SINGAPORE: At this year’s Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA), audiences can expect to see comics come to life before their eyes, take part in a movie, and even cook their own dishes.
This year’s edition will run from June 28 to Sept 9. Among the highlights is Singaporean artist Sonny Liew’s first foray into live performance. The creator of the acclaimed graphic novel The Art Of Charlie Chan Hock Chye will be drawing his latest work in front of an audience.
As part of the festival, two noted Southeast Asian filmmakers will also be shooting films, where audiences are expected to participate.
Singaporean director K Rajagopal is making an hour-long film based on a wedding scene from local author Balli Kaur Jaswal’s novel Inheritance, and ticket-holders play the role of wedding guests.
Meanwhile, Filipino director Lav Diaz will also be shooting his latest film in Singapore, where one gets to go on-set to see him at work.
Elsewhere, festival goers can drop by the homes of 18 households to participate in cooking a dish and bond over food.
The Art Of Charlie Chan Hock Chye's creator Sonny Liew will find himself the centre of attraction once more when he does a live drawing performance at SIFA 2017. (Photo: Epigram Books)
ENCHANTED OVER COMICS, FILMS AND FOOD
Revolving around the theme of “Enchantment”, the festival will feature a total of 15 commissions focusing on Singapore artists and local collaborations with international artists, and seven international productions. The full lineup will be revealed in the coming months.
As the fourth and final instalment under the leadership of theatre director Ong Keng Sen, organisers have decided to combine SIFA and its pre-festival experimental series The OPEN into one seamless experience. Previously, there was a one-month gap between the two events.
“Since it’s the team’s last year, we decided to push through and fill the gap with something interesting, the last weekend of The OPEN will join up with SIFA,” said Ong.
While there will be more conventional shows announced later on, the initial lineup sneak peek reveals an inter-disciplinary slant, with literature, film, graphic arts and food figuring prominently.
Singaporean filmmaker K Rajagopal will be making a film based on Balli Kaur Jaswal's novel Inheritance for SIFA 2017. Audiences get to participate in the filming as wedding guests. (Photo: Akanga Film Asia website)
While details of Sonny Liew’s performance are still being finalised, the artist said it will “involve exploring the creative process of coming up with a comic story”. Ong revealed it will be a brand new work and the artist will be drawing onstage. “It will be going back to the bare bones basics of what graphic novels are, and the idea of characters coming alive through live drawing and maybe even voices.”
Meanwhile, K Rajagopal’s film will be shot over one weekend, where participants play the role of guests at a Punjabi wedding event taken from the novel Inheritance. The final film will then make its premiere on the final night of SIFA.
The festival’s other film-themed programme involves witnessing acclaimed director Lav Diaz shoot his latest film in Singapore. Titled Henrico’s Farm, the movie looks at domestic workers serving a different kind of life sentence away from home. SIFA audiences will be able to go on-set as well as learn more about Diaz's films from the director himself.
Award-winning Filipino director Lav Diaz will be in town during SIFA 2017 to do a film - and you're invited to watch him in action. (Photo: AFP/Tiziana Fabi)
“We’re trying unusual performances this year and looking at crossing film and performance,” said Ong. “The only way to bring the audience into the live performance of film is to bring them into the filming process, by either watching or being filmed. One of the things we have focused on is having a different audience relationship with the works - we’re looking a lot at intimate works.”
And there’s no space more intimate than a person’s kitchen. An event called Open Kitchen will involve participants working with real-life home cooks to create a dish. The event is inspired by the Make Food, Not War movement by Lebanese food activist Kamal Mouzawak, who will also be in town to whip up his own dish.
RESPONDING TO THE TIMES
With his tenure as SIFA director nearing its end, Ong describes it as a “good run. But the important thing to do is wrap it up in a way that makes sense, and that’s why we very much wanted to talk a bit about what’s affecting the live arts right now.”
While arts festival line-ups are normally finalised a year or two in advance, Ong revealed that they have had to “recalibrate” the 2017 edition in response to international and local events that took place last year.
The 2017 edition of SIFA will be the fourth and last one for festival director Ong Keng Sen (Photo: Jeannie Ho)
“Our world has changed. It’s become a world of populism. Brexit happened, Trump happened, the immigration ban in the US happened,” said Ong. He also pointed to a “very quiet culture war” that he said was taking place in Singapore, citing the controversy surrounding some of the shows at last year’s SIFA and M1 Singapore Fringe Festival. Two shows from the latter were dropped after complaints from certain sectors of the public.
According to Ong, at least half of the events in the SIFA 2017 lineup was “rebooted” after “very intense discussions” during the past three months.
One of the new performances that eventually emerged was Open Parliament. The festival has commissioned three Singaporean playwrights to each write an act of a play, which will be read at the parliamentary chamber at the Arts House. Members of the general public will then serve as public jurors who will offer their opinions on whether or not the plays should then be hypothetically staged.
“The audiences will go in not just to hear the play but also to hear the voices of these members of the public. It’s a space of fiction where we enact a parliament of voices of the public,” said Ong.
The festival is currently holding an open-call for volunteers until March 21.
“Open Parliament was completely conceived after Trump and the Fringe Festival, because Singapore is also suffering from populism. We have to reflect a little bit about the confusion in Singapore relating to performances of theatre in particular. SIFA as a national performing arts festival has a responsibility to discuss this,” said Ong.
The Chamber at The Arts House will be transformed into a fictional parliament for SIFA 2017'S Open Parliament event. (Photo: Arts House Ltd)