What To Catch At Singapore International Festival of Arts 2016
PUBLISHED August 4th, 2016 09:06 am | UPDATED June 3rd, 2020 12:16 am
Calling all arts lovers! For one entire month each year, the Singapore International Festival of Arts 2016 (SIFA) brings together the best of local and international artists to celebrate the performing arts. From 11 August to 17 September 2016, expect 20 shows that run the gamut across theatre, dance, and music.
Curated according to the theme of Potentialities, 15 out of 20 shows featured this time round are new creations, with the spotlight put on our foreign friends (we saw a local centric lineup in last year with SG50). With so many inspiring shows for the choosing, we figure we’d pick out what we’re looking forward to seeing this year:
Hamlet/College
Legendary Canadian stage director Robert Lepage presents Hamlet/Collage, a mega high-tech, high-energy performance designed for only one actor: Russia’s national artist Evgeny Mironov. Employing video mapping technology, he will perform inside a suspended open-sided cube, playing different characters in a rendition of Shakespeare that’s totally original, imaginative, and inspiring.
Lepage creates a tragedy of the consciousness in this prison of the mind – Mironov deftly walks, runs, leaps, and reposes on its walls, floors and ceiling, playing everyone from Ophelia to Polonius in a mental asylum, a library, the ramparts, and even a bubbling pond. This is the Bard like you’ve never seen before.
When: 12 & 13 August 2016
Where: Drama Centre Theatre
Cost: $40, $60, $80
Everything By My Side
Climb into bed and listen to Argentinian director Fernando Rubio’s Everything By My Side. Comprising 10 female actors, the work literally involves lying next to the actors in this intense performance piece – a deeply intimate and personal moment with someone you may never meet again.
Rubio’s work was born after a dream as he remembers a long-lost childhood story that had been forgotten for 25 years, and has been performed in different public spaces all over the world, including Argentina, Brazil, Croatia, and Spain – whether on a sunny pier, amidst a shady park, floating on a pond, and now in an art gallery.
When: 12 to 14 August 2016
Where: National Gallery Singapore
Cost: $10 (Click here to register for your performance)
I Am LGB
The scene: You are a performance artist. It is the 24th of January 1994. You teach contemporary art at a public university. One day, you receive an anonymous letter from your students. The letter calls for a boycott of your classes. “If we are taught by him next year, we will not go to his classes. His teaching is too political and is about sensitive issues. He teaches performance art, which is now forbidden in Singapore, and we are quite right not to go.”
Led by two of the most innovative contemporary performance artists – Loo Zihan and Ray Langenbach, I Am LGB melds identity politics and art in a provocative and critical exploration of a State.
When: 18 to 20 August 2016
Where: 72-13
Cost: $25
Five Easy Pieces
Featuring seven young performers, Swiss Director Milo Rau’s Five Easy Pieces is a masterful marriage of documentary and theatre, looking at controversial themes through the eyes of children to help us understand ourselves in the process. Based on a real-life story of a paedophile in Belgium, the emotionally powerful drama employs all of Rau’s past approaches: the scenic form of reenactments; the focus on social taboos and traumas; and the search for what is most human in a narrative.
When: 18 to 20 August 2016
Where: Victoria Theatre
Cost: $30, $45, $60
The Last Bull: A Life In Flamenco
An endeavour of love by Checkpoint Theatre, The Last Bull: A Life In Flamenco is an extraordinary story between one man and the art of flamenco. Written by Huzir Sulaiman and directed by Claire Wong, the show explores Antonio Vargas’ life story: from the five year old boy stumbling across his aunt dancing flamenco to emerging as one of the world’s most enchanting flamenco dances.
Spontaneous, fiery, and beautiful. Seductive and heartbreaking. That’s the wonderful journey of discovery and adventure for the 75-year-old dancer, who continues to dance in Singapore today. And yes, the master himself will be on stage to showcase his electrifying and mesmerising flamenco dance.
When: 25 to 27 August 2016
Where: SOTA Drama Theatre
Cost: $35, $45
Ron Arad’s 720°
This video installation by designer extraordinaire Ron Arad is an unforgettable sight. Made up of 5600 silicon cords totalling over a staggering 37km in length, 720° makes a perfect circle of 18 metres in diameter, serving as an interactive video screen for both sides of the 360-degree stage. More than just a monumental visual display, videos by various artists, including Singaporean performance maker Brian Gothong Tan, will be projected at the beautiful Gardens by the Bay. Come for the spectacle, stay for the art!
When: 2 to 17 September 2016
Where: The Meadow @ Gardens by the Bay
Cost: Free! (Click here for each night’s video programme)
Sandaime Richard
400 years after the death of the iconic playwright William Shakespeare, it’s still clear that his works remain inexhaustible. In this witty satire, Shakespeare is put on trial by none other than the Maachan of Venice for falsifying history and defaming Richard Sandaime, the Grand Master of Ikebana. Maachan, who has forever been condemned by the writing of Shakespeare, pits wits against the writer. Who will win?
With this 25-year-old work written by playwright Hideki Noda, Ong Keng Sen creates a comic extravaganza by juxtaposing Asian traditions with absorbing video, fashion, and club music. In comic turn after comic turn, SIFA Festival Director Ong Keng Sen casts the kabuki onnagata (female impersonator) Kazutaro Nakamura as Richard Sandaime, as well as homegrown actress Janice Koh, top Indonesian film actress Jajang C. Noer along with an extraordinary international cast.
When: 8 to 10 September 2016
Where: Victoria Theatre
Cost: $30, $45, $60
Singapore International Festival of Arts is running from 11 August to 17 September 2016 at various locations around Singapore. For the full programme line-up, please click here.
This article is sponsored by the Arts House Limited.
Top Image: Asa Bruno
