Alec grew up in an ordinary family in Queenstown. He worked for the SAF Music & Drama Company and then SAFRA Radio before conceptualising, producing and directing Singapore’s first chinese musical, December Rains, which has since become an icon of the Singapore theatre.
He went on to art-direct Twelve Storeys, Singapore’s first entry to the Cannes International Film Festival and thereafter, left for the US and stayed there for fifteen years working as a theatre director. He wrote and directed his first film A Big Road in Shanghai, which was nominated for the Best Film Award when it premiered at the Singapore International Film Festival.
In 2015 he was commissioned and invited back by the Singapore International Festival of Arts to write and direct Nanyang, The Musical, which premiered here during SG50. He stayed on in Singapore after that.
A father with very young children, he will bring to his role as a Member of Parliament a keen awareness of the pressures and challenges of bringing up a family in a fast changing job landscape with unfair competition from foreign labour.
His exposure to and experience of living and working in America and China give him a wider perspective to what Singapore and Singaporeans can do to thrive even in a world that is in flux.
