Dive into the Singapore International Festival of Arts 2026: A guide to the premieres and highlights
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Here are closer looks at the must-see shows of the season.
PHOTOS: ARIFFIN JAMAR, JASEL POH, ARTS HOUSE GROUP, MATT BYRNE
SINGAPORE – Veterans and a throwback will headline the Singapore International Festival of Arts 2026, which carries the theme of Legacy.
Theatremaker Chong Tze Chien’s debut outing as festival director sets the scene with a couple of heavyweight marquee attractions. First is festival commission Lush Life, featuring jazz diva Jacintha Abisheganaden holding court in a biographical meta-drama, alongside ex-husband singer-songwriter Dick Lee. It is directed by Ong Keng Sen.
Next up is the return of the festival village, which long-time festivalgoers will remember fondly from prior iterations at Fort Canning and Esplanade Park. Packed with late-night shows and early-bird events, the festival village promises to be a vibe and best of all, admission is mostly free.
The festival is organised by the Arts House Group and commissioned by the National Arts Council. Here are closer looks at the must-see shows of the season.
Lush Life explores Singapore’s nascent pop scene through lives of Jacintha Abisheganaden and Dick Lee
Jacintha Abisheganaden plays herself in Lush Life, based on the story of her life and marriage with Dick Lee.
ST PHOTO: JASEL POH
Jazz singer Jacintha Abisheganaden may have a dreamy way about her, but those around her are palpably nervous. “It’s not blue, is it?” she inquires at one point of her mascara. “No, no, no, no, no blue,” the make-up artist could only stammer.
Despite a lower profile in recent years, Abisheganaden’s bona fide cultural status – a pioneer jazz singer who gained international recognition with albums such as Here’s To Ben (1998) and Autumn Leaves (1999), and a star of 1990s Singapore English theatre – is undiminished.
Arthur Miller goes to Beijing and Singapore in Jeremy Tiang’s Obie Award-winning play
Bilingual theatremaker and host Danny Yeo will direct Singaporean translator and playwright Jeremy Tiang’s Obie Award-winning play Salesman之死.
ST PHOTO: JASEL POH
When Arthur Miller flew to Beijing in 1983 to direct a Mandarin adaptation of his acclaimed tragedy Death Of A Salesman, he faced more than just a language barrier. The American playwright found that his actors – fresh after the Cultural Revolution – could neither fathom the vocation of a travelling salesman nor the concept of selling insurance.
What made the cross-cultural conversation possible was the oft-neglected figure of interpreter Shen Huihui, who is the focus of Singaporean playwright and translator Jeremy Tiang’s Obie Award-winning play Salesman之死. With a Chinese-English title referencing Miller’s play, it opens the Singapore International Festival of Arts with three shows at the Victoria Theatre on May 15 and 16.
T.H.E Dance Company dances with digital avatar in new tech-driven work
Kuik Swee Boon, artistic director of T.H.E Dance Company, which is putting on Strangely Familiar, a hybrid dance imagining the encounter between five dancers and an otherworldly ecosystem.
ST PHOTO: ARIFFIN JAMAR
For its return to the Singapore International Festival of Arts after its landmark As It Fades in 2011, The Human Expression Dance Company has opted for something a little less human.
In keeping with the times, it has spared no expense investing in software Move AI, setting up 10 cameras at its studio in Goodman Arts Centre and working with a local tech team to create a larger-than-life avatar.
Singaporean Golden Horse nominee Yong Ser Pin, 78, faces up to death in Last Rites
Last Rites actor Yong Ser Pin.
ST PHOTO: JASEL POH
When veteran Singaporean actor Yong Ser Pin, 78, imagines who he might want to play in his final performance, he reaches for one of history’s titans – China’s last emperor Puyi, whose dramatic fall forever altered Chinese history, as immortalised in Bernardo Bertolucci’s film The Last Emperor (1987).
The actor, who was nominated for a Golden Horse Award for his role in 2019’s Wet Season, has also considered playing a cultural titan who has changed his life more intimately – the late doyen of Singapore theatre Kuo Pao Kun. In 1966, Yong interviewed at Kuo’s Singapore Performing Arts School, now The Theatre Practice, for a backstage role but was instead handed a script by Kuo to audition as an actor.
At 63, South Korean actress Lee Hye-young turns age into an edge as Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler
Hedda Gabler by the National Theater Company of Korea, which stars Lee Hye-young, comes to Singapore after a sold-out run in South Korea.
PHOTO: ARTS HOUSE GROUP, MATT BYRNE
First staged 135 years ago during the nascent women’s rights movement, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s proto-feminist play Hedda Gabler is only now captivating South Korean audiences. In an unlikely coincidence, two concurrent stagings in May 2025 competed for audiences in Seoul.
South Korean actress Lee Hye-young, 63, who stars as the titular character in the sold out National Theater Company of Korea (NTCK) production, believes it is because of something fundamental about a woman’s existence within the institution of marriage: “It is not only the structural oppression imposed by social systems, but also the invisible constraints women themselves carry – something subtly inherited and internalised from their mothers, and the mothers before them.”
Volcanoes at 6.30am? Three other events to attend at Sifa 2026
Festival director Chong Tze Chien has ensured other unorthodox experiences are in store. Here are three events that might have flown under your radar.
Book It/Singapore International Festival of Arts 2026
Where: Various venues
When: May 15 to 30, various timings
Admission: Ticketed events range from $20 to $88; free admission for others
Info: For a full list of programmes, go to sifa.sg
