SIFA 2026: Makan Culture – An interview with playwright Jo Tan and director Krish Natarajan on makan, mayhem and making meaning

What happens when theatre stops asking audiences to sit still and instead invites them to eat, speak, and play? At the festival village of the 2026 Singapore International Festival of Arts, new experience Makan Culture unfolds as a lively, unpredictable encounter that sits somewhere between performance and gathering. Created by Jo Tan and directed by Krish Natarajan, the work brings together music, puppetry, and audience … Continue reading SIFA 2026: Makan Culture – An interview with playwright Jo Tan and director Krish Natarajan on makan, mayhem and making meaning

SIFA 2026: Tempo – An interview with choreographer Fernando Melo on twisting and turning time through dance and illusion

Time slips, stretches, and occasionally seems to stand still in Tempo, a dreamlike work presented at the Singapore International Festival of Arts. In this collaboration between director Kalle Nio and choreographer Fernando Melo, falling bodies hover mid-air, actions reverse, and the ordinary becomes quietly uncanny. Rather than treating illusion as spectacle, Melo approaches it as a byproduct of attention, of bodies, space, and time aligning … Continue reading SIFA 2026: Tempo – An interview with choreographer Fernando Melo on twisting and turning time through dance and illusion

SIFA 2026: The Lighthouse – An interview with Patch Theatre artistic director Geoff Cobham on light and children’s theatre

In The Lighthouse, light isn’t something you simply watch, but something you step into. Created by Geoff Cobham for Patch Theatre, the work invites audiences, both young and the young-at-heart, to move through a glowing landscape of shifting rooms, reflections, and surprises, where curiosity leads the way. Presented as part of the 2026 Singapore International Festival of Arts, this immersive experience rethinks what theatre for … Continue reading SIFA 2026: The Lighthouse – An interview with Patch Theatre artistic director Geoff Cobham on light and children’s theatre

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

SIFA 2026: LACRIMA – An interview with director Caroline Guiela Nguyen on painstaking, invisible labour and craftsmanship

What fascinated French artist Caroline Guiela Nguyen about the fashion world was never the glamour of haute couture itself, but the invisible human machinery that sustains it. LACRIMA, which comes to Singapore this week as one of the opening shows of the 2026 Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA), may begin with the commission of a royal wedding dress, the kind of object typically associated … Continue reading SIFA 2026: LACRIMA – An interview with director Caroline Guiela Nguyen on painstaking, invisible labour and craftsmanship

An Interview with actress Nathania Ong on finding her own voice and reclaiming Éponine in Les Misérables – The Arena Spectacular

In Les Misérables – The Arena Spectacular, scale is everything: a full orchestra onstage, sweeping projections, and a staging language that expands the musical’s visual and sonic reach. Yet within that enormity, the production’s emotional force hinges on something far more intimate. And doing exactly that is the character of Éponine. Portrayed by Singaporean performer Nathania Ong, the character emerges not as a peripheral tragic … Continue reading An Interview with actress Nathania Ong on finding her own voice and reclaiming Éponine in Les Misérables – The Arena Spectacular

Tender Urgency: An Interview with rising artist Lucas Tan on his debut solo exhibition ‘Pressure Points’ at Haridas Contemporary

Lucas Tan paints as if trying to hold something just a moment longer, capturing an expression, a touch, a glance that might otherwise slip away. In his debut solo exhibition Pressure Points, the Singapore-based painter offers a body of 14 works that is at once intimate and composed, grounded in lived experience yet carefully constructed into images that linger. It’s a wildly successful work for … Continue reading Tender Urgency: An Interview with rising artist Lucas Tan on his debut solo exhibition ‘Pressure Points’ at Haridas Contemporary

A Little Piece of Eternity: An Interview with Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker on repetition and return in Fase, Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich

When Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker created Fase, Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich in the spring of 1982, she was starting, quite deliberately, at the beginning. “I wanted to develop my own choreographic writing,” she recalls. Trained in classical ballet (“a very strictly codified language”), she chose instead “to go step by step, literally one movement at a time,” trusting an emerging intuition … Continue reading A Little Piece of Eternity: An Interview with Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker on repetition and return in Fase, Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich

Pesta Raya 2026: An Interview with Maria Tri Sulistyani, founder of Papermoon Puppet Theatre, and playwright/director of ‘PUNO – Sewing Memories’

Twelve years ago, the story that would become PUNO: Sewing Memories began with a promise. Back in 2013, Papermoon Puppet Theatre was planning a collaboration with a close friend from the Philippines: puppetry artist Don Salubayba. “It was kind of like, wow, it’s amazing that we have so much in common, let’s do something together,” recalls director and playwright Maria Tri Sulistyani, also a co-founder … Continue reading Pesta Raya 2026: An Interview with Maria Tri Sulistyani, founder of Papermoon Puppet Theatre, and playwright/director of ‘PUNO – Sewing Memories’

Pesta Raya 2026: An Interview with Dr. Norzizi Zulkifli on adapting Macbeth for Randai and traditional arts in Malaysia

When Dr Norzizi speaks about randai, she does not describe it as an artefact or a genre. She describes the art form as something breathing, precarious, but alive. “Without ASWARA,” she says plainly of the National Academy of Arts, Cultural and Heritage of Malaysia, “randai is a dying traditional art form. It exists, but it is also not there. If you come to Kuala Lumpur … Continue reading Pesta Raya 2026: An Interview with Dr. Norzizi Zulkifli on adapting Macbeth for Randai and traditional arts in Malaysia