★★★★★ Theatre Review: Hedda Gabler by National Theater Company of Korea (SIFA 2026)
Lee Hyeyoung delivers a masterclass performance in Park Jung-hee’s hypnotic, sexually charged reimagining of Ibsen’s classic, now transformed into a suffocating psychological thriller of a K-drama. Before we see anything in the National Theater Company of Korea’s Hedda Gabler, we hear a gunshot. It tears through the darkness with such violence that the audience visibly jolts. And from that very first moment, director Park Jung-hee … Continue reading ★★★★★ Theatre Review: Hedda Gabler by National Theater Company of Korea (SIFA 2026)
★★★☆☆ Dance Review: Strangely Familiar《熟悉的陌生》 by T.H.E Dance Company (SIFA 2026)
T.H.E toes the line between human and machine in this visually ambitious production, occasionally overwhelmed by technology superseding the very humanity it seeks to explore. Playing as part of the 2026 Singapore International Festival of Arts, before T.H.E Dance Company’s Strangely Familiar even begins, the world of the performance is already quietly consuming us. The soundscape hums through the theatre with an eerie, dystopian distance, … Continue reading ★★★☆☆ Dance Review: Strangely Familiar《熟悉的陌生》 by T.H.E Dance Company (SIFA 2026)
Books: Raphaël Millet’s ‘Singapore – A Cinematic Portrait’ reimagines 125 years of life on screen
What does a city look like when you trace it not through maps or monuments, but through cinema? A new publication from the Asian Film Archive and film scholar Raphaël Millet offers a striking answer: Singapore, reframed as a living, evolving character across more than a century of film. Launched on 21 May 2026 at Oldham Theatre, Singapore: A Cinematic Portrait is a richly illustrated … Continue reading Books: Raphaël Millet’s ‘Singapore – A Cinematic Portrait’ reimagines 125 years of life on screen
Flipside 2026: An Interview with Dwayne Lau on rolling with the punches with ‘Snakes and Ladders!’
For actor and musical theatre performer Dwayne Lau, his original work Snakes & Ladders! is a way of re-living, re-framing, and re-negotiating the unpredictable shape of a life that has unfolded very much like the board game at its centre. What began as a 40-minute showcase at the Esplanade Concourse has now grown into a full 90-minute theatrical experience a year later. But for Dwayne, … Continue reading Flipside 2026: An Interview with Dwayne Lau on rolling with the punches with ‘Snakes and Ladders!’
SIFA 2026: Lush Life – An interview with director Ong Keng Sen on making art out of life and legacy
Before streaming platforms, before bedroom recordings, and before Singapore had any real infrastructure for popular music, there were artists like Jacintha Abisheganaden and Dick Lee, figures who carved out creative lives with few precedents and even fewer guarantees. Their songs, relationships and artistic decisions did not just define their own careers; they helped shape what it meant to be a musician in Singapore at all. … Continue reading SIFA 2026: Lush Life – An interview with director Ong Keng Sen on making art out of life and legacy
SIFA 2026: Planet [wanderer] – An interview with choreographer Damien Jalet and scenographer Kohei Nawa in search of the body’s place in the world
Strange and bewitching, Planet [wanderer] is a rare theatre production that unfolds like a dream one cannot quite hold onto. Created by choreographer Damien Jalet and visual artist Kohei Nawa, the work brings eight dancers into a shifting terrain of textures and matter, where bodies bend, sway, and reorganise themselves like reeds in the wind, caught in a fragile balance between “power and vulnerability, harmony … Continue reading SIFA 2026: Planet [wanderer] – An interview with choreographer Damien Jalet and scenographer Kohei Nawa in search of the body’s place in the world
SIFA 2026: Hedda Gabler – An interview with director Park Jung Hee on Henrik Ibsen’s universal cultural resonance
Few characters in modern theatre are as enduringly enigmatic as Hedda Gabler, a figure suspended between control and chaos, desire and restraint. In this latest staging by Park Jung-hee, Artistic Director of the National Theater Company of Korea, the question is not how to modernise Hedda Gabler, but how to encounter it anew. Rather than imposing a contemporary veneer, Park approaches the work as a … Continue reading SIFA 2026: Hedda Gabler – An interview with director Park Jung Hee on Henrik Ibsen’s universal cultural resonance
★★★★★ Theatre Review: Last Rites by Liu Xiaoyi / Emergency Stairs (SIFA 2026)
Five masters of performance confront mortality and artistic legacy in Liu Xiaoyi’s ambitious, cathartic cross-border work. What has always made theatre so beautiful is its temporality. Every performance exists only once; even repeated over multiple nights, no show will ever look or feel exactly the same again. It is fragile, fleeting, and alive precisely because it disappears the moment it is completed. By extension, the … Continue reading ★★★★★ Theatre Review: Last Rites by Liu Xiaoyi / Emergency Stairs (SIFA 2026)
★★★★☆ Theatre Review: 6 Microlectures on Genocides (May 2026) by theriverproduction
Anxious, tightly constructed theatre that confronts the limits of speech, empathy, and artistic response in the face of ongoing catastrophe. Singapore’s relationship with the Israel–Palestine conflict is shaped by a long-standing posture of official neutrality, coupled with tight constraints on public political expression. In practice, this has produced a civic environment where public commentary on the conflict is often carefully circumscribed, reflecting both domestic concerns … Continue reading ★★★★☆ Theatre Review: 6 Microlectures on Genocides (May 2026) by theriverproduction
Theatre Review: Year Zero by ART:DIS (SIFA 2026)
Meta-theatrical act of frustration at how difficult diversity and inclusivity is to achieve in reality, and an argument of its impossibility. Over the years, disability arts in Singapore has grown immensely, moving beyond perceptions of charity or pity, and towards recognition of disabled artists as professionals in their own right: practitioners with formal training, artistic rigour and distinct creative voices. At the forefront of this … Continue reading Theatre Review: Year Zero by ART:DIS (SIFA 2026)
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