Updated: Apr 28Updated: Apr 28
At play in the realm of art, at ease in the realm of theatre. The 2026 Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA) raises its curtain in mid-May, taking play and legacy as its guiding threads — drawing audiences to explore, to engage with the artists, and to wander freely through a space of pure creativity.游于艺，乐于戏。2026年新加坡国际艺术节（Singapore International Festival of Arts, 简称SIFA）将于5月中旬掀开序幕，以“玩乐”与“传承”为主线，引领观众主动投入探索，与艺术家互动，在创意空间中自在游走。
Commissioned by the National Arts Council and produced by Arts House Group, SIFA 2026 takes “Let’s Play!” as its theme. From 15 to 30 May, it presents multi-disciplinary works by local and international companies across a host of indoor venues and outdoor public spaces in Singapore, offering a rich and varied programme from dusk until midnight — inviting audiences of every age to discover the joy and vitality of art.由新加坡国家艺术理事会委托艺苑集团（Arts House Group）主办的SIFA 2026，以“Let’s Play!”(艺同作乐)为主题，从5月15日至 30 日，呈献国内外艺术团体的多元媒介演出，涵盖新加坡多个室内表演场地及户外公共空间，从傍晚至午夜提供丰富多样的节目，让各个年龄层的观众发掘艺术的趣味与活力。
The festival’s new director, Chang Tze Chien, has laid out a three-year curatorial vision built on three ideas: legacy, roots and revival. Beginning this year, the festival unfolds as a trilogy that maps Singapore’s performing-arts landscape, honouring the past, examining the present and imagining the future. SIFA, he says, should be more than an annual ritual of a festival; it should be “a living, ever-evolving vessel” charged with nurturing local talent and cultivating the wider arts scene.新任总监张子健提出为期三年的策展计划，以“传承”、“根源”和“复兴”为三大愿景，从今年起陆续呈现三部曲式展演，梳理新加坡的表演艺术景观，旨在尊重过去、审视当下、想象未来。他表示，SIFA 不应只是每年一度的例行节庆，而是一个“活生生且不断演化的载体”，肩负培养本地人才与推动艺术风气的责任。
This year’s edition takes legacy as its curatorial spine, paying tribute to the pioneers who laid the foundations of Singapore’s contemporary performing arts. Many of its marquee works revolve around individual lives, artistic inheritance and collective memory, prompting audiences to weigh two central questions: looking back on the past, what have we inherited — and what will we choose to carry forward? MU/SE highlights a handful of local productions that read this proposition from different angles.本届艺术节以“传承”为策展主线，向本地当代表演艺术的奠基者致敬。多部重头作品围绕着个体生命、艺术遗产与集体回忆展开，引导观众思考两个核心问题：回望过去，我们继承了什么？又将选择带走什么？《MU/SE》重点推荐几部本地制作，从不同角度解读这个命题。
Four Decades of Theatre, in a Single Thread四十年剧场脉络
The festival’s opening production, Salesman之死 (Salesman’s Death), is written by Jeremy Tiang, the Singaporean writer and translator based in the United States. It premiered in New York in October 2023 and last year won Best New American Play at the 68th Obie Awards. Drawn from the recollections of scholar Shen Huihui, the play returns to 1983, when the American playwright Arthur Miller travelled to Beijing to direct his own masterwork, Death of a Salesman. Commissioned by the celebrated actor Ying Ruocheng — who translated the play into Chinese — she served as Miller’s interpreter throughout the rehearsals. A young English-department teaching assistant at the time, she confronts the misunderstandings born of the cultural gulf between East and West, and ultimately becomes the bridge that allows both sides to communicate and to trust one another.开幕大戏《Salesman之死》由本地旅美作家兼翻译家程异编剧，2023年10月在纽约首演，去年获颁美国第68届奥比奖(Obie Awards)最佳新剧奖。故事以学者申慧辉的回忆为蓝本，讲述1983年美国剧作家阿瑟.米勒(Arthur Miller)到北京执导自己的名剧《推销员之死》（Death of a Salesman)，她受知名演员及此剧的中文版译者英若诚委托，在排演期间担任阿瑟.米勒的翻译员。这位大学英文系年轻助教在翻译过程中，面对东西方文化差异带来的误解，而最终促成双方的沟通与互信。
