Cutting-edge festival

After a year on vacation, the grande dame of Singapore arts festivals has gone from paunchy to punchy - with a third of its shows sold out and praise from audience members bolstering its return.

While the line-up appeared to favour the cutting edge and avant garde over mainstream blockbusters, avid artsgoers and new audience members who attended the renamed and rebranded Singapore International Festival of Arts told Life! it was far from esoteric, even if some productions were more difficult to appreciate in terms of presentation.

The event came to a close on Sunday after an expanded six-week run and a leaner but focused menu of 12 international productions. This was akin to a selective multi-course degustation compared to the usual buffet of 25 to 40 events compressed into two weeks.

The nearly $7-million festival drew 22,000 people, including audiences at its pre-festival programme, The O.P.E.N., and sold 86 per cent of tickets in total.

The last time the festival was held in 2012, it had gross sales of 72 per cent. Its ticketed performances drew 16,000 and its free events, 220,000.

The reduction in scale is largely due to a shift in identity for the festival.

There were no concurrent free fringe-type events or a Festival Village this year, and productions were held in more boutique-type venues, such as the Victoria Theatre and the School of the Arts Studio Theatre.

The Esplanade Theatre, which seats 2,000, is closed for upgrading.

Prior to a review of the festival last year, which turned it into an independent entity, the former state-run Singapore Arts Festival had come under criticism for its lack of identity and how it seemed to have become increasingly irrelevant in a burgeoning scene of arts and cultural activities here.

There are now more than 3,000 performing arts productions a year and at least 80 festivals organised by independent presenters and groups, such as the Esplanade's Huayi - Chinese Festival of Arts and The Necessary Stage's M1 Singapore Fringe Festival.

Festival director Ong Keng Sen's stance was that the festival could not and should not replicate the work of others.

He believed the experimental and the crowd-pleasing could mix, and hoped to cater to an expanding group of arts lovers hungry for something beyond the mainstream.

The theatre director and Cultural Medallion recipient, 51, tells Life!: "I think it was a festival in which we had to pluck up our courage and jump into the unknown.

"I do feel gratified that there is an audience out there who really were engaged... That's where I'm taking heart, that we've managed to smoke these people out to come to the festival and that their curiosity and hunger for something different was satisifed."

Ong had selected a palette of classics-inspired but also spikily avant garde works for his first year at the helm of the 37-year-old festival, giving it the overarching theme of Legacy And The Expanded Classic to give it a certain cohesion.

He also wanted to hook first-time audience members through diverse topics that one might not immediately associate with the arts, such as bioethics.

Hence the decision to bookend the festival with the deeply challenging Michael Nyman opera with a scientific bent, Facing Goya; and The Wooster Group's controversy-laden and unabashedly postmodern Cry, Trojans!

But this seems to have worked. Four productions sold out this year: Japanese traditional arts showcase Sambaso; Amid The Clouds, a meditative piece focusing on two Iranian exiles; the Berliner Ensemble's exuberant and surreal Peter Pan directed by Robert Wilson; and a South Korean musical adaptation of classic Greek tragedy, The Chorus; Oedipus.

University graduate Delia Pak, 23, who caught two shows, loved Peter Pan, a visually spectacular production that carried the edge of the experimental due to its director Robert Wilson, known for his genre-bending and occasionally baffling work.

She said: "I enjoyed the production immensely. It was so surreal, I felt like I was in dreamland, or rather, Neverland. The cast, costumes, music by the live band, props and stage effects were amazing."

Public servant Joel Tee, 27, bought tickets to five shows even though he did not recognise many of the featured artists.

He says: "Part of the attraction for me was a bit of a fringe element to some of the works - they try to push conventions.

Some of the artists may not be as well known but I approached this in the sense of looking for something new."

There were productions, however, that did not do as well as the others. Listen To The 20th Century, a series of four concerts by the London Sinfonietta which took audiences on a journey through 20th-century music, had concert halls about two-thirds full.

Ong felt that music audiences here seemed "less heterogeneous" than their theatre counterparts, noting that audiences were more "resistant" to experimental new music, being more accustomed to the classics of the 17th to 19th century.

But a generally bolder approach to choosing shows to watch seems to be a reflection of the increasingly sophisticated tastes of the Singapore public, who are not always opting for more straightforward linear narratives or Broadway-type musicals.

Theatre director Alvin Tan, 51, founder of The Necessary Stage, felt the festival was "very well curated, with a sharper artistic focus that made it more relevant to the arts community".

He adds: "It had things that were adventurous, but somehow also had cachet with the arts community.

In the past, people always talked about how the festival should have something for everyone. But it was still not thematically tight, whereas this festival had a target audience for more experimental and more arty stuff which was accessible as well."

He cited arts giants such as Robert Wilson and The Wooster Group who would reel in those who had followed their works as well as new audiences drawn by their name and influence.

Not all was rosy at first for the festival. Its future was momentarily cast in shadow following a tumultuous public spat in March between Ms Lee Chor Lin, chief executive of Arts House Limited, which organises the festival, and Ong.

He had criticised the way she operated as CEO, compounded by disputes over the format of the festival brochures. This seems to have blown over as the festival proceeded smoothly.

During the course of the festival, which opened on Aug 12, there were also some questions raised over its format and programming.

