Dragonflies is the story of a family fighting for survival in a hostile world, looking for somewhere to call home, and something that might look like hope.
The year is 2021 and climate change is wreaking havoc across the globe. Donald Trump has been re-elected US President for a second term. Brexit is in full effect and causing chaos all over Europe. In the wake of escalating wars in the Middle East, famine in West Africa, and relentless terrorist attacks by radical extremists, the UK—and many nations around the world—has enforced a ban on all immigration.
With the coastline around him and life as he knows it crumbling to dust, Leslie Chen is forced to abandon his home in England and move his family back to his birthplace, Singapore. Confronting a country that is a world apart from the one he knew as a child, he is now made to question the meaning of home. As the crises and conflicts escalate, one thing is certain, come hell or high water, and possibly both, he must protect his family.
While dragonflies migrate halfway across the world, we, the human race, struggle to embrace our nomadic heritage, our need to move to greener pastures in order to survive. And as global warming, the resurgence of far-right politics and worldwide paranoia make us burn bridges and build walls between communities, families and individuals, we have to ask ourselves: Where do we go from here?
Reader Reviews:
“Compassionate, hopeful and exquisitely acted.”
–Best of 2017, The Straits Times
“Watching Dragonflies is like reading an issue of The Economist from cover to cover: it is chock-full of urgent issues from immigration to xenophobia to climate change. Excellent script, evocative staging, brilliantly played!”
–The Business Times
“A dynamic and fresh look on current affairs that aims to enrich, surprise and stimulate its audience. But overall, the message of Dragonflies is simple: build bridges, not walls.”
–Pride Kindness
“The play’s success lies in how realistic and possible it all is, and the genuine threats feel like they have the potential to seep into our own reality, with very real stakes for characters we’ve come to know and relate to, and evoking intense sympathy as we watch a family completely come apart, helpless in the face of circumstance.”
–Bakchormeeboy
“A gripping tale of displacement that is, at once, epic and intimate.”
–Naeem Kapadia, Crystalwords
“A play that ambitiously tackles multiple issues—from climate change to human migration, from racism and xenophobia to openness and generosity, from ambivalence to empathy, from impassioned implementation of laws and policies (when “I’m sorry” really doesn’t mean “I’m sorry”) to the touching gentle connection of human relationships across lines that traditionally do not cross—and somehow successfully stitches it all together into deep, stirring storytelling.”
–Sticky Rice
“Street's writing is effectual in capturing the pain brewed by grief, as well as the resignation in a person from a marginalised community.”
–Buro247