When director Jonathan Lim took the script from Chang Tze Chien a year ago, his first thought was: what does this story have to do with Singapore? Once he began his research, he discovered that the Beijing production of Death of a Salesman had in fact been staged locally, at Victoria Theatre, during the 1986 Singapore Arts Festival — SIFA’s forerunner.导演杨君伟一年前从张子健手中接过剧本时，心想：这则故事跟新加坡有何关联？他在着手进行资料收集后，得知北京版《推销员之死》曾于1986年新加坡艺术节(SIFA前身)期间在本地维多利亚剧院上演。
He shared the discovery with Chang Tze Chien straight away, and SIFA made a point of staging Salesman之死 at Victoria Theatre to echo that history — a decision that thrilled him. “We are presenting a play inspired by a classic that was performed in this very theatre 40 years ago. It feels like a return to where it all began, and that carries real meaning.”他第一时间与张子健分享这个发现，SIFA也特别做出安排，将维多利亚剧院作为《Salesman之死》的演出场地，以呼应历史，他为此兴奋不已。“我们将呈献一部以40年前在同一座剧院上演过的经典作品为灵感的戏剧，感觉像回归原点，意义重大。”
The New York staging of Salesman之死 was mounted off-Broadway in an intimate black-box format with an all-female cast; the Singapore version offers a different reading altogether. Jonathan Lim has reworked the form, using a play-within-a-play device so that the story resonates with the evolution of local theatre. He has assembled four generations of Chinese- and English-language theatre actors — senior, middle, young and youngest — to share the stage, among them Lim Kay Siu, Gerald Chew, Li Xie, Tay Kong Hui, Neo Swee Lin, Tan Pei Boon, Hang Qian Chou, Ric Liang and Goh Guat Kian. The most senior of them, Lim Kay Siu, made his own stage debut in 1976 — at Victoria Theatre, no less — while Gerald Chew appeared in Singapore’s first English-language production of Death of a Salesman in 1994. These quiet coincidences all point back to the legacy that this year’s SIFA holds so dear.纽约版《Salesman之死》以外百老汇小剧场形式呈现，并由全女班演出，新加坡版则提供另一种诠释。杨君伟对演出形式做了改动，透过戏中戏的手法，使故事与本地剧场的发展相呼应。他召集新加坡华英语剧场老中青少四代演员同台演出，包括黄家强、周光炎(Gerald Chew)、李邪、郑光辉、郭沛珊、陈珮文、韩乾畴、梁海彬和吴慧婷。当中最资深的黄家强于1976年首次登台演戏正是在维多利亚剧院，周光炎则在1994年演过本地首个英语版《推销员之死》，这些微妙的巧合都指向本届SIFA强调的“传承”。
Lim reveals that it was the Singaporean theatre pioneer Kuo Pao Kun who, back then, invited the Beijing actors to the Lion City to perform Death of a Salesman and Teahouse — a gesture that shaped local theatre profoundly and left a precious gift to the generations that followed. “One generation plants the trees, and the next enjoys the shade. We stage this play with a sense of conviction and of mission.”杨君伟透露，当年新加坡剧场先驱郭宝崑邀请北京演员来狮城演出《推销员之死》与《茶馆》，对本地剧场界影响深远，为后辈留下了宝贵的馈赠。“前人种树，后人乘凉，我们怀着一份信念和使命感来呈现这台戏。”
One striking feature of the production is the dozens of audience seats placed onstage. The director explains that when Arthur Miller was rehearsing in Beijing, officials would forever gather to “look on,” so he has seated a portion of the audience on the stage itself, as though dropped into the rehearsal room of the play — letting those onstage and those in the house watch from different vantage points, and stirring different trains of thought. “This year SIFA’s theme is ‘Let’s Play!’, and we are inviting the audience to make a play with us — and to have fun doing it.”这部作品的一大特色是台上设置了数十个观众席，导演解释，当年阿瑟.米勒在北京排戏时，总有许多官方人士“围观”，于是他安排部分观众坐在台上，如同置身于戏中的排演现场，让台上台下的观众以不同视角观剧，从而引发不一样的思考。“今年SIFA以’Let’s Play!’为主题，我们也邀请观众一起Making a Play(创作一台戏)，并且从中作乐。”
