Sifa 2023: The art of navel-gazing

WHAT exactly is The School, a very strange new work from the Singapore International Festival of Arts (Sifa), that runs till Jun 4? The participatory theatre production requires the audience to put on provided uniforms, attend classes with fellow audience members, and discuss ideas of how to create a new school system from scratch. 

The moderators, in the guise of school prefects, ask: “What rules should we create? What values should we live by?” Along the way, the audiences are told to pick cards randomly from a large selection, look at the image shown on the card (which could be anything from a shaman to a public protest) and “locate” themselves in the picture. “Where are you in the picture?” the prefects ask. “What do you need right now?” 

The entire exercise, which lasts for three-and-a-half hours, is not unlike other participatory theatre performances in Singapore, especially the ones created by Drama Box. But this particular work is created by long-time arts practitioners Li Xie, Jean Ng and Joavien Ng (all of whom had one time or another been involved with Drama Box) and has a much looser and unstructured feel to it.