The world today is a fractured, volatile place, with rising tension, isolationism and unrest all about, whether it’s in terms of wars, the climate crisis, or simply the growing stresses of everyday living. One could even say it’s the emergence of new fault lines that seem to be increasingly determining the way we live and interact with each other – why then do we continue to make and appreciate art when there are so many more pressing matters to attend to?

This year’s edition of the Esplanade’s The Studios programme is here to remind us of that, where it uses art as a means of connection, to make us feel less alone in the face of the apocalypse and evoke the beautiful mysteries of life. Marking the second part of the Land trilogy after 2023’s edition, The Studios 2024 brings together four programmes that shine a light on what determines and shape our trajectories as individuals, communities, societies and nations, bringing attention to global histories and personal histories to make sense of this current, turbulent times.

The season opens with Drama Box’s Air, a verbatim play, intimately sharing the authentic voices of the Orang Seletar, an indigenous coastal community that once lived in Singapore. Last staged in 2019 as part of a two-part double bill, this updated version of Air utilises interviews and conversations to showcase the Orang Seletar’s stories, struggles, and resilience as they compromise with the encroaching changes to ensure the survival of not only their people, but more importantly, their identity. Now with new material woven into the already rich tapestry of stories, this results in a play that confronts the issues of land, dispossession and community head-on. Air is led by co-directors Adib Kosnan and Kok Heng Leun, and stars Dalifah Shahril, Rizman Putra, Saiful Amri and Suhaili Safari.

At a time of rising tensions between the United States and China, artist Ming Wong presents a musical lecture-performance that traces the journey of Sino-American “ping-pong” diplomacy, starting with President Richard Nixon’s historic state visit to communist China and his meeting with Chairman Mao Zedong 50 years ago. In a ping-pong double concerto accompanied by archival moving images and spoken word, they explore the role of European classical music, modernism and myth-making in the rise of these two nations in the 20th century. Touching on themes of identity, social structures and the language of cinema, Rhapsody in Yellow: A Lecture Performance with Two Pianos charts the changing balance of power between the two nations, in a duet of discord and harmony, chaos and serendipity, humour and pathos.

Part documentary and part a speculative look at how we might deal with the past, Sim Chi Yin’s One Day We’ll Understand excavates hidden histories, Chinese diasporic experiences and the long legacies of colonialism. Through the lens of Sim’s life and camera, we time-travel into her family archive, recovering traces left in the wake of the anti-colonial war in British Malaya, during and beyond the Malayan Emergency. Led by a Singaporean-Australian creative team, One Day We’ll Understand combines haunting imagery with narration, archival footage, and a driving live score by percussionist Cheryl Ong, giving voice to Sim’s multiple personas as artist, historian, writer, mother and granddaughter, opening up ways to think about our pasts and futures.    

Finally, in September, Wichaya Artamat’s This Song Father Used to Sing (Three Days in May) zeroes in on a small kitchen space in Bangkok. A brother and sister live through three days there in May, each time in a different calendar year, to commemorate their deceased father in a traditional Chinese ceremony. They cook, eat, chat and joke about nothing in particular, as their retiring nature contrasts with the captivating and often absurd conversations they engage in. Past, present and future blend subtly, connected to the political context of the Thai metropolis. The play shows life as it is, without drawing a veil over its alienating character. The characters’ statements do not serve any logic and neither do they lead to a clear end.

As distressing as current affairs may be, the arts are here to offer solace and comfort in knowing that conflict is everywhere, and not insurmountable. It brings a means of making sense of the upheaval all around us, as we examine dispossession, loss, discord, memory and history, to juxtapose the national and international against the personal, to find an intimacy in these stories that reminds us to pause, and take a moment to ponder the many difficult and messy questions of today, perhaps finding and encountering hope in the process.

The Studios 2024 – Fault Lines runs from July to September 2024 at the Esplanade. Tickets and full programme available here