The play by Elangovan, a two-hour monologue by one of 12 divorcees depicting their marital problems, opened to a full house.

But he and actress Nargis Banu have received anonymous death threats for allegedly smearing Islam.

Indian Muslim groups have held secret meetings, largely critical of the Tamil-language play entitled Talaq or divorce, which has also been published as a hot-selling book.

Both the play and the book have been licensed by Singapore authorities, who usually take great care in approving such works to avoid religious sensitivities in the multi-racial island.

Elangovan, from a Hindu background, said he was unperturbed by the furore caused by the play as his objective was to portray the ordeal of women suffering in silence while victimised by their husbands.

``This is a human issue, I had todesign it creatively and as a work of art,'' said the 41-year-old Elangovan, winner of the 1997 Southeast Asian Write Award, the region's premier literary prize.

An anonymous letter he received recently branded him an `infidel', warned him of death and urged him not be another Salman Rushdie, the Indian-born writer served the death sentence by Iran for his book Satanic Verses.

``I'm no preacher and I don't need to proselytise,'' Elangovan told AFP, saying he ``just tore up the letter and threw it away.''

Elangovan, a Tamil-English bilingual poet working as an arts administrator in Singapore's state-linked National Arts Council, said the state literary agency, DBP, in neighbouring predominantly Muslim Malaysia had already translated the book into Malay as part of an ASEAN drama anthology.

The Singapore Islamic Religious Council (MUIS), which administers Islamic affairs, ``has received feedback on the drama and is looking into the matter,'' a spokesman for the Council said.

Among thecontroversial scenes of the play is one when actress Nargis Banu emerged from 20 years of beatings and humiliation at the hands of her husband by disrobing and walking into a pool of light against a backdrop of fire.

Some Muslims were alarmed that, by removing her long black robe, she was renouncing Islam.

But Elangovan explained: ``She is just walking out of her troubles, getting out of her male entrapments of a community and attaining personal freedom.''

``She walks into a green beam of light, green is the colour of Islam.''

Elangovan, who was trained in Australia, Britain and Spain and whose works have also been translated into Malay, Tagalog, Spanish and Japanese, has run into trouble before with his poems and books filled with strong social satires.

His poem Buddha's Hand Grenade, where the founder of Buddhism was portrayed donning military garb and black boots in his fight against social ills, raised eyebrows even among Myanmar's pro-reform campaigners.

They had to remove the poemfrom a book they compiled on reforms.

A play he staged in 1992 on India's untouchables working in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia during British and Dutch colonialism also ran into strong opposition, with the government bowing to demands that the play not be restaged.

A year later, Elangovan adapted Nobel laureate Italian playwright Dario Fo's play Accidental Death Of An Anarchist, but his play was disrupted when police had to step in to clear troublemakers.

It was in that same year that Elangovan said he was deprived of the Singapore Young Artist Award for literature, even though confirmed of the prize.

``I feel it is an unnecessary punishment to deprive me of an award at the last minute, and based on my theatre activities, when I was actually nominated for literature,'' he said.

``But I would not compromise anything for position and power at the expense of my search for truth and my art. I've been walking too long in minefields ignoring the stones that have been thrown at me frombehind.''