MS Features: Cheeyang Ng, who felt unseen but now thrives as a theatre artiste
The lights dim. The music starts. Then comes the ask.
“I can’t hear you,” Cheeyang Ng told the audience.
In ‘Legendary’, a solo musical created by the 36-year-old Singaporean artiste, silence is not really an option.
Source: Source: @cheeyangmusic on Instagram
20 years ago, Cheeyang, who goes by the pronouns they/them, entered the public eye as the first champion of Singapore’s singing competition ‘Campus Superstar’.
Since then, the singer-songwriter has performed all over the world — but their recent show on the island after 15 years abroad was one to remember.
Former Campus Superstar winner returns home to sold-out crowd
Cheeyang’s new show is built on participation. People sing. People lean in. People become part of the ritual.
So when Singaporeans sat quietly at first, Cheeyang noticed.
“The Singaporean crowd is so quiet,” they said with a laugh to MS News, noting the number of times they had to tell them to be louder.
But by the end of each show, something shifted.
“Everyone was very much singing along and being a part of this experience,” they said.
And for Cheeyang, that mattered more than applause.
Source: Cheeyang Ng on Facebook
“I just felt really welcomed,” shared Cheeyang.
“I just felt invited back into a space where I have been alienated for a really long time, both perceived by myself, so perceived by society.”
Leaving Singapore as a university student
Singapore first knew of Cheeyang in 2006 as a 16-year-old teenager with a big voice.
Source: mewatch Campus Superstar
After completing their studies at Hwa Chong Institution, they later enrolled as an undergraduate at the Singapore Management University (SMU).
But even then, Cheeyang knew the conventional route was not for them.
“I was doing Business in the middle of my first year at SMU,” they said.
“And the only thought in my head when I was at school was that there was no way that I would survive a nine-to-five job.”
That was when Cheeyang moved to the US to study at the Berklee College of Music.
Source: Cheeyang Ng 黃智陽 on Facebook
“When I first moved to the US, I thought I was gonna pursue some kind of pop music,” they told MS News.
“My background was in Mandopop, and I was trying to figure out how to bridge Mandopop and Western pop music and what that sounds like.”
Doubts in New York City
But leaving their life in Singapore behind was not an easy task.
“It was really hard. It was really hard for everyone involved,” they said.
Cheeyang said they came from a “very, very middle-class” family and had to make the move work with scholarships and government support.
Then came New York.
A little brownstone apartment in Brooklyn. Expensive rent. Not much money.
At one point, Cheeyang remembered sitting on a rock in Central Park, asking a friend from SMU if moving to America had been a mistake.
Source: Cheeyang Ng 黃智陽 on Facebook
“I had maybe like $10 in my bank account, and I was eating pasta and pizza for the entire month of my birthday,” they said.
“And I just thought, did I make the worst mistake of my life?”
They did not set out to write musicals, survival pushed them there
Even so, Cheeyang persevered in a theatre world which they described as far less open than it is today.
As an Asian performer, they said they were repeatedly pushed toward the same narrow roles.
“I was very much pigeonholed into roles that were specifically for Asian people like ‘King and I’, ‘Saigon’, and ‘Thoroughly Modern Millie’,” said Cheeyang to MS News.
“Like just really stereotypical Asian roles.”
It was that feeling of being unrepresented that changed the direction of their career.
So, determined to survive and thrive in the industry where they are the minority, Cheeyang made a decision:
I decided that the best way to proceed is to write myself into these shows.
Source: Cheeyang Ng on Facebook
Legendary asks a question many queer people know too well: where do I fit?
Cheeyang said they had wanted to write about Chinese mythology for years.
But the real emotional engine of ‘Legendary’ came later.
“As I started to come to terms with myself and my growth as a person, I realised that I couldn’t find myself in these stories that came before me,” said Cheeyang.
And so, that absence became the work.
Source: @cheeyangmusic on TikTok
“The goal of the piece is to interrogate some of these stories that we’ve inherited through our ancestors and the generations before us,” they said.
“To question where does a queer person fit into the narrative.”
And at its core, they said, ‘Legendary’ is about “ancient myths and modern questions” and “looking at mythology through a queer and trans lens”.
Source: @cheeyangmusic on Instagram
It is for the younger self who had too many questions
The question about legacy, lineage, and what gets passed on, also gives the musical its pulse.
Cheeyang described ‘Legendary’ as an offering. A window. A response to a younger self who once felt lost.
Image by MS News
“I didn’t want the next generation of queer kids to experience the same thing that I experienced,” they told MS News.
“The musical is for my 13-year-old self who had so many questions about the world and where I fit into it.”
That is what gives Legendary its emotional force.
More than just performance or a spectacle, it is a conversation across time.
Source: Cheeyang Ng 黃智陽 on Facebook
In Singapore, that conversation found an audience
Cheeyang admitted they did not expect the Singaporean audience to respond this strongly.
“It was such a gift to be able to share ‘Legendary’ here in Singapore,” they told MS News.
“Twenty years ago, I wouldn’t have expected or believed that if you told me that this would be possible.”
Image by MS News
They expected perhaps two shows of 200 people. Instead, there were four spanning across two days in February and March.
“It was four shows. And we sold out pretty quickly,” shared Cheeyang.
However, what stayed with them was not just the turnout.
“There were people in the audience who were just genuinely leaning in and listening to an experience that they have no context for,” they recalled.
For an artiste whose work lives in the space between East and West, queerness and tradition, distance and belonging, that mattered.
Source: Cheeyang Ng on Facebook
“For them to really be interested in finding out how someone so different from them has lived their lives and be so inviting and accepting of that has been such a pleasure and joy.”
‘I think queerness is resistance’
Cheeyang’s work often returns to the same fault line. East and West. Self and community. Tradition and individuality.
“I think my experience coming from a very traditionally Chinese background going into a very westernised world brings this clash,” they said.
“The East values collectivism and the West values self. So, where does that intersection lie if you are an individual who lives between these two worlds?”
That is not just the premise of Legendary.
It is the map of Cheeyang’s life.
Also read: Naturalised footballer Kyoga Nakamura finds comfort in S’pore as Lions eye historic homecoming
Naturalised footballer Kyoga Nakamura finds comfort in S’pore as Lions eye historic homecoming
Have news you must share? Get in touch with us via email at news@mustsharenews.com.
Featured image adapted from mewatch Campus Superstar and Cheeyang Ng 黃智陽 on Facebook.
