★★★★★ 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)

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: 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

SIFA 2026: Salesman之死 – An interview with director Danny Yeo on translating and adapting Arthur Miller

In the spring of 1983, despite not speaking a word of Mandarin, Arthur Miller travelled to Beijing to direct Death of a Salesman with an all-Chinese cast. The encounter, later documented in his memoir Salesman in Beijing, has since become a touchstone of cross-cultural theatre-making. More than two decades later, that improbable collaboration now finds new life in Salesman之死, a multilingual, documentary-inflected work that traces … Continue reading SIFA 2026: Salesman之死 – An interview with director Danny Yeo on translating and adapting Arthur Miller