people born after 2010 – now in upper primary to the lower secondary level – for the project, diagnoses the challenge thus: “They are projected as a generation that cannot be understood.”

The mother of a six-year-old boy, she feels the urgency to get a head start on what her son – and inevitably herself – will have to reckon with when he becomes a teenager.

“What’s that going to be like for him and for me as a parent?” says the 37-year-old associate artistic director. “It was really important to me that young people see themselves authentically on stage in a way that is honest and sincere.”

Unusually, Hard Mode is commissioned by the National Arts Council as part of its efforts to expand the range of offerings specifically developed for teens and grow theatre audiences.

The play is directed by Claire Wong with dramaturgy by Huzir Sulaiman – the joint artistic directors of Checkpoint Theatre.

Five teenagers navigate growing up in Singapore: transitioning to new schools, forming and maintaining friendships, dealing with parental expectations and finding out just who they are. If the premise sounds oddly generic, that is because there is a certain universality to how all generations come of age.

Ng says it was common for her interviewees to make offhand remarks about how their concerns were insignificant, and by extension, that their existence was too. They feel pressure to have it all figured out at a young age.

Their bodies are changing, their voices are cracking; Covid-19 has been a once-a-century pandemic that disrupted rites of passage so important to people’s formative years.

But in their exposure to, and veneration of, Western culture and K-pop, Ng recognises that what Gen Zers and Gen Alphas are experiencing is also unprecedented. Particularly shocking for her was when young people confided that they wished they could have plastic surgery or that they hated the Singaporean accent.

Ng says: “If you’re talking about local literature, they don’t have enough of that – more current, relevant resources or stories to see as mirrors. I was quite surprised that a lot of them are consuming so much Western media.”

Over time, “they may want to emulate them. They may want to be white, for lack of a better way of phrasing it”, she adds. “The standards of K-pop are also so exacting and punishing.”

Actor Chaney Chia, who at 27 is the oldest of the cast, says this void of local representation is dangerous – Singapore’s context is unique and constant comparisons to an “unrealistic or unattainable standard” guarantees unhappiness.

Asked if there is an over-catering to Gen Zs and Gen Alphas, Chia says most of it is still advertising, businesses hopping on trends to sell their products.

To make sure they were on the right track, the Hard Mode team conducted multiple readings throughout the process to get feedback from a young audience. Ng says one comment that particularly pleased her was an attendee saying it felt like Ng had hidden a microphone in one of their bags.

Rehearsing for Hard Mode has brought back a host of physical sensations for Chia, who jokes that he has rediscovered his teenage angst.

He has intentionally made his voice more nasal for the part to reflect a time when it is just starting to break. His mannerisms are also more gangly and insecure.

“It’s about those imperfections,” he says. “A lot of the process was excavating the awkwardness in our bodies. We don’t really forget. Our body remembers, in a way.”

Ng promises that the play tackles those fresh, hormonal sensations that teenagers are experiencing for the first time, from big, overwhelming anger to platonic love – vastly different experiences for boys and girls.

Hard Mode is for anyone who has ever been young. Ng says: “Why do we forget about what it was like being a teenager?”

Book It/ Hard Mode

Where: Sota Drama Theatre, 1 Zubir Said Drive
When: Oct 18 to 26, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Sundays, 3pm; Thursday and Fridays, 8pm; Saturdays, 3 and 8pm
Admission: From $60 via Sistic (go to

str.sg/SFuW

or call 6348-5555)