Ghafir Akbar

Guards at the Taj is a personal story of a friendship challenged under dictatorship. Two long-term friends, Humayun and Babur, stand guard at the Taj Mahal hours before it is unveiled at dawn. They are forbidden to look at the monument, speak, or lower their swords. The play reaches a turning point as the guards are ordered to do an unimaginably violent act and their friendship is changed forever. I leave the Singapore Repertory Theatre after Guards at the Taj with mixed feelings. For a start, I am impressed by the actors’ performance, especially since the whole play only runs…

Guards at the Taj, written by award-winning playwright and winner of the best new play in the 2016 Obie awards, Rajiv Joseph, will be performed in KC Arts Centre from 14 November 2018 to 1 December 2018. Set in 1648, Guards at the Taj is a dark comedy based on a myth about Taj Mahal, a mausoleum commissioned by the Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan, to house the tomb of his favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. In the play, the majestic beauty of the Taj Mahal is a deliberate contrast to the ordinary guards who are placed in charge of the mausoleum the day before its unveiling.…

I could feel this production right before I watch it – from the entrance of Fort Canning Green, we were invited to enter the picnic spaces through “The Capitol” stage and have a sense of how it feels to navigate through the multi-dimensional set like the actors would. It was at this moment that I admired how the team’s Production Designer, Richard Kent, managed to utilise the stage not just to add more layers to the storytelling, but to make the play’s audiences feel a tad more special, as if telling us that we are not mere spectators of the…