Danial Matin (he/him) writes about family, identity, love, grief and suicide. He is currently interested in excavating ideas of personal and historical memory, and the instability of its interstices.

Through his work, he hopes to normalise representations of marginal communities and issues on the page and stage. Recent accolades include forum theatre work Here Where You Were (M1 Singapore Fringe Festival, 2024), audio play Ghazal of the Banana Tree’s Heart (Singapore Art Week, 2024), Asymptote (Singapore International Festival of the Arts, 2023), and dance-theatre performance Before You Go (independent, 2022).

What kind of writer would you classify yourself as?

I would say I’m a fairly versatile writer. Of course, based on my body of work in the past years, I‘ve come to be associated with the label of the “mental health writer”, because I’ve written a couple of plays about suicide and grief. But I have written more lighthearted ones, like my audio play Rolling With The Times for Geylang Serai Trails and Ghazal Of The Banana Tree’s Heart  for Singapore Art Week.

I also wrote a musical about and for my GRC, Lost In Choa Chu Kang, because they were looking for something different for a new year's event in 2021. So I think my fascinations have been growing to include not just ideas of suicide but also memory, identity and a lot of trans identities. I don’t just mean trans in the LGBTQ sense of the word, but transnational, trans in a very broad sense. For instance, my play Asymptote features Singaporean characters who live abroad.

Why pursue a career in playwriting?

I think it’s something I enjoy doing. I feel like I have some degree of competence in it, and I think if I weren’t good at it I wouldn't enjoy it either. Enjoying it comes with some degree of confidence. No one likes doing something they’re bad at. I also see playwriting as necessary, because sometimes I think I have things to say, things that I want to communicate… but I feel like I'm unable to communicate it unless it’s through a play. Plays allow me to convey specific feelings or perspectives that I want others to experience and understand. And I do see the meaningful impact it has had on other people as well.

If you could choose one Singaporean play from the canon, what would you pick?

The play that I’ve admired (and is close to my heart) is Rosnah, by Haresh Sharma. Because for one, it is a monodrama, a one-woman show. How do I write a monodrama that is engaging for an hour and a half? As a playwright, that’s impressive to me both technically and thematically, especially in how it explores the question: 'Do I modernise and become Western, or do I preserve who I am?'

The other play to me is one of Alfian Sa’at’s earlier plays, Landmarks from Asian Boys Vol 2. It’s a vignette play, and every scene is a two-hander. Rosnah was the first but this is the second. I think Alfian’s writing has a way of being tender, but penetrating simultaneously. He manages to capture the sense of nostalgia in local, lost spaces, especially in a very modernising Singapore.

Has there been a favorite project thus far?

It’s difficult to choose because they’re all special in their own way. At that point in time, I’ll often think, 'Oh wow, this is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever written.' But then, after that comes the anxiety of: 'How can I do any better than this?'

Having experienced that multiple times, it makes me less anxious because I've seen how I’ve grown and matured as a writer with each play that I’ve written. I’m always exploring new ways to become a better writer—to grow on my strengths but to also try out other styles of writing.