AWARE’s “Saga” podcast: Conceptualisation, production, and challenges

From Social Service.Shi, I'm Jing Yao. Today we are joined by Kelly Liu and Jasmine Ng, writers and producers of Saga, a limited series 12 episode podcasts documenting the March to May 2009 Saga surrounding gender equality group aware, the association of women, action and research. I'm a huge fan of the Saga podcast and more than a decade later in 2021, the themes surrounding the 2009 aware saga I believe are still relevant for activism and advocacy, gender, sexuality and religion, as well as social cultural and political progress in Singapore. Speaking with Kelly and Jasmine was my chance to learn about how they conceptualized and produced Saga, how they dealt with resistance in convincing 50 individuals to speak about their experiences and the other challenges they faced. Kelly is a West Communications Manager and Jasmine is a filmmaker, director and producer. You can listen to all 12 episodes at aware.org.Shi/Saga. I first invited them to introduce themselves and their connection to aware. Marina Lim, first mentioned by Kelly is the first and current executive director of aware. She also features in Saga both during the event and in the podcast. So Kelly and Jasmine, maybe the Saga episode of "Couche take us through how the Saga episode of the Saga limited series was conceptualized in the first place." Okay, I will go. I'm Kelly. I will introduce myself a bit as well. I am currently a West Communications Manager, but two years ago, two and a half years ago, when all this started to take shape, I was an unemployed person. I have been a magazine editor before in LA, before I moved back to Singapore in 2017 and kind of took a year off for burnout reasons and was just kind of doing different volunteering. I was volunteering a bit with the T-Project, actually, at that time. And through the T-Project, I got connected with aware. I happened to meet Karina at some random session that they were doing. Of course, I told her, "It's so great to meet you. It's so great to meet aware in general because in my life, I was telling her, when I was 18, the Saga happened and it really opened my eyes to a lot of things. It was a very formative moment, almost a political awakening for me, myself, as a very coolist and apathetic, 18 year old living in a bubble in Singapore. So she was like, "Oh, that's amazing. Next year is going to be the 10-year anniversary we actually thinking about doing something to commemorate it. Not sure what it is yet. Do you want to be involved?" And I said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. I was, as an editor, maybe you have some thoughts about what shape it can take." And I said, "Yeah, yeah, sure." Of course, then I went home for a few weeks, was doing a lot of reading. Roy Tan has his LGBT wiki. He's like Singapore LGBT wiki. And he has a very comprehensive page about the Oes Saga. So I really just spent a few hours diving deep into every single link, every single video that he was linking to. And I think watching specifically, I think it was the New Guard press conference videos on YouTube, I watching that really just struck me like, "Oh my God, this should be a podcast because just the amount of footage that was available of the New Guard and the Old Guard, but just hearing their voices, hearing the New Guard's voices as they explained their position and just hearing the kind of like the fervor and the intensity and the passion of what they were seeing and how convinced they were of what they were seeing. I was just like, "Oh my gosh, this is so evocative, right? This just shot little video clip was really so evocative." So then I went back to Karina and said, "You know, what about if you consider a podcast, is that something that you guys might want to do?" And she said, "You know, sure. You know, don't know what a podcast is really, but like, you know, let's let what true, why not?" And then actually it's so happened that after that, the comms manager at the time at a where step down and so they were also looking for a comms person and Karina said, "Would you be interested in, you know, in applying for this?" And I said, "Actually, sure. Why not?" So that's how it came to be that I ended up doing like both of these jobs at the same time, which, you know, in retrospect, was not so wise, but it just happened like that. It all just kind of happened at the same time. So that's kind of how the initial, um, including of it began and of course also knowing, I knew that Jasmine was on the board, right? And obviously I knew her work from Shokas and her other films. And you know, obviously though, when I was trying to think like who had aware, we even know how to make a podcast because I don't, right? Like I have never done anything like that. I immediately thought of Jasmine because I knew that she would have the kind of technical, know how the kind of producer experience, even with the story, right? To know kind of how to package this. And so I thought, "Okay, like if I can get Jasmine on board, then maybe this can actually happen." So that's how it happened from my perspective. I don't know Jasmine, you want to share what happened from your perspective. Okay. So I, so I'm Jasmine and I'm a film and television director and executive producer. That's my day job. And I also, along with many other people, including people like Pam