CREATION

By Tai Shani (United Kingdom)

27 – 29 May, Fri – Sun 8pm Pasir Panjang Power Station

1h, No Intermission

Rating: General Recommended for audiences age 16 and above

Tickets: $35*

*Limited concessions available for students, NSFs and seniors

Take a trip into the unconventional mind of Turner Prize award-winning artist, Tai Shani, in this exciting new iteration of her film The Neon Hieroglyph, created for SIFA 2022.

With her singular ability to build worlds of arresting and mythic beauty, British artist and the 2019 Turner Prize award winner Tai Shani draws inspiration from forgotten sources, fictional stories and collective fantasies.

The Neon Hieroglyph is a filmic performance that takes audiences into a hallucinatory universe, where Shani unleashes her artistic imagination to an unlikely subject: a speculative history of ergot, a fungus that grows on common grains, linked to mass hallucinations in Europe.

Shani weaves a series of psychedelic vignettes around ergot that encompass a historical narrative between myth and reality, including references to a continuous 450-year outbreak of ergot poisoning in Alicudi, one of seven islands that make up Italy’s Aeolian islands.

With scenes set in ‘impossible places’, The Neon Hieroglyph segues from the cellular to the planetary, from ice cream sundaes to Palaeolithic caves, dancing plagues to communist witches, as Shani weaves her subtle commentaries on altered states, communality and speculative futures.

In the register of the fantastical, immaterial and mystical, Shani casts well-known Malaysian actress Jo Kukathas in the role of narrator for this new exciting iteration of The Neon Hieroglyph, created for SIFA 2022.

Astonishing, iconoclastic and full of surprise, The Neon Hieroglyph is a spectacular filmic performance not to be missed.

The film series The Neon Hieroglyph was commissioned and produced by Manchester International Festival. The project is also commissioned by The British Art Show, and is developed in collaboration with Serpentine’s Back to Earth project. 31

BANGSAWAN GEMALA MALAM

By Teater Ekamatra (Singapore)

2 – 4 Jun, Thu – Sat 8pm Victoria Theatre

2h, No Intermission

Rating to be determined Recommended for audiences age 6 and above Performed in Malay with English surtitles

Tickets: $38*, $48

*Limited concessions available for students, NSFs and seniors

Also available on SIFA On Demand $15 per show $25 for bundle of 4 (U.P $60)

In a merry night of theatre, Singapore ethnic minority theatre company Teater Ekamatra remakes Shakespeare’s classic A Midsummer Night’s Dream, inspired by the splendour of Bangsawan opera and Nusantara.

In its heyday in Singapore in the 1930s and 40s, Bangsawan, a form of Malay operatic theatre, would regale audiences with its fantastical characters, and its mix of drama, music, and dance.

Now, Singapore ethnic minority theatre company Teater Ekamatra presents a lush, contemporary take on Bangsawan, in its highly-original adaption of one of Shakespeare’s beloved plays, A Midsummer Night‘s Dream.

Promising to be the most whimsical of love stories, this comic tale follows four lovers as they escape to the forest, only to be bewitched by fairies in a deceptive game of love and fantasy.

Now set against the exuberance of Nusantara, Bangsawan Gemala Malam revisits Shakespeare’s magicinfused world with music, set and costumes celebrating the region’s cultural vibrancy.

Conceived by Artistic Director Mohd Fared Jainal and directed by Aidli Alin Mosbit, Bangsawan Gemala Malam stars Aisyah Aziz, Rizman Putra, Munah Bagharib, Fir Rahman, and Vanda Miss Joaquim, amongst many other brilliant talents, along with costumes by local fashion designer, Max Tan.

Don’t miss this delightful evening of theatre, as Bangsawan Gemala Malam invites you to revel in the world’s perennial obsessions: love, jealousy and magic.