In March, it was announced that Gaurav Kripalani, the Artistic Director of the Singapore Repertory Theatre, would succeed Theatreworks Artistic Director Ong Keng Sen as Festival Director of Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA). This changing of guard foretells a significant shift in approach to programming and presentation choices: Ong is known to favour presenting works that are more unconventional, experimental, cross-genre, while Kripalani is known to present mainstream plays and blockbuster musicals. The response from the arts community has thus been divided; while some feel that more accessible, digestible and well-known works is a change that is welcome, others fear that the risk-taking quality of art that provokes questions and new, unusual perspectives, is threatened. Time will tell.
