Meet the trans actor who gives ‘kind of a middle finger’ to Singapore’s conservative values
- When Medli Dorothea Loo realised she was a girl trapped in a boy’s body, ‘it wasn’t a moment of joy and relief’ but rather ‘fear and dread’, she said
- Performers like Loo are rare in Singapore, where activists say transgender people still face stigma, from job discrimination to family rejection
With LGBTQ characters effectively barred from free-to-air television, performers like Loo are rare in Singapore’s mass media.
“Within Singaporean spaces, trans people are just [considered as] jokes,” the 20-year-old said.
“I think me being on stage as a trans body, as a trans voice, is a little act of rebellion. It’s like kind of a middle finger to ‘Singaporean values’,” said Loo, who has turned more to theatre performance since she came out in 2021.
Her latest appearance was in January in a small documentary theatre production TRANS: MISSION, featuring different generations of trans people discussing their lives in Singapore in front of a live audience.
Raised in a Catholic family, she began acting aged seven, when she performed in the 2011 short film Cartoons by award-winning Singaporean filmmaker Ken Kwek.