Old Flames Reunite to Sing a Whole Life旧爱聚首唱尽人生
The very premise is a talking point: Jacintha Abisheganaden, the veteran Singaporean singer and actress who has been married three times, sharing a stage with her second husband, Dick Lee. She a jazz chanteuse, he a musical prodigy — in 1983 she released her debut album, Silence, featuring nine of Dick Lee’s original songs, launching a long collaboration between them. The pair married in 1992 and parted ways five years later.有过三段婚姻的新加坡资深歌手兼演员Jacintha Abisheganaden，与第二任丈夫李迪文(Dick Lee)同台演出，这个构想本身就很有话题性。一位是爵士女伶，一位是音乐才子，她在1983年推出首张专辑《Silence》，收录九首李迪文的原创歌曲，由此开启长期合作关系。两人在1992年结婚，五年后结束婚姻关系。
Lush Life is written and directed by Ong Keng Sen, artistic director of T:>Works. He brings to the stage the life story of Jacintha — a close friend and one of the company’s founding members — presenting her conversations and interviews in a form that fuses music and theatre. Alongside Jacintha herself, the actress and singer Frances Lee plays her “other self,” while her former husband, Dick Lee, appears as a special guest to perform at her side.《Lush Life》由剧艺工作坊(T:>Works)艺术总监王景生执导和编剧，他把好友兼创团元老之一Jacintha的人生故事搬上舞台，将她的对话访谈以结合音乐与戏剧的形式呈现，除了她本人演出之外，演员兼歌手Frances Lee也将饰演她的“分身”，前夫李迪文更担任特别嘉宾与她同台演出。
Jacintha inherited her parents’ musical gifts. At 19 she won an English-language singing contest held by a television station; after graduating from the English department at the National University of Singapore, she joined an English-language newspaper as an arts reporter, then went on to study creative writing at Harvard and to work in the United States. On her return home she was active across music, theatre and television, and from her forties devoted herself to recording jazz albums in Los Angeles — songs that have since been picked up by American television series and Hollywood films.Jacintha遗传了父母的音乐天赋，19岁在电视台举办的英语歌唱比赛中夺冠，从国大英文系毕业后加入英文报当艺术记者，跟着到哈佛大学修读创意写作，并留在美国工作。回国之后，她活跃于乐坛、剧场和电视圈，40岁以后专注于在洛杉矶录制爵士专辑，歌曲曾被美剧和好莱坞电影选用。
Looking back on the first half of her life, the 68-year-old Jacintha sums up her outlook as simply “doing a job well”: she throws herself wholeheartedly into her performances and leaves the verdict on her achievements to the audience. “As a performing artist, I keep seeking out chances to perform. As for which of my artistic achievements are worth passing on — that is not for me to decide. It is for the audience to take part, to discover, and to determine what is worth keeping and cherishing.”68岁的Jacintha回顾前半生的经历时，以“做好一份工”表明心迹，她全情投入表演工作，成就交由观众评定。“身为表演艺术家，我不断寻找演出机会。至于有哪方面的艺术成就可以传承下去，不是我说了算，而是让观众一起参与和发现，决定哪些值得保留和珍惜。”
The playwright-director takes the classic jazz standard Lush Life for his title, weaving together documentary and reinvention, stepping into character and stepping out of it, as the heroine recounts the moments in her life that were at once lush and hollow. The three will sing 15 songs in all — jazz numbers among them, and works by Dick Lee that have never before been performed in public.编导以经典爵士歌曲《Lush Life》为剧名，结合纪实与重塑、入戏与出戏的形式，让女主人公叙述生命中华丽与空虚的片段。三人将在剧中演唱15首歌曲，除了爵士曲目之外，还包括李迪文创作但未曾公开演出的作品。
A Farewell Rite, Onstage舞台上的告别式
