By Kunchur Bharat (26A01B)

Singapore International Festival of the Arts, lovingly acronymised as SIFA, will be returning to Singapore from 15–30 May. Raffles Press was grateful to receive an invitation to the programme reveal, held at the Arts House at the Old Parliament Building. 

Festival Vision and Theme

The theme for this year’s edition of SIFA is “Let’s Play!” coined by Festival Director Chong Tze-Chien. This will be the first edition of SIFA in his 3-year tenure as he takes over the reins from Natalie Hennedige. 

For Chong Tze-Chien, play functions on many levels. And throughout the 3 editions of SIFA that Chong will helm, guided by this theme, he seeks to unpack its layers year by year. During our brief conversation, he revealed that the notion that play is important to art did not originate with him. He credits this to Singapore theatre legend, the late Kuo Pao Kun: 

“The idea of it came many, many years ago, when the late Mr Kuo Pao Kun said that as artists, we need to learn how to play […] You need to make art by first being mischievous and being curious, and hence the word ‘Play’.”

Festival Director Chong Tze-Chien 

In line with Chong’s commitment to play, all attendees at the reveal were gifted a Rubik’s Cube emblazoned with SIFA’s letterhead. 

Act I

“Because I’m a storyteller, I like to tell this in 3 acts.” 

Festival Director Chong Tze-Chien

Act I took place in the Chamber at the Arts House, a familiar site for those who frequent the Singapore Writers’ Festival. 

Chong, alongside emcees Jo Tan and Danny Yeo, explained that SIFA 2026 would be based on 5 festival pillars: Festival Village, Festival Stage, Festival Play!ground, Festival House, and Festival Nites. 

While the broad theme for the next 3 editions of SIFA is “Let’s Play!”, the focus for 2026 is legacy. To this end, the return of the Festival Village is an homage to the festival spirit of the 1990s and early 2000s that Chong wishes to revive as part of his sprawling 3-year vision. It will comprise indoor and outdoor performances, interactive installations, and communal engagement, with 95% of offerings being free. Paid events are also SG Culture Pass eligible. 

As the name suggests, the Festival Stage encompasses the array of performances that are on offer at SIFA 2026. From plays performed by local companies and international troupes to abstract dance works, SIFA functions as a confluence of homegrown and local artistry. 

Some notable performances mentioned were Tempo by Kalle Nio and Fernando Melo, a dance and illusion-based performance art in which the senses are deceived, gravity is defied, and the audience is compelled to ruminate over time’s mystical elasticity. Theatre heads can look forward to a performance of Shakespeare’s Hamlet by the Peruvian theatre company Teatro La Plaza with a cast composed entirely of actors with Down Syndrome. Chong is especially proud to present inclusive theatre at SIFA 2026, and fans of Hamlet will appreciate how the performance leverages Shakespeare’s work of existential tragedy to discuss the pains that those with Down Syndrome experience as they attempt to find their place in society. 

Festival Stage and Festival Village are designed to work together to explore the emotional and intellectual core of the festival, which in this case is “Legacy”. The programming’s DNA is to get people to have conversations with each other, and “Let’s Play!” encapsulates this invitation to collaborate and experience the arts together. The spontaneity that the Festival Village offers, where participants can show up without a planned itinerary and discover the arts in an organic manner, is essential to Chong’s festival vision.

SIFA, however, is anchored by the physical space of the Festival House, which is the Arts House. Programmes to look forward to include The Lighthouse by Patch Theatre (Australia), which beckons children and children-at-heart to explore the fascinating qualities of light, sound, perspective and reflection. The rooms of the Art House will be open and connected for participants to explore across venues, a first for a venue where events typically lean more “proper”. Additionally, Past, Present, and Future, which comprises talks by veteran artists in Singapore and film screenings from legendary Singaporean filmmakers — such as the late Kuo Pao Kun — further pushes Singaporeans to engage with our artistic legacy. This is made more significant by the historic location. 

 Act II

Act II brought us out of our comfortable chairs in the chamber into the lobby of the Victoria Concert Hall (VCH). Upon entry, a large black curtain was mysteriously draped across the Level 2 balcony of the hall.

With the mystery of the curtain still hanging in the air, Act II reminded us that the lifeblood of SIFA, despite the vast array of international offerings, is still local productions. But first, a trip down memory lane. Attendees were surprised with an original acapella rap performance by Krish Natarajan, while Jo Tan ad-libbed from the balcony. 

The segment at the VCH lobby also foregrounded two local works that would be part of the Festival Stage: Salesman之死 by Jeremy Tiang and Danny Yeo, and Strangely Familiar by T.H.E Dance Company. 

Those familiar with Jeremy Tiang may know him for his debut novel, State of Emergency, which won the 2018 Singapore Literature Prize for English fiction. 

