MID-WAY through this interview with Oon Ah Chiam at a restaurant outside the National Library, a middle-aged waitress approaches our table.

She is a fan of Oon's opera shows. They chat in Hokkien and she gets an update on the upcoming shows the 65-year-old is performing in.

It's been 50 years since she entered the trade, says Oon, adding that such encounters with fans are not unusual. She says she is "semi-retired", performing only occasionally.

Nearby, in a rehearsal room at the National Library's Drama Centre, a cast including Pam Oei, Karen Tan and Beatrice Chia-Richmond are busy rehearsing Titoudao, a play written and directed by her son, Toy Factory Theatre Ensemble artistic director Goh Boon Teck.

It is based on Oon's life as a popular opera performer, with Oei playing her. The play was first staged by Toy Factory in 1994. In 2001, a revival of the play, also by Toy Factory, won five Life! Theatre Awards, including one for Play of the Year.

The title is the name of one of Oon's most popular roles, a loyal servant named Titoudao, in an opera named Yi Bo Jiu Zhu.

Meticulously decked out in red nail polish, fuchsia lipstick, and gold and jade jewellery as well as precipitously high platform shoes (she's petite and 1.28m tall), the chatty Oon looks easily 10 years younger than her age.

Born to a farmer and a housewife, she grew up in a kampung with 11 siblings, helping her father plant vegetables and feed chickens. Her mother died when she was 13, after suffering a stillborn pregnancy.

"We were very poor," she recalls. "When we were children, my siblings and I all had bloated stomachs, like those starving kids in Africa, because there wasn't much to eat."

After seeing a neighbour who joined an opera troupe return home wearing gold jewellery, she started to harbour the same dream.

"People in those days still looked down on actors, but my father agreed. He said he had so many daughters anyway, and it wasn't like I was going to steal or beg."

At age 16, she joined the Sin Sai Hong Hokkien street opera troupe as an apprentice, and started with bit parts with no lines.

"In other kinds of opera, you usually play only one kind of role," she explains. "But for Hokkien opera, you must know everything. I've played men and women, old and young, creatures from heaven and hell. The only character I haven't played is Justice Bao."

She attributes her rise to popularity to her knack for being observant and being able to take criticism. Although she wasn't allowed to have boyfriends by the troupe master, she did have admirers, who showered her with gifts.

Once, she received a big bag of prawns from a fan, she recalls with a chuckle.

At age 28, she married Goh Thiam Hock, then a lorry driver. He is now retired from the contractor business.

But a strained relationship with her mother-in-law made her yearn to go back to acting. Soon, she was treading the boards once more, and performed throughout her three pregnancies. Her two other children work in the advertising industry.

Watching Titoudao, she says, brings up many memories for her. "It's very touching to watch how my son tells the story of my life. My godmother cried when she first saw it, because she didn't know that things with my mother-in-law were so bad then."

But at the moment, she is more concerned with getting the opera bits in the play right.

"I've been helping them learn the way to walk and talk in Hokkien opera," she says.

"It's difficult for them, they are not used to this," adds Oon, who is known to show up at rehearsals with her fried beehoon.

Titoudao plays at the Drama Centre till March 31 at 8pm, with weekend matinees at 3pm. Tickets from $42 to $58 from Sistic (www.sistic.com.sg, tel: 6348-5555).