Wee, I'm one of the very, you know, the very many who only joined aware during the Aware saga in 2009. You know, many of us who just thought, "Okay, where's doing good things?" and, you know, but life hasn't been that bad for me. So I haven't been, you know, start to do anything until that one day I remember was a Saturday opening up, you know, the Straits Times and my kitchen and reading about the very first report that something seemed a miss, right? That, you know, the ex-girl mysteriously had been all of a sudden replaced by all these newcomers. So that that's when I had joined. And then since I've been volunteering with Aware and also have been serving on the board, currently on the board right now. And so I think along the way, of course, it was such a huge milestone. I mean, much like Khalil, just from reading, you know, but even being there, right? It was really a huge awakening moment for many of us, right? And I have always kind of thought that something should be done about the Aware saga, right? And many other people did also. So obviously people like Margi Thomas, Dan Alam, whom, you know, Margi being a co-founder of Aware and the current precedent, Dan Alam, one of our ex-presidents, I think all of them, because they were also journalists, they saw the value in that. But I think what a lot of people don't realize is, you know, now you've, some of your listeners would have heard some of the podcasts, perhaps all 12 episodes, but actually what a lot of people don't realize is how hard it is at many times it was to persuade people to talk about it, because for many of them, it's still very traumatic. So over the years, every time, you know, like me, second, who is like around the corner, I'd say, hey, let's commemorate it, you know, let's take, because we have a, is it like a nine-disc, nine DVD, no, it's like three, three DVD discs, nine chapter, recording of the actual EOGM itself, the actual May, second, 2009 extraordinary journal meeting where the vote of no confidence was, you know, being table and voted on, right? And I was kept saying, you know, let's play it, let's stream it, let's watch it and everybody kept going, no, who would want to watch that? It was so horrible, it was such a terrible time, nobody wants to revisit that, you know, even like five years in, eight years in, the wound was still very, very fresh. So a lot of times, my experience of this whole thing of like trying to get people to talk about it was, a lot of people just didn't want to, let's not revisit that. On the other hand, the journalists, right, other historians, you know, amongst where they were saying, let's do it, let's do it. For me, you know, as somebody who just knew you're looking at it, you just know, of course, it makes for great content, right? I was keen to do that. So it took for somebody like Kelly from a fresh perspective. And I think, you know, to Corinne and some of the people was that idea that, okay, this is kind of a neutral person, you know, doesn't have any kind of baggage and also represents, you know, the millennials, you know, and they have an idea to watch what the Gen Zs are thinking. And this idea of as a medium of podcast that we've never done before, and perhaps that's something that we could reach younger, newer kind of audiences. And so I think with that nice combination, and then I think the, the, the, the third thing that made everything click was, um, Barathe Jack Dish. So Barathe Jack Dish is an award winning journalist, you know, many people actually remember her. A lot of people online have been saying, oh, I remember that voice, you know, because I used to listen to her on the radio, on the way to work, on the way to school. And we had always, many of us have, have been very impressed by the work she's put in, particularly for interview series, a deep dive interview series that she used to do called on the record, right? And in fact, actually, for the last couple of years, I've, it's, well, maybe a serendipity, right? I've always kind of around the time when we've had our annual fundraiser meeting, not meeting our fundraiser ball. I've reached out to her and said, which you'd like to come and attend it. And she's always said, know. And finally, we actually met. She was like, oh, yeah, the one who keeps asking me, if you want to attend the Aware Fund Razor. And she was saying that, yeah, you know, she was like, who's this person? And why did they keep asking? And then finally, you know, it's all kind of like worked out. And so I think between the three of us, we kind of represent, you know, we're bringing different things to the table. Not just, I mean, the set of combined skills is one thing, but I think also that, you know, Kelly has this idea of like the, you know, she kind of represents that fresh perspective of being neutral because she doesn't have any kind of like historical emotional baggage to it for myself, for the many people who are it who we did interview, because they do know me as somebody who is also volunteer and been on the, and who's also on the board. And also maybe some of my film work. So then there's a different level of trust. And then for the third, it's, you know, a verb for people who know that, you know, she will be, you know, she'll be really kind of rigorous in her line of interview that sense of fairness, you know, that she will be, you know, she will definitely, you