Stage and screen fight for attention

HYBRIDITY continues to shape arts programming in 2021, as live performances and digital offerings compete for audiences' attention. Some companies are lining up Plan A, B and even C - from pure live to pure online shows - should the Covid-19 situation improve, worsen or stay the same, as that has direct impact on the probable number of people allowed into a performance venue.

For the upcoming M1 Fringe Festival, which typically showcases works from all over the world, artistic director Alvin Tan hasn't programmed a live show by a foreign company because of travel restrictions. Only local titles will have live presentations - and even these have guidelines on how rehearsals and performances are to be carried out.

"Also, the live shows can be watched by fewer audiences than usual," says Mr Tan, "so we've taken the extra step of filming these shows and releasing them later as videos-on-demand. Ticket sales for the videos-on-demand will hopefully help make up for the shortfall."

The social and political turmoil of these past years though - from Covid-19 and the climate crisis, to #MeToo and Black Lives Matter - has given artists plenty to think and talk about. The M1 Fringe Festival features several works that tackle themes of social transformation, revolutionary change and peaceful resistance. Highlights include a line could be crossed and you would slowly cease to be, about climate change and how it affects people; and Havoc Girls & Kamikaze Boys, about how social upheavals impact the young.

Meanwhile, major theatre companies such as Wild Rice, Pangdemonium and Singapore Repertory Theatre (SRT) have completely reshaped their programming to focus on plays with much smaller casts. Monologues and two- or three-handers populate the season.

Wild Rice is debuting an original local monologue in March titled The Other F Word, which has actress Miriam Cheong examining what it's like to be a fat woman. Pangdemonium opens its season with a one-woman show called Girls & Boys starring Nikki Muller; the Dennis Kelly play debuted in London in 2018 with Oscar nominee Carey Mulligan in the role. SRT has pushed all its big productions, such as The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-time and Shakespeare In The Park to 2022, turning to small-cast plays such as The Sound Inside for 2021.

As for the Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA) taking place in May, festival director Gaurav Kripalani says: "We're working with artists from countries which have or will have a green lane with Singapore. But who knows which country is going to get a second or third wave? So with everyone we're talking to, we're making sure the artists can come up with a Plan B.

"Meanwhile, with other international artists, we want them to create digital works with a strong interactive element. We do not want to just livestream a show or broadcast a past recording. With one artist we're working with, all 30 participants will be able to see and talk to each other online. With another artist we're in talks with, the artist wants to engage with the audience one-on-one . . . Interestingly, it's the newer companies that have been able to quickly adapt to this fast-changing landscape."

Mr Kripalani says this year's SIFA will also have a strong focus on local works, in view of the fact that Covid-19 has decimated the work opportunities for many Singapore artists. This is a perspective that informs other government-funded art events, such as the upcoming Singapore Art Week.

If there's a silver lining in all this - and that's a big "if" - it's that artists have been incentivised to create digital-only works that can potentially reach out to audiences beyond Singapore, as well as collaborate with artists from across the world.

Mr Tan, for instance, recently co-directed a Zoom play on racism titled Who's There? featuring a cross-continental cast of woke artists. He says: "The experience absolutely energised and challenged me, because it opened my mind even more to different perspectives . . . Now that's a big deal for someone like me who's been making socially-engaged art for a long time."

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