A highlight of Sifa is the Sing Song Social Club, a community choir where many come to express themselves in harmony with others (All photos: Sifa)
Fresh from its national elections held but a week ago, the island country down south sets upon its 60th year (SG60) while ushering in the 2025 Singapore International Festival of Arts (Sifa).
Adopting the theme “More Than Ever”, it looks avowedly to home, with a commission of 15 principal local productions and works that explore the complexities of nation, history, people, local geography and space. The festival commenced in 1977 as the Singapore Arts Festival with the purpose of celebrating the arts and commemorating the city state’s diverse communities and cultures.
Since inception, the festival (renamed the Singapore International Festival of Arts in 2012) has emerged as a principal regional and international event for the arts. Pledging to be a platform for the development and nurturing of culture and creativity from Singapore, it has also served as a centre for leading international artistes in the region.
In the 1990s, such figures as the Indian classical instrumentalists Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan; the bold, experimental classical ensemble The Kronos Quartet; and the venerated South African playwright Athol Fugard made the Singapore festival their Southeast Asian destination. It also nurtured cross-border work, with the first staging of A Samad Said’s Lantai T Pinkie, a commemoration of his early days in journalism in Singapore and the cabaret age of the 1950s. The play, performed in its entirety in Malay, was staged by Singapore’s renowned Teater Kami.
Coinciding with SG60, the festival explores the complex, often paradoxical, idea of nation, culture and community with a statement that reads: “This year’s theme, More Than Ever, celebrates the bold and dynamic growth of Singapore’s arts scene as the nation marks its 60th anniversary. With a record number of commissioned works by local artists, it reimagines how art is experienced. Including free performances in public spaces like the SIFA Pavilion at Bedok Town Square and Little SIFA at Empress Lawn, the festival showcases the resilience and innovation of Singapore’s creative community.”
The idea of community is duly impressed in this year’s event inauguration with a free outdoor event in the Bedok Town Square, one of Singapore’s most historical districts. Sifa, organised by Arts House Limited will impress the multidisciplinary. Director Natalie Hennedig, for whom this will be the last festival before she steps down from her role, tells Singapore’s Business Times: “Sometimes, words are not enough; words alone cannot be trusted. Multidisciplinary forms communicate these complexities more effectively. They open deeper emotional and intellectual spaces for audiences.”
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Among the stagings that impresses this writer most is Lear — a non-verbal rendition of Shakespeare’s searing play staged as a physical performance by deaf (the artist rejects the term “hearing impaired”) Singaporean artist Ramesh Meyyapan, who is based in Glasgow.
Perhaps one of the provocative productions is Umbilical, an “immersive experience” by artists Rizman Putra, Zul Mahmood and thesupersystem. “Umbilical explores the social and emotional ripples resulting from division and transformation, drawing poignant parallels with the looming uncertainty experienced by the people who lived through the separation of Singapore from Malaysia in 1965,” says the artists’ statement. “A dynamic blend of movement, music, visual projections and AI integration, Umbilical is an immersive performance that delves into the intricate layers of identity, belonging and relationships. Here, the umbilical cord serves as an evocative metaphor and symbolic bridge between water and land, people and places, and past and present.”
The festival explores, as always, the multilingual nature of Singaporean society with productions in Mandarin and other languages. It pushes further frontiers with a puppet production of George Orwell’s Animal Farm by Singapore’s The Finger Players and, further resonating SG60, explores aspects of local history and community experience in The Sea and The Neighbourhood — a multidisciplinary work inspired by Bedok’s coastal heritage, neighbourhood charm and the modernity of its inhabitants.
Colony — A True Colors Project extends the collaborative and multidisciplinary nature of the productions, and the festival, as a “raw, breathtaking collision of dance, music, film and story”.
International artists, notably from the US, Lebanon and especially Chile (Manuela Infante’s Vampyr — a mockumentary in which stubborn shapeshifting South American vampires struggle to live), provide an edge to the 2025 event’s reach for the multidimensional and multidiscipline.
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Meanwhile, the spirit of public engagement is perhaps best displayed in the Sifa Pavilion, which pledges to expand “notions of community through the performing arts”.
The festival statement says: “Imagined as a transient arts space charged with multidisciplinary artistic expression and public engagement, the pavilion lends powerful new dimension to the festival’s relationship with the shared public environ — the common space where our plural narratives co-exist. A colossal installation by visual artist Wang Ruobing doubles as a performance stage becoming the visual icon of the festival’s first pavilion, an environment built to engender collaboration and gathering through the conduit of performance.”
Perhaps at no other time has Sifa been so declarative about its desire to emerge from and aspire to a spirit of community — affirming, in this year of SG60, the “resilience” of not just the Singaporean artist but its community itself.
The Singapore International Festival of Arts 2025 starts from May 16 to June 1. Visit sifa.sg for the full calendar.
This article first appeared on May 12, 2025 in The Edge Malaysia.
