Something for Everyone at the Singapore Arts Festival
By Kathy Zhang
View of the Singapore Arts Festival’s main site, Esplanade Park, and in the background Esplanade: Theatres on the Bay.
General manager of the annual Singapore Arts Festival (5/18–6/2), Low Kee Hong, developed the theme for this year, “Our Lost Poems,” which amounted to an equal dose of popular flair and rehashing of half-forgotten cultural tropes, to draw the interest of the general community. Whether orchestra music or an all-girl deejay bootcamp, from Ong Keng Sen's reinterpretation of Shakespeare's King Lear through Japanese Noh theater to a boxing match between contenders to be Singapore's national icon, there was something for everyone at the festival. Needless to say the 22 performing events, which were centered around Esplanade Park and at venues throughout the civic district, did not always meet Low's lofty vision, described in the curatorial statement, of addressing: “stories that inspire us, legends that have deep cultural roots and riddles that reveal the secrets of the world.”