A review of Sambaso by Chinese-language daily Lianhe Zaobao expressed the disgruntled opinion that the festival seemed to be heavy on "foreign traditional arts" and too light on the "local or Chinese traditional arts", and challenged the festival to take a stand on the matter. It added that Sambaso brought "a calm and forceful Eastern wind" into a festival that "seemed to favour Western work".

In response, Ong says: "One of the big questions is - what is the relevance of the festival today? For me, it may not be about providing a diet, not something along the cultures of Singapore, not so much along the lines of a mass spectacular. But maybe something more introspective, something quieter.

"It's like wanting to have a reading room, or a place where you can sit down and chat with a friend and not necessarily go to a very loud and noisy bar.

The festival allows that kind of possibility, a much more intimate space that audiences come to and they can find themselves in this material rather than just being dragged along by the public."

He feels such an approach sits well in a busy period that also saw the crowd-pleasing Singapore Night Festival - which drew 500,000 people over two weekends in August - and the Esplanade's Pesta Raya - Malay Festival of Arts competing for the attention of artsgoers.

In that vein, he does not think the Singapore International Festival of Arts should be duplicating the work of existing festivals.

He says: "I think there's something for everyone, but maybe the issue is that we have to continue to communicate with more Singaporeans to allow them to cross the border, to realise that, yes, art is there as a unifying factor."

All things considered, the festival seems to have been egalitarian and careful to check the boxes across genres (dance, theatre, performance art, music), mixing the traditional with the cutting edge.

It included countries whose work does not frequent Singapore as often, such as Belgium, South Africa and Iran, with big names (Berliner Ensemble and The Wooster Group) featured alongside smaller outfits and less familiar artists.

It also made sure to give the marginalised a voice, such as those with mental disabilities, the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community and political asylum seekers.

Regular festivalgoer Jean Tsai, in her 50s, who saw 10 out of the 12 shows this year, felt "the dance category offered fewer choices than in the past and the works were not as spectacular".

But the marketing consultant felt the curatorial direction was strong: "The selection of performances brought us back to the earlier years of the festival, which put on cutting-edge works by excellent companies. We're getting, for example, one of the biggies of theatre, The Wooster Group, which was never seen here before."

New York-based The Wooster Group's Cry, Trojans! was one of several works that severely divided audience members. Dozens walked out during intermissions, while others stayed to wrestle with its content.

Festival opener Facing Goya, which Ong directed, was also a polarising work.

"The less said, the better," the Wall Street Journal wrote after the opera's Spoleto Festival debut, adding that the text was "set to stupefyingly banal music that sounded like bad Philip Glass and came to the far-from-original conclusion that the art gene cannot and should not be identified, quantified or reproduced".

The Financial Times, however, which attended the show at the Victoria Theatre, heaped high praise on the production in a five-star review, declaring that the opera "has found an entirely new level of resonance".

But even if audiences and critics differed over the presentation of a work, there was no doubt that production standards were high.

Performing arts academic Charlene Rajendran, 50, caught 11 of the 12 productions and says: "The quality of the shows was good. Even if I didn't like everything I saw, they were of high professional standard and had an interesting approach to art-making."

The revamped festival's lengthier six-week run prompted remarks from some that the festival buzz had been dissipated; the creation of a Festival Village or fringe-type events running concurrently in previous years had given the festival a more obvious downtown presence.

But there were others who appreciated the calmer pace of the festival, which gave them the space to watch multiple productions without missing out on others.

Ong says he was looking for a different festival model that would allow busy Singaporeans to carve out time for shows.

He says: "In many older festivals that I attended, many friends would say, 'there are so many things I had to miss because I just couldn't get there'. I know that the work space of Singaporean life is very intense."

Next year, audiences' cravings for local and South-east Asian work will be satisfied with a festival edition dedicated to "Post-Empire", taking note of Singapore's former status as a British colony and dovetailing with the country's Golden Jubilee celebrations.

Ong has commissioned at least 12 productions, with about $2.5 million disbursed on home-grown work.

Those picked include dance pioneers Goh Lay Kuan and Santha Bhaskar's Bhaskars Arts Academy; comedian Kumar; the T'ang Quartet; theatre groups Cake Theatrical Productions, Teater Ekamatra, Wild Rice and Drama Box, as well as Lasalle College of the Arts, whose students will work with Wang Chong, artistic director of Beijing experimental theatre group Theatre du Reve Experimental.

Ong's own six-hour durational performance, titled The Singaporeans, a sprawling installation featuring 30 new Singapore citizens, will be part of the festival too.

Putting his own work in, he says, is similar to many European festival models such as Germany's Ruhrtriennale or France's Avignon Festival, where festival directors are often arts practitioners as well.

He says: "For me, it's a good move to move towards that kind of transparency. You put yourself on the same line as all the other artists that you're curating.

"Once you put yourself in the mix, it also means that you are actually accountable. And you start to express with passion... and the passion starts to emerge in the season itself as well."

But he is quick to shift the focus away from himself, saying of this year's festival: "My main intention is to make art a part of everyday life for Singaporeans. We brought in the pinnacle of international art and whether you like or dislike it, you know you're watching different events of high quality."

corriet@sph.com.sg

This article was first published on Sept 23, 2014.
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