How does a veteran actor who has inhabited countless roles come to terms with the reality of an ageing body? As both the journey of a life and a career in theatre move into “super-ageing,” what do such performers still hope for from their time onstage? Last Rites (末了), a cross-disciplinary work directed by Liu Xiaoyi, artistic director of the experimental company Emergency Stairs, brings together five renowned performing artists from across Asia — with an average age of 74 — to ponder a searching question together: if you could set the terms of your very last performance, what would it look like? And how would your own artistry live on?塑造过无数角色的资深演员，如何面对肉身老去的现实？当人生旅程与戏剧生涯一起迈进“超老龄化”，他们对自己在舞台上的表现怀抱着怎样的期待？实验艺术团体避难阶段(Emergency Stairs)艺术总监刘晓义执导的跨界作品《末了》(Last Rites)，汇聚五位来自亚洲各地的知名表演艺术家，平均年龄为74岁，在剧中共同思考一个发人深省的问题：如果可以预设人生中的最后一场演出，那会是什么样子？个人艺术造诣又将如何传承下去？
All five performers arrive with formidable pedigrees. They include the veteran local actor Yang Shi Bin, nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the Golden Horse Awards for the film Wet Season; the seasoned Korean actor Jung Dong-hwan, who appeared in the film Mama Aju’s Blossoming Road; the Japanese Noh actor Kanji Shimizu, who once performed Kuo Pao Kun’s Spirits Play in Singapore; the Indonesian traditional Javanese dancer Didik Nini Thowok; and the Korean arts-school professor and mime artist Nam Geung-ho.五位演员都大有来头，包括凭电影《热带雨》入围金马奖最佳男配角的本地老戏骨杨世彬、演过电影《花路阿朱妈》的韩国资深演员郑栋焕(Jung Dong-hwan) 、曾在新加坡演出郭宝崑剧作《灵戏》的日本能剧演员清水宽二（Kanji Shimizu）、印尼传统爪哇舞蹈家Didik Nini Thowat，以及韩国艺校教授兼默剧演员南兢镐（Nam Geung-ho)。
Through interviews and projected imagery, the director deftly conjures an interplay of the real and the illusory, letting the performers’ memories, imaginings and physical performance flow into one another. Each traces the first impulse that set them creating and revisits the many struggles endured in the pursuit of an artistic ideal, until their separate stories are woven into a collage of belief in art itself. And with the conviction that “every performance is a farewell,” they lend the work a profound emotional depth.导演通过访谈和影像投射，巧妙营造虚实交错的互动，让演员的记忆、想象与肢体表演交汇融合。演员各自回溯最初的创作冲动，探寻在追求艺术理想过程中经历过的各种挣扎，将彼此的故事交织成一幅关于艺术信念的拼贴画。他们也怀着“每场演出都是告别作”的心态，为演出注入深刻的情感厚度。
Theatre and Dance, Each in Its Own Splendour戏剧舞蹈各自精彩
Among the international productions, the French director and playwright Caroline Guiela Nguyen transforms the Victoria Theatre stage into a haute-couture atelier to tell a story about the passing on of craft. The title, Lacrima, is taken from the Latin for tears. The drama opens as a Parisian couture house receives a commission to create a wedding gown for an English princess; the workshop calls upon its head seamstress, a lace-maker from Alençon in France and a master embroiderer in Mumbai, who together labour for eight months over the royal bridal dress. As they sew, each of the artisans wrestles with troubles of family and of health, all but spending themselves in the pursuit of absolute perfection. Lacrima offers piercing insight into society and human nature, throwing light on the little-known toil, sacrifice and emotional cost that lie behind the haute-couture industry.外国制作方面，法国导演及剧作家Caroline Guiela Nguyen将维多利亚剧院的舞台化作高级定制服工坊，演绎一则关于工艺传承的故事。剧名《Lacrima》取自拉丁语，意为泪水。剧情从巴黎一家高定时装屋接到为英格兰公主定制婚纱的订单展开，工坊出动了首席裁缝师、法国阿朗松的蕾丝工匠，以及孟买的刺绣大师，花费八个月精心缝制王室嫁裳。匠人们在制衣过程中各自面对家庭和健康的困扰，为追求极致完美几乎耗尽自己。《Lacrima》对社会和人性有深刻洞察，折射出高定时装工业背后鲜为人知的辛劳、牺牲与情感代价。