know, balance the interview with, I think that in retrospect, was kind of like a good combination that kind of, you know, it would, it would invariably be one of us who would be for every different person to be interview, they would feel like, okay, there's something that they can say, okay, I'm willing to jump off this, you know, I'm going to like take this, jump off this cliff with you right now and do something quite scary, you know, which is to talk so intimately, right? There's a big official historical moments, but then there are all these little personal histories. And that was what we were interested in as well, because I knew that, that, that tone, that tenor was something that many other media coverage would have not done, because for sure there was plenty of media coverage in 2009. There was a book written about the West Aga, I think that came out in 2010 or 2011, but what has not been covered, not been charted and I thought was equally important. I think all of us believe intimately in this, particularly Margie Thomas, right? It's, it's the small personal histories, those kind of stories that I think previously is well documented, not well got a document actually, not well documented at all, but you know, with the oral history archives, those sort of documentation, when sometimes people forget that history is also made by the small people, not just like the big, you know, figures, the captains of industry or politicians. Kelly makes a reference to the blogosphere. The term blogosphere describes the community or personal and collective blogs, and in my memory, there was an explosion of blogs in Singapore, recited by the general elections in 2006 and 2015. If you've listened to Saga, you'll also hear about how the quote unquote "oh god" and its supporters used Twitter and the hashtag #awaresshe to mobilize support. I mean, in documenting these, in your words, these small personal histories, what are some of the, I mean, I'm hearing a few of these potential challenges that come up in Jasmine, you mentioned, getting people to talk about it would be difficult because they were resistant to the idea for so many years. I imagine there would be one difficulty, the other one. I think Kelly alluded to would be pulling together all these resources. There's a wiki on it, there's a book, there's this DVD set, I'm also struck by the fact that in the first few episodes, the original footage and recording of the, not the EOGM, but the AGM that started it all was also on record. So what was some of the difficulties throughout this journey of pulling all these small personal histories together through this production process? Yeah, I mean, you're right, there was just a huge amount of existing material, right? So all the news coverage, some of it is probably longer available like the TV stuff, we didn't have access to, we kind of relied on what's on YouTube, right? But also all the archives, all the new super archives, every new super pretty much was covering this for like two months straight. So it was a huge amount of articles reading and then outside of the mainstream media, just like the blogs, right? And social media, just like all the, I mean, I think we, people have been kind of scoffing at our usage of the web blogosphere, like in one of the episodes, but like it wasn't blogosphere, you know, the blogosphere at that time was huge, like there was so many more blogs that people were regularly reading and writing and commenting on, right? And there was just like this treasure trove of material. Unfortunately, a lot of that was also been lost like in the, you know, 12 in the 10, 11, 12 years since. So what we could find was great, but we know that there was a lot more that in the forums and all these pages that are now lost, right? Because people will do that in other things and we're like, oh, okay, click the link and then the link is dead, right? So just a huge amount of research, we read the Terence Chong book that Jasmine mentioned that was published in I think 2010 or 11, the called The Aware Saga, which is a collection of kind of more academic essays, you know, including some written by some of the people that we featured ended up featuring Ring in the podcast. And then just kind of, yeah, go, I was such a long time ago, like I trying to remember how we, it's really just then kind of, okay, like kind of maybe going to Margie at that point as the kind of unofficial self-appointed aware historian, we just collect and compulse all these kind of archives for herself and in full aware, right? And just kind of being like, Margie, what do you have? And then, yeah, and then her just also sending us like all these emails, like forwarding, like all the emails that were going on. And you know, again, like, dozens of emails being sent back and forth every day, right? So during that two months, just reading all the emails, being like, who is that? Like, oh, this person's copy. Like, is this person important? Like, who's that? So really just making a huge list of like every single person that we could think of that was even tangentially involved in the saga. And that was, you know, like, like really dozens, like, we interviewed, we ended up interviewing 50 people, but there were more than 50 people, right? I mean, there were even some people that we couldn't get in touch with, you know, when maybe like not so interested in revisiting as Jasmine