SINGAPORE – Natalie Hennedige, whose three-year stint as festival director of the Singapore International Festival of Arts (Sifa) was meant to conclude in 2024, will extend her tenure to 2025.
In a Zoom interview with The Straits Times, the 49-year-old says she will present a new theme for Sifa 2025, which coincides with the 60th year of Singapore’s independence.
While the theme has not been set, she is thinking about “capturing what needs to be said now in relation to celebration” and asking: “How do we celebrate the moment in spite of the difficulties in the global climate?”
For her first two editions of the multidisciplinary festival, Hennedige programmed works under the thematic arc of The Anatomy Of Performance, which explored the elements behind performance with the subtitles Ritual and Some People.
The arc will be completed in 2024 with the subtitle They Declare. Where past editions explored how people observe ceremonies and experience the world respectively, this edition is about “decentring the human”.
The festival, which runs from May 17 to June 2, features five commissions and seven international presentations. Early-bird tickets for the festival, organised by Arts House Limited and commissioned by the National Arts Council, are on sale.
Among the commissioned works which deal with ecology are home-grown experimental music stalwarts The Observatory’s Refuge, a live performance project inspired by the subterranean world of caves in Ipoh and Sarawak, and Suara / Oro Rua, a collaboration between Singaporean music producer Safuan Johari and Maori choreographer Eddie Elliott engaging with the sounds of a post-anthropocentric future.
“These prescient indigenous voices are leading us through the quandary of environmental chaos,” Hennedige says of Suara / Oro Rua, a concert and a dance performance titled after the Malay word for “voice” or “sound” and the Maori word for “to resonate”.
The other non-human thread in the line-up is artificial intelligence, which Hennedige has continually explored.
In 2024, artist Genevieve Chua has been commissioned to present Wilful Machine – a playful show with two performers and 14 sculptures that asks what it means to be human in a world of algorithms.
A new platform, Little Sifa, is aimed at children aged seven to 12 and will offer activities for young ones.
Expect a family day out in Dhoby Ghaut, where you can roam an old-school fairground on Cathay Green and interact with Spanish company Antigua i Barbuda’s 5m-tall ballerina in the Asian premiere of The Dancer’s Fair.
Across the street, puppet show Leonardo! A Wonderful Show About A Terrible Monster by Emmy-winning performance collective Manual Cinema will play at the School of the Arts Drama Theatre for three days.
Hennedige says of Little Sifa: “It’s something that we’re exploring with an intent to continue to expand in 2025 and further down for the festival.”
Those looking for home-grown theatre shows can expect a blockbuster collaboration in The Prose And The Passion. The festival commission takes inspiration from the books, biography and letters of English novelist E.M. Forster as 2024 marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of his classic novel A Passage To India.
The play is directed by Chong Tze Chien, Young Artist Award recipient and a core member of The Finger Players, and written by Haresh Sharma, a Cultural Medallion recipient who is resident playwright of The Necessary Stage.
Hennedige characterises the pairing as “slightly unexpected” because of their different affiliations.
Sifa will also unveil Tomorrow And Tomorrow, a new platform which invites Singapore theatre companies to showcase works-in-progress at Stamford Arts Centre. Hennedige is tight-lipped about this programme.
When asked about the place of works-in-progress at an international festival which usually presents glossy finished productions, she says: “These days, international programmers and festivals are coming in at nascent stages of ideas. Gone are the days when international festivals are interested only in tried and tested work.”
On what she has learnt from directing Sifa, Hennedige repeats a mantra that has been with her from the start: “You have to create balance without losing essential identity.”
Adding that she is more confident about handling the balance between different interests in the festivals, she says audiences will “see shifts” in the festival “without losing some of its edge”.
Book it/Singapore International Festival of Arts 2024
Where: Various venues
When: May 17 to June 2
Admission: Free; ticketed ones from $38. Early-bird tickets with up to 15 per cent discount are on sale till March 31. Tickets for Tomorrow And Tomorrow will be released at a later date
Info: sifa.sg
