SIFA 2024: The Anatomy of Performance – They Declare

Returning from 17 May to 2 June 2024, the Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA) 2024 presents The Anatomy of Performance – They Declare, an expression of the multiplicity of voices that the Festival welcomes and celebrates. With Festival Director, Natalie Hennedige, setting the direction of the Festival for a third year, SIFA 2024 calls for audiences to embrace difference and make space for the coexistence of different beliefs and ways of being. 

SIFA 2024 continues to foster creative intersections, progressive and original works that demonstrate how performance can be approached as a dynamic arena for artistic innovation and expression, as well as reflect shifting perspectives today. Festivalgoers can look forward to a diverse line-up ranging from dynamic transnational collaborations, exciting invited international presentations, an engaging event that celebrates Singapore’s vibrant theatre scene, as well as Little SIFA, an all-new programming pillar dedicated to families and children. Examples of these highlights include: 

• Moby Dick by Norwegian director, actress, puppet-maker, and artistic director of Plexus Polaire, Yngvild Aspeli, presents a 90-minute live adaptation of Herman Melville’s mythical work about an ancient white whale. Performed by a cast of seven actors, fifty puppets, and video projections, the work employs filmic techniques, captivating puppetry, and clever stagecraft to manipulate the audience’s perspective.
• SUARA / Oro Rua by Singapore music artist Safuan Johari and Māori Choreographer Eddie Elliot features original compositions, choral singers, and New Zealand dance artists to imagine a post-Anthropocene future.
• Singapore theatre-makers Haresh Sharma and Chong Tze Chien’s The Prose and the Passion is a play where fictional characters from English novelist E. M. Forster’s novels traverse space and time and interact with characters from Sharma’s imagination. 
• First showcased at the 2019 Venice Biennale, internationally-acclaimed award-winning experiential opera performance Sun & Sea by Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė, Lina Lapelytė, will make its Singapore debut at SIFA 2024. An ecological work at its very core, the work takes the form of an imitation beach indoors where its lounging performers sing about mundane existence, worry, and boredom, darkly remarking on the Earth’s decline.
• Transforming Stamford Arts Centre into a sandbox of works-in-process, Tomorrow and tomorrow is an extraordinary opportunity to witness the diverse practices of local theatre groups on a single platform, opening up vistas for future presentations while unearthing Singapore’s fertile ground for contemporary theatre-making.
• As part of Little SIFA, The Dancer’s Fair beckons audiences of all ages to Cathay Green, where a larger-than-life ballerina and an old-style fair comprising seven fascinating machines await. Catch Leonardo! A Wonderful Show About A Terrible Monster, where Mo Willems’ books are brought to life with hundreds of illustrated paper puppets, book pages, two-dimensional props, furry monster puppets and songs.
• SIFA’s online presence continues with the light gleams an instant, a 9-minute experimental short film helmed by film artist Natalie Soh in collaboration with Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum and Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music that responds to the museum’s collections of specimens, exploring the recursive and decaying nature of memory and meaning-making.

SIFA 2024 is commissioned by the National Arts Council and organised by the Arts House Limited.