said, but this incident, or people that we probably should have spoken to, and you know, we probably don't know where their stories are, like to this day, right? I'm sure that some out there that we could have got, but we didn't. So yeah, just a huge amount of research that we did over the first few months. And then, you know, you were talking about trying to get people, the difficulty of getting people to really be open and be intimate and kind of tell their personal stories because yeah, I think Jasmine's right. We're so used to talking about, you know, the big event that a lot of times I think when we ask people, like, you know, but what were you doing that day? Like, how did you feel that day? You know, like, what conversations were you having with your friends and your family about this, like in your own downtime, right? They're like, oh, this is important. You know, do I need to talk about this? And we're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is what we want, the texture, right? That, that, yeah, the really be able to put people in your shoes, you know, 10 years ago. But we did do kind of, you know, what I think, you know, we were talking about too, like kind of, we did have a pre-interview phone call with some of them with many of them. Just to be like, hey, you know, we need a jogger memory, we know it's been like 10 years, like it's been a very long time. Probably nobody's asked you this before and you never thought about this. But like, can you really, really try to remember, like, you know, every single day, every single week of this journey, like at what point were you doing what and what, you know, so we did have these long conversations with them first before and and told them, hey, go and read your old emails, read your old SMS, and you go and really do your own research as well into your own life back then. And then you can come back for the real interview and then it can you all kind of come up. So it was a big process. I think one of the other things that helped us also make that a decision to do this now rather than even later is that 10 years is a long time already. But on top of that, a lot of our, the founders of where, who were there, you know, in the front lines and also on the day itself of the EOGM and a lot of other, you know, significant people, they, you people have, people have moved out of the country, people have, we've lost some people, you know, they passed on some of this, you know, because they're quite elderly, they're, you know, who are in their 80s going into their 90s, you know, some of our significant founder members, that, you know, they are in stages of dementia. So it's important to, to start to really, you know, it's kind of excavate and document before all of that is lost. If I would ask you like a rough estimate how long, so the 12th, it's a 12th episode limited series, if you were to count the number of hours you spent on the entire project, or via rough estimate for the number of hours. For me, it's like every night and for two years, I don't know how many hours that is. I guess, so I guess professionally, no, not so professionally, let me put it this way. I, for the amount of work that we did, we got to think that it's stretched long also because a lot of times people were only available to be interviewed on weekends, right? I think just the idea of of, of any each interview would take about, you know, anything from an hour to three hours and then for one, for those who were right there in the trenches, you know, in the front lines, those would be maybe like five, six hours, right? And not at one goal because people just get exhausted. And while they kind of sound maybe in the podcast, they're speaking quite freely. And for everything you hear would have been preceded with like a lot of, you know, that was difficult. I don't want to think about it, you know. There was a lot of hesitation, so it took a while to people get that out. So, Kelly is working her day job at a where, you know, being comes manager, it means that that's all the main bulk of work. So I think all of us were doing this almost like as a outside of our work hours. It was a hobby that was rather large in its scale. So yeah, from record, you know, only being able to interview people on weekends, attending to other work at a where then, last year, I think it took about a year spread across weekends and evenings. And then of course, then when 2020 came about, we also took an opportunity because there was so much more immediate urgent work to attend to. So we kind of parked it aside. And then, you know, I mean, on the one hand, I guess you could, we could say that, okay, lockdown would have been good time. But I think there were so many pressing issues that needed to be attended to that would not have been a good time to put out the podcast. And I think a lot of people were a lot more settled by the time we decided to launch it towards the actual launch date was 9th December 2020 last year. And we talked about the challenges and some of the difficulties along the process was wondering for each of you were there. Personal highlights. So what was the one thing that brought you the greatest joy from working on this project or gave you the greatest satisfaction from working on this limited series. So I mean, I would say a lot of it was, I mean, yeah, obviously, you know, as Jasmine said, it was, it was