Intrusive thoughts during a beach holiday at the end of the world.

In our modern world of stresses and being constantly online, how much can we say we can truly detach ourselves from work and take a relaxing holiday? For Lithuanian artists Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė and Lina Lapelytė, it seems that any vacation will be bound to be filled with intrusive thoughts, and unexpectedly, has become a concept that they’ve sharpened into an incisive, absurd performance-installation about climate change and the end of the world.

Originally presented for the Lithuanian Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Art Biennale, it’s not hard to see why Sun & Sea also won the Golden Lion for best national participation that year. Brought to Singapore as part of the 2024 Singapore International Festival of Arts, Sun & Sea is perhaps one of the strangest pieces to premiere at this year’s festival, as it transformed the Esplanade Theatre into a temporary, makeshift beach.

Ascending a flight of stairs, audience members find themselves surrounding the installation space, peering down into an enclosure surrounded by grey walls. It feels like we’re looking down into an animal enclosure at the zoo, observing vacationers enjoying their time on a fake beach, seemingly unaware of the audience above. Comprising both professional performers (including singers from the Singapore Lyric Opera) as well as volunteers from the public of all ages and backgrounds, all appropriately casually dressed in bikinis, board shorts and sunglasses. These holidayers routinely pop in and out of doorways, bringing with them more beach paraphernalia, from badminton rackets to beach chairs, McDonald’s to summer reading.

In short, beyond the almost dystopian enclosure-like set-up, if you suspend your disbelief, you could almost believe that these were all people spending time on an actual beach. That is, until the singing starts. In each session, the performers run through a single song cycle, featuring both solos and group choruses, before looping through it again for the next group of audiences. Taking people watching to new extremes, these songs reflect the beachgoers’ inner thoughts, often starting off as a complaint or passing fragment, but developing into violent or dark-sided subjects, from burn out to environmental pollution affecting the wildlife. Oftentimes, these are absurd ideas, yet it speaks of the way we cope or the way our mind wanders when faced with so much existential angst and pressure.

Sung in English, all of this is set to rather jaunty or relaxed tunes, often very simple recurring melodies, with the operatic voices a stark contrast against its heavier topics. There are countless characters featured, from a gay couple in a long-distance relationship, to an incredibly wealthy mother, to a woman complaining about trash on the beach, and a pair of twins lamenting mortality and wanting to create perfect, everlasting copies with 3D printing. There’s a lot of fun as well in trying to spot who exactly is singing the solos, as there are no spotlights to showcase them, and one finds one’s eye wandering across the beach landscape constantly to people watch and observe.

We wonder then when exactly this is set – what if this is not the present, but a glimpse into a post-apocalyptic future, where a small man-made beach is the only patch of natural land left for a holiday, while disasters rage outside? The vacationers look so relaxed, with smiles all over, yet all of them are plagued with visions of doom within, perhaps trying their best to stave off the paranoia with the beach, only to have it exacerbate their fears, in this sun-dappled, reflexive space of limbo, where strangeness and charm collide.

Sun and Sea is a brilliant, hypnotic work of quiet tragedy that unites these seemingly disparate thoughts into a collective, and one could honestly stay on for hours, transfixed by both the sight and sound of this preposterous setting, to emerge deeply resonant and sincere in how it addresses humanity’s anxiety over the end of the world. In all our hypocrisies and desperation, it becomes a reflection of our desire to do something to change, but remaining paralysed in the face of how insurmountable it all is. All we can do is watch the world burn and pretend everything’s ok.

Photo Credit: Andrej Vasilenko, Neon Realism and Evgenia Levin, courtesy of the artists

Sun & Sea played from 30th May to 1st June 2024 at the Esplanade Theatre, as part of Singapore International Festival of Arts 2024. More information available here Read the libretto here, and purchase the soundtrack here

SIFA 2024: They Declare ran from 17th May to 2nd June 2024 across various venues. Full programme available here

Production Credits:

Concept and Development Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė, Lina Lapelytė Director and Set Designer Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė Lyrics Vaiva Grainytė Composer and Music Director Lina Lapelytė Curator Lucia Pietroiusti Tour Producer Caroline Smith Production Manager / Stage Manager Erika Urbelevič Technical Director Dovydas Korba Libretto Translation (from Lithuanian to English) Rimas Užgiris Sound Engineer Romuald Chaloin Galiauskas Performers Evaldas Alekna, Aliona Alymova, Svetlana Bagdonaitė, Nabila Dandara, Auksė Dovydėnaitė, Saulė Dovydėnaitė, Zachary Singson Dominguez, Claudia Graziadei, Sandro Hähnel, Vincentas Korba, Ieva Marmiene, Artūras Miknaitis, Vytautas Pastarnokas, Jeronimas Petraitis, Juozas Petraitis, Pranas Petraitis, Giacomino Pietroiusti, Eglė Paškevičienė, Kalliopi Petrou, Jonas Statkevičius Featuring singers from Singapore Lyric Opera Claudia Gehlen, Grace Xu, Haruna Akizawa, Heart Lopez, Hu Yanjun, Lowell Tan Ying Jie, Patricia Chong, Patricia Teng Huei Ching, Rachelle Lu, Sindy Keng Sin Jing, Zoey Li Zhengrong