New Arts Festival chief wants an "arts Olympics". The chap concerned a Cultural Medallion recipient, late forties theatre director.
As anywhere else on the global art circuit, the art chief is wary of "art fatigue", keen to "move away from giving the Singaporean audience more entertainment and consumerism, what he calls "use and throw attitude".... "
Some stamina is going to be needed by the local audience as the former three week stretch of the festival has now become six, book-ended by National Day on August 9 and the F1 "extravaganza". Racing against the iconic Singaporean sky-line as close to art as one can get in the local parley here.
Otherwise blockbuster productions: "Some dream names and productions he tossed out during the chat.... includ(ing) the Berliner Ensemble, the German theatre company created by Bertold Brecht in 1949, the Russian Bolshoi and Kirov.... hopefully securing deals for David Byrne's new musical about Imelda Marcos titled Here Lives Love, and perhaps even a Japanese kabuki performance."
(Page 6, Wednesday 15 May 2013, Straits Times. Usual mid-week condo porn.)
As preparation here a slow pencil-in-hand reading of the OUP secondhand p/b of Plato's Defence of Socrates, picked up from the auntie at Bras Basah for $6.90. Great theatre ready-made, were the old guy not so infamously ugly and the turns of mind so challenging. Even the threat of capital punishment fails to cow the crusty truth-speaker to power. An adaptation to local conditions with some crafty costuming—judges Men in White; Workers Party balloons; shadowy back-of-stage puppet-master in profile with some audible mumbles regularly interspersed....
The giant inflatable white Bunny has been brought out of storage and returned to his alfalfa patch out front of SAM—the Singapore Art Museum at Dhoby Ghaut, opposite the Singapore National Gallery. Late last week there had been no sign.
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