Producers of the play Talaq -- meaning divorce in Malay -- have questioned the council's decision to bring in two Muslim men to judge the work about oppressed Muslim women.

The NAC had demanded a preview to decide whether to issue a public performance licence for the English and Malay language productions of the play, which has previously been staged in the Indian Tamil language.

The president of Agni Kootthu, the theatre staging Talaq, said requests to have Muslim women on the panel were refused, although a Malay woman would be among the 13 to preview the work.

Talaq is based on real life accounts of Indian Muslim women in Singapore and explores oppression, marital violence and rape, and the culture of silence forced on these women by their families.

But Agni Kootthu cancelled an Oct 16 preview when two representatives of the all-male South Indian Jamiathual Ulama (SIJU) were included on the NAC panel.

Theatre president Somasundram Thenmoli said she objected to the SIJU delegates because they were not members of the Public Entertainment Licensing Unit nor the Drama Review Committee, and they excluded women from their organisation because it was a "religious" group.

"These two men were going to comment on our play which is about oppressed women of their society," Thenmoli said.

Thenmoli said she was told by the NAC's executive director Choo Thiam Siew that the inclusion of two SIJU members was justified because they were Indian Muslims, even though the review committee also included two representatives from the government-sanctioned Muslim body, Majlis Ugama Islam Singapore (MUIS).

"SIJU had no legal right to preview the play," Thenmoli told AFP, adding their presence would have undermined MUIS' role as the governing body for Muslim matters in Singapore.

"I have been intimidated by the executive director of the National Arts Council ... to agree to an unlawful preview of 'Talaq'. I have refused to go along with his unreasonable behaviour and attitude," she said.

The government has been actively cultivating the arts scene in Singapore, which has long been criticised as sterile and overly censored, earmarking an additional $450 million (US$28 million) over the next five years to develop the arts and culture here.

But public performances remain subject to the issuance of a licence from police authorities, based on recommendations from the NAC.

A licence will not be granted if the performance is deemed sensitive to any of the ethnic groups in the city-state.

The Chinese, Malay and Indian communities make up the bulk of the population of four million citizens.