Hedda Gabler, Ibsen’s celebrated play presented by the National Theater of Korea, uses the heroine’s inner turmoil — her restlessness within an ordinary married life — to lay bare the conflict and contradiction women face between their social roles and their private longings. For this staging, the veteran Korean actress Lee Hyeyoung returns to the stage; she first took the lead in the play in 2012, winning Best Actress at both the Korea Theatre Awards and the East Asia Theatre Awards. To play the same role again 14 years on is not merely a reinterpretation of a classic, but a symbol of the continuity and inheritance of the performing arts.韩国国家剧院呈现的易卜生名剧《Hedda Gabler》，通过女主人公不安于平凡婚姻生活的内心挣扎，揭示女性在社会角色与个人渴望之间的冲突和矛盾。这次演出特邀韩国资深演员李慧英(Lee Hyeyoung)重返舞台，她于2012年首次主演这部剧作，获得韩国戏剧奖和东亚戏剧奖最佳女演员。时隔14年再演同一角色，不仅是重绎经典，也象征着表演艺术的延续与传承。
Beyond the works conceived around legacy, the dance pieces SIFA has brought in and commissioned are well worth watching too. In Planet (Wanderer), a contemporary dance work by the Belgian choreographer Damien Jalet in collaboration with the Japanese visual artist Kohei Nawa, eight dancers move like reeds swaying in the wind, holding a delicate balance between strength and fragility, destruction and evolution, to reveal the natural bond between humankind and the earth.除了以传承为发想的剧目之外，SIFA引进或委约的舞蹈作品也很有看头。比利时编舞家Damien Jalet携手日本视觉艺术家 Kohei Nawa创作的当代舞蹈作品《Planet(Wanderer)》，八位舞者的肢体动作如同随风摇曳的芦苇，在力量与脆弱、破坏与演化之间保持微妙平衡，展现出人与大地的自然联系。
The Strangely Familiar, a multimedia dance work directed and choreographed by Kuik Swee Boon, founder and artistic director of the local company T.H.E Dance Company, deploys holographic projection and advanced technology to bring dancers on in virtual form, prompting audiences to reflect on the connections between the physical and the digital worlds.本地“人·舞团”(T.H.E)创办人及艺术总监郭瑞文执导和编排的多媒体舞蹈作品《熟悉的陌生》，运用全息投影和先进技术，让舞者以虚拟形体现身，促使观众思考实体与数码世界的连结。
A Diverse Slate of Outdoor Performances多样化的户外演出
Beyond its indoor venues, SIFA 2026 also revives the Festive Village — an outdoor stretch running from the lawn in front of Victoria Concert Hall to Anderson Bridge, set up with a stage and food stalls. Here it presents works such as Makan Culture, a community performance that blends theatre with cooking; The Memory Pool, a play tracing artistic legacy and the bond between master and apprentice; and Rupture, a site-specific sound installation by the band The Observatory inspired by the earth’s natural activity — the vast majority of them free of charge.除了室内表演场地之外，SIFA 2026也重新推出“节庆村”(Festive Village)，从维多利亚音乐厅前方草地延伸至安德逊桥的户外空间，设置戏台和美食摊位，呈献结合戏剧与料理的社区演出《Makan Culture》、刻画艺术传承与师徒情谊的戏剧《记忆游泳池》、The Observatory乐团以地表自然活动为灵感的场域声音装置《Rupture》等作品，当中绝大部分为免费节目。
The most arresting of the outdoor performances is surely Noli Timere, created jointly by the American sculptor Janet Echelman and the choreographer-director Rebecca Lazier. Echelman has fashioned a vast net-like sculptural installation suspended seven metres in the air, on which performers carry out the dance and acrobatics Lazier has choreographed, embodying the fearless spirit of the Latin phrase Noli Timere. The work premieres on the lawn in front of Victoria Concert Hall before moving to Punggol Digital District, where interactive segments invite audiences to take part up close.最引人注目的户外演出，当属美国雕塑家 Janet Echelman 与编舞家兼导演 Rebecca Lazier 联手打造的《Noli Timere》。前者创造了悬浮于七米高空的大型网状雕塑装置，表演者在网雕上呈现后者编排的舞蹈与杂技，展现拉丁语“Noli Timere”的无畏精神。作品首演于维多利亚音乐厅前的草地，随后移师榜鹅数码园区，并设置互动环节，让观众近距离参与其中。
For full details, visit the SIFA website: https://www.sifa.sg/欲知详情，请浏览SIFA官网：https://www.sifa.sg/
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