tiring. It was stressful. You know, it was a lot of hard work over two years. But I mean, you know, I don't want to make it seem like it wasn't at every point also enjoyable on some level, right? I mean, I am a huge podcast fan. I think if you had told me a few years ago, hey, you've been making a narrative podcast. It would have been like my dream come true, right? Like really, it is my dream come true. Not not it would have been it is my dream come true to make a podcast of this nature of the skill, right? So, I mean, so I for a long time, I think throughout the whole first year, I was just like my thing back when my God, I was really working every night and every weekend on this for hours, you know, after like one, two a.m. Like every night, it's how, how did I do that? But I think like really doing that first, especially that first half of it was I was just so boy by just like the thrill and excitement, you know, just like just like the high of like, oh my God, I'm doing what I wanted. I'm doing it. This is what I would have loved to do and I'm doing it. This is how amazing, right? And what an incredible story. Like as a storyteller, like, you know, I know that like stories like this are not going to fall into people's laps, like, you know, every day, right? Like this is a really a rare, rare opportunity to tell an incredible story that no one has told at this level before. And so like just that alone was enough for me. But I would say like one big highlight was really like sitting during the interviews and listening to just listening to the interviews, right? I mean, on the one hand, hearing bar, D who I think is a masterful interviewer, you know, as Jasmine said, she's so experienced. She doesn't shy away from asking the tough questions when she's not. The tough questions when she needs to write, but she does it in a way that is not there is also quite empathetic, right? She's not she's not like gonna, you know, put people off by her like interrogation, you know, she's not like that. So just as a as as someone who is better interviews myself, I was just learning so much from her and the way she did it. But also just listening to these people, I mean, you know, I had like I said, I had just only moved back to Singapore, like very not long before. So my I was, this was really my introduction to like all these legends of civil society, right? Of of of of aware legends of aware, like iconic iconic women, right? I mean, and what how like, how privileged and what a luxury it was to meet these people and not just meet them, but then be like, okay, we're gonna book you for three hours. You're gonna talk to me about your life and everything that you've ever done. And I'm gonna get to like really just like ask you any question I can think of about all these things like that you've done you amazing person, right? I mean, like how, how like what I mean, what other way would you be able to do that right? So for me, it was this huge like eye opening introduction to these people that I now, you know, and back then, but even more now, like, you know, hugely admire. That was a huge highlight for me. You know, I totally agree for Kelly and I think a lot of it. Well, in my line of work, you know, particularly working on documentaries, factual programming, see it along the way, you know, you've, you've really kind of like built up an arsenal of like different kind of strategies and, you know, different ways of coaxing people to speak and everything. But still, I think it's even from all those years of experience, I think my experience is very much like Kelly's, you know, once you're in that room. And when people, you know, it starts off a bit slow, you know, you sort of ease them into it. But the willingness and that kind of leap of faith that that our interviews took to give to us, to give to you know, audiences that we don't know who they might be. Are there going to be any, you know, listeners and who are these people and how this would be received. I think the trust that they gave to us to know that this would be professionally objectively handled. Because it's not to be assumed that, you know, because of our own links to aware that it would be handled one way or the other. Right, I think that that that trusted it gave, I think that was very, very humbling and much appreciated. And there was so many moments where I mean, you know, you got, I think in general, I hope that, you know, even for audiences who are not interested or never thought they were previously interested in, you know, advocacy and social issues. I think, you know, hopefully you do see, you do encounter a lot of moments in the podcast where you will feel moved. Right. And just think of us in that interview, in that whichever interview who were in, you know, for that particular person. Right. When there was chance, such intimate and still very raw, you know, experiences. And I'm telling you, you could feel like a lot of times you feel the sort of a collector sort of feeling of like everybody's trying to regulate their breath and try not to like cry. Just so that you know, you're kind of like, so we're not going to the recording because it was a very mentally emotionally stressful time for a lot of the people who were, you know, we feature. And it's quite something to, to witness and to be able to help, you know, be given that trust to bring us to many, many people out there. And