Salesman之死 was inspired by Arthur Miller’s 1983 visit to Beijing to direct his play, Death of A Salesman, with an all-Chinese cast despite not speaking any Mandarin himself. In the play, a young university professor is summoned to the theatre to interpret for Arthur Miller, who will soon arrive to direct his iconic play — but in Mandarin. Meanwhile, the Chinese ensemble has never met a “salesman” at all. Salesman之死 is a comical tale of the chaos of theatremaking and cultural confusion. 

Strangely Familiar is an atypical dance performance in which five dancers encounter a shifting digital being that exists in the boundary between human instinct and invention. The encounter eventually invites us to reflect on healing and coexisting with the things that humankind creates.

Act II ended with resolving the mystery of the curtain, as it fell to reveal the Festival Village map. 

Amidst rumbles of applause, we were ushered out of the VCH for the third and final act. 

Act III

“Behind almost every successful Singapore arts initiative is a woman.” 

Danny Yeo

For Act III, we were moved from the VCH lobby to the Empress Lawn, behind the statue of Stamford Raffles that overlooks the lawn. The woman that he was referencing? Legendary artist and organiser of the third incarnation of the Singapore Festival Arts (the precursor to SIFA) in 1982, Juliana Lim. 

On a platform behind the statue, she regaled us with a story about how they had gone about organising SFA 1982. 

“When ticket sales started one morning, a queue longer than what you see at Apple launches today snaked from the lobby, into the porch, around the corner, wrapping the entire building.”

Juliana Lim, reminiscing about SFA ‘82

1982 marked an unequivocal turning point for SFA. They had brought the arts scene in Singapore to international stature by creating a 10-day festival with 18 local and international performing groups—an event of unprecedented scale. 

Image Credits: https://c42-archive-staging-files-acl.s3.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/public/2021-05/19821210-moc-sin-pg1.pdf

For art workers then, it was clear that the festival had “fired the public imagination” and “answered a dominant thirst for new arts experiences”. More than 40 years later, some things still hold: a festival has no meaning unless the community owns it. And according to Juliana, the confidence that any of us can see an amazing show, indoors or outdoors, is what turns a mere series of shows into a national cultural memory. She ended her speech by revealing the 1982 slogan, which continues to live on in the hearts of local artists: “It’s your show, be in it.” 

Taking over from her, Yeo explained how the space of the Empress Lawn will extend to Anderson Bridge and the Esplanade as a location for the community to come together. This ties in seamlessly with the final festival pillars: Festival Nites and Festival Play!ground. As part of the complete festival experience that Chong envisions, the festivities will continue into the night, designed to appeal to a younger audience and create an arts-centric nightlife anchored by the space of the Civics District. With performances tearing throught the night and one scheduled at the crack of dawn, the festive spirit is set to run around the clock. Festival Play!ground provides an opposite but complementary effect. It will open the Festival Village in the first week and will then turn into a roving arts experience in Punggol (coincidentally, where Chong is a resident!). 

Epilogue

I was fortunate enough to catch Chong before the press and other guests got to him to probe further on the concept of the Festival Play!ground. A criticism commonly levied against Singapore’s Arts scene is its exclusivity; unless you have had the privilege of being brought up in an environment in which you have been exposed to the arts at a young age or your educational background has provided you with enough knowledge of the Singaporean art scene, those that tend to frequent events like SIFA, or even SWF, tend to already be those “in the know”. The arts are also geographically locked in the city centre, away from the heartlands, and hence, the layman — the implicit message is that while other forms of entertainment make themselves readily available, the Arts (with a capital A) require you to bring yourself to them. 

This criticism is not lost on those driving our Arts scene. Bridging this gap was central to Chong’s festival vision for 2027 and 2028, especially as SIFA 2027 would be its 50th Anniversary, and hence form what he calls “the anniversary arc”. He explained that the idea for it was also inspired by a past pre-festival activity known as the Festival Fringe. As part of Festival Fringe, different art communities were activated in spaces around Singapore, such as Raffles Shopping Centre. The most recent example was the SIFA Pavilion at Bedok Town Square last year. Ultimately, Festival Play!ground functions as a physical affirmation of the fact that the Arts do not just exist around the illustrious city centre, but, really, are the most well-placed in our heartland estates. 

While he could not give away too much about the shape that SIFA will take for the coming 2 years, we do know that the anniversary arc will pick up from Legacy to explore Roots (2027) and Renaissance (2028), hinting at an islandwide expansion of SIFA’s programming. 

In the same vein, I ended our interaction by asking him how Singaporeans can engage with the arts in our day-to-day lives. He had this to say: 

“They [Singaporeans] always think about art as being a separate part of their lives […], but if you think about [the] Arts as cultural expression, then you can’t tear it and divorce it from our everyday lives.”

SIFA 2026 seeks to embody the notion that “it’s not work, and then play after work”, as Chong commented, but that work, play, and the arts can coexist. And as important as it is to bring oneself to the arts, sometimes the arts need to be brought to you. 

SIFA 2026 will take place from 15th to 30th May. Tickets and more information can be found here.