East meets West at Singapore Arts Festival

A. Junaidi ,  The Jakarta Post ,  Singapore   |  Sat, 06/21/2008 12:22 PM  |  Entertainment

The month-long Singapore Art Festival will end on June 22 with one performance by The Lunatics of the Netherlands.

In the final, free theater performance, award-winning The Lunatics will perform their Hydro Sapiens act on Sunday at Bedok Reservoir.

Through the performance, which is part of the Water Wonder Series, The Lunatics want to answer several questions, such as what is the power of water? How weak can it make you? Should we fear it, love it or hate it?

The group, which is known for its ingenious acts and own brand of powerful poetic imagery, often playing with elements of air, fire, water and earth, will deliver their latest water fantasy.

Organizers of the festival this year were able to book bright performances from Asia and Europe, showcasing diversity, understanding, mutual learning and cooperation.

Groups from Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and Singapore, and acts from "the West", such as those from France, Slovenia, Canada, Italy and Germany, were staged in the annual festival.

Combining the Eastern music of Chinese opera's Peony Pavilion with Elizabethan music from Shakespeare's Hamlet and Othello, Singaporean noted director Ong Keng Sen staged a dramatic musical act titled Awaking from June 13 to 14.

Ong collaborated with Chinese composer Qu Xiau Song, musicians from the Singapore Chinese Orchestra and the Musicians of the Globe led by Phillip Picket, who is familiar with classical English music.

The show explored the philosophies of love, death and afterlife as represented by two masterful playwrights -- Tang Xian Zu (author of Peony Pavilion) and Shakespeare.

"We started intensively preparing the show six months ago. I just wanted to show the concept of love, death and afterlife in the two cultures," Ong said after the performance last week.

Ong said he initially wanted to marry the music from Peony Pavilion and Romeo and Juliet, as they carried the same theme.

"But there is no music in Romeo and Juliet. So, we combined Peony Pavilion music with that of Hamlet and Othello."

As a result, beautiful compositions accompanied by the voice of Chinese opera singer Wei Chun Ron and soprano Joanne Lunn delighted audiences who were already astonished by the stage setting of an eternal garden with a perfect lighting arrangement.

Ong's effort to marry the Eastern soul of music with a Western arrangement might seem to some as a less-than-perfect match. But this, Ong said, is probably due to different philosophies of love and death: In a Western mind, when love ends with death, it's just over, finished, while in the East, it's just a new beginning, of afterlife.

Awaking was not the only piece that explored Shakespeare's works in the Singapore Arts Festival. The King Lear Project: A Trilogy, which was co-directed by Singaporean Ho Tsu Nyen, was another performance that explored the works of the English master author.

Staged from June 11 to 13 at the Drama Center Theater, the show managed to attract a young audience with a contemporary presentation and quotes from Lear -- but for those familiar with Lear, some roles in the show, such as that of the interpreter, were not necessary, if somewhat disturbing.

However, as the festival director Goh Ching Lee said, the festival aimed to give Singaporean artists a stage to explore their works as well as a chance to meet with other Asian and European artists.

"We are not just looking outward but also keeping traditions," Goh told The Jakarta Post last week.

Singaporean traditional groups, such as Sri Warisan Som Said with its Malay tradition and Bhaskar's Arts Academy with its Indian roots, as well Mayangsari Group with Bengkulu tradition from Indonesia, were given stages in the festival.

Other performances showed in the final days of the festival, including the Cantonese Opera by Wuchuan City Cantonese Opera Troupe, which started its show on June 13 and ended on June 20, showed a strong repertoire amid the changing times and tastes of the audience.

Apart from tight and well-scripted plots, the troupe performed risky acts, such "bursting the lotus", "dual mirrors" and "jumping chairs", that obviously required extensive training and precise acrobatic movements.

The Temple, a play about the unique multi-layered experiences of seven people, which was staged by the Singapore's Cake Theatrical Production, will also be shown at the Napoli Teatro Festival in Italy later this year.

Copyright © 2008 The Jakarta Post - PT Bina Media Tenggara. All Rights Reserved.