as a listener, I completely resonate with the range of emotions without giving too much away, I would say, episode three got me really angry. To listen to speeches and the snippets and three and to hear the applause that followed it got me really routed up. And I've said this to a lot of friends as well that I, you know, this was only less than a decade and a half ago, I can't believe that was said and then, you know, that got me the state of emotions as well. I guess it's a final question given the success of the podcast and given, you know, the traction is gotten and it's going to continue to get traction from from listeners as well. So, where has for any future limited series or for the podcast itself as well? So I, I, so for the podcast, you know, obviously it now just lives out there on the various platforms, right? Spotify, Apple, Goal and, you know, our microsite that we built, where the dog, she said, Saga, which has, you know, a lot of other bonus material as well, right? Like so, like clips, actually, like in the process of kind of populating it with some of the clips that we were not able to include in the in the 12 episodes. So there's going to be some bonus stuff there as well. And of course, there's also like a list of characters. There's like a timeline that we put together of the aware saga incidents. There is like quite a lot of like extra further reading links to my articles, just like a lot of stuff on that website. So that's great. So yeah, for now that's that's going to be out there. Hopefully, you know, people will continue to find it. You know, over the next few months and possibly years, right? I mean, I think a lot of people have told us that they would like students to they would like to use it as a teaching tool in in classes and have students listen to it and use it as a key study as well. So, you know, that's all that's fantastic. As far as you audio projects, I don't know if that's something that when necessarily is going on, want to pursue too much. We don't really have plans right now. I think you know, this is it was such a huge endeavor. And of course, not every audio project has to be of this nature, right? So it might not have it might not be of the same scale. So we were definitely open to it now that we've done it before. I think it'll be so much easier than the first time when we were just trying to figure it out as we went. But yeah, I mean, I think, you know, like I said, there's only really one aware saga. I, you know, I have been other interesting parts of a way of history, but nothing, you know, not even on the same level as this, I think. So it's, yeah, we'll see what happens. Actually, there's a lot of material that and and not so much saga focus that we could make a lot of other projects on whether it's, you know, a different podcast type of format or whether it might be a documentary or kind of some hybrid, you know, kind of medium. I think it's really about resources of time, you know, because I really had where, you know, from from at least point of view as a, you know, comes manager, myself on the board on the board. And also as a volunteer. There's a lot of work that we already do, you know, through aware that takes up so much of our bandwidth and time. But yeah, I mean, it's, yeah, you know, so I think, you know, we will probably be called. to doing some other projects. Actually, there's no shortage of ideas. It's really just about finding the time and then knowing whether there's going to be a listenership. And because, like we said, I think, why 12 episodes, even after 12 episodes, we have a lot of material that we could not include. And hence, we're able to, over the next couple of weeks, release those as bonus clips and search. But I think the reason why we were able to easily fill 12 episodes and more was because it was not just about the events of those two and a half months in 2009. It's really about all these darts that we need to examine a bit more and figure out how you join those darts, how other people join those darts that, yeah, in fact, we could go on for seasons, multiple seasons, and you'll still be mining it. Because there's a story that still is unfolding as we speak. And also right on the note of our future plans, one thing that we kind of maybe have, well, I don't want to be joking me because we are actually quite serious about this. Is that we weren't able to get the new gut to speak on the record for the podcast, which was a huge disappointment for us because that had always kind of been, so that's the white whale that we're like, that's our dream, right? It's to really have everybody on the podcast, not just the Olga and their allies. So, and we didn't make various overtures to them at various points during the two years and they were not accepted. But what we have said and what I think we continue to say is that if they do, ever get in touch with us and they do want to do like, maybe like a live episode or just some kind of interview, yeah, it can be live, it can be not live whatever, right? Like however they want to do it, we are very, very, very open to kind of doing like episode 13, right? Like the new gut speaks finally here from the other side. So that is something that, you know, I guess we still kind of pulled out a fame hope that that might happen and we're kind of always on the road really for that to happen. (gentle music) (gentle music)