While other festivals around the world are going fully online or shrinking their programmes, the Singapore Festival of the Arts (SIFA) is determined to carry on. There are over 60 shows and 300 performances taking place in both virtual and live venues over 16 days in May. Several of them are new commissions for Singapore and foreign artists.
"The arts must go on," says SIFA's festival director Gaurav Kripalani. "So we intend to bring you the best from around the world - especially at a time when you can't travel."
This is a festival on an unprecedented level: many are joining hands across continents as never before to help the global arts community get through the pandemic.
Many artists are agreeing to virtual collaborations where once it would have been deemed too impersonal or clumsy. Others have sped up their adoption of various technologies such as Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality.
In Singapore alone, SDT is partnering with SSO for the first time. The artistic directors of three rival theatre companies - Ivan Heng of Wild Rice, Adrian Pang of Pangdemonium, and Kripalani of Singapore Repertory Theatre - are teaming up for a stage comedy called The Commission. ("We're BFFs now," jokes Kripalani.) And the entire jazz community of Singapore is coming together to celebrate the life and music of jazz icon and Cultural Medallion recipient Louis Soliano.
Here are 12 programmes to watch out for at the upcoming SIFA, running from 14 - 31 May. Tickets can be purchased at www.sifa.sg.
1. Cosmogony
By Cie Gilles Jobin
Since Swiss dance company Cie Gilles Jobin can't come to Singapore, it's using motion capture technology to capture its dancers' movements in Geneva and simultaneously reconstructing them as digital avatars in an open public space in Singapore. (Venue to be confirmed later.) The immersive work is a world premiere and a coup for the festival.
2. Gardens Speak
By Tania El Khoury
Here's a heart-wrenching experience: In Gardens Speak, you're made to wear a plastic coat and dig into a graveyard to uncover the stories of people who died in the Syrian uprising against the Assad regime. You're asked to lie in the ground - as if you were a corpse yourself - and listen to the histories of the deceased, as told by those who loved and lost them.
3. The Journey
By Scott Silven
Silven is an artist, mentalist and illusionist. Promising an experience unlike any other - no, really - The Journey transports you from a village in Glasgow, where Silven was born, into the corners of your own mind. The entire show takes place online, with Silven interacting with you and 29 other participants virtually, and guiding you through the mind-bending adventure.
4. The Rhythm Of Us
By Singapore Dance Theatre and Singapore Symphony Orchestra
It's hard to believe that SDT and SSO have never collaborated before. This triple bill begins with dancer Chihiro Uchida performing with cellist Ng Pei Sian alone, and ends with rousing ensemble of musicians and dancers. Celebrated American choreographer Pam Tanowitz choreographs the middle piece
5. The Year Of No Return
By The Necessary Stage
TNS was supposed to stage this pan-Asian play about climate change last year, but the cancellation of the 2020 festival pushed it to this year. No matter. Playwright Haresh Sharma and Rody Vera have since reworked the text to include the coronavirus pandemic as well, making The Year Of No Return more relevant than ever.
6. A Thousand Ways Part II and III
By 600 Highwaymen
Last year, 600 Highwaymen staged the memorable A Thousand Ways Part I, in which you were guided to engage in an intimate sharing session with another audience member - a complete stranger - on the phone. This year, the company returns with new extensions of the micro-theatre concept: In Part II, you get to interact face-to-face with another audience member. In Part III, you meet a group of them. The works centre on our need for intimacy, connection and community.
7. Three Sisters
By Nine Years Theatre
Singapore's NYT has successfully adapted one canonical text after another. Now it's re-imagining Chekhov's Three Sisters, a profoundly bittersweet play about isolation and longing. What's unique this time is that it's collaborating with New York's famed experimental company SITI and Anne Bogart. And while the American actors cannot travel to Singapore, they're devising ways to bridge the gap.
8. As Far As Isolation Goes
By Tania El Khoury and Basel Zaraa
What is it like to be an asylum seeker? Tania El Khoury and Basel Zaraa have created a moving piece of microtheatre, in which you alone interact with an actor on Zoom to understand his plight. You need to have a black marker pen, paintbrush, water and tissues with you, because the actor will instruct you to draw images on your arm.
9. A Song For Louis
By various artists
Jazz drummer Louis Saliano was awarded the Cultural Medallion in 2018 for his five decades worth of contributions to Singapore music. Many jazz musicians have worked with him and been inspired by his sheer talent and generosity. Many are coming together for this one-night-only concert to perform for and with him.
10. The Commission
By Singapore Ricepertory Pangdewildium
Last year, the artistic directors of three theatre companies - Ivan Heng of Wild Rice, Adrian Pang of Pangdemonium, and Gaurav Kripalani of Singapore Repertory Theatre - teamed up for Ken Kwek's hilarious short film The Pitch, which poked fun at their rivalry, while highlighting the crushing impact of Covid-19 on the theatre scene. They're now back for The Commission, a "Singapore Ricepertory Pangdewildium" live play that once again satirises theatre-making in Singapore. Expect side-splitting humour.
11. The Invisible Opera
By Sophia Brous
Imagine being in a room where you're being observed every minute, though you do not know by whom. Through sound design and live vocals, The Invisible Opera amps up your low-grade paranoia to fever-pitch levels to highlight the issues of modern surveillance states. Indeed, the artists won't even be in Singapore because of travel restrictions - they'll be manipulating you from another city.
12. Sátántangó
By Béla Tarr
Based on a novel by Laszlo Krasznahorkai, this epic Hungarian film by Bela Tarr is a classic of arthouse cinema. It runs for 7½ hours, telling the story of a group of villagers struggling to pick up the pieces after the fall of Communism. The film is long, slow, bleak and not for the weak of spirit. But it may also be one of the most moving and powerful cinematic experiences you'll have in your life.
Originally published in The Business Times.