Volcanoes at 6.30am? Three other events to attend at Sifa 2026

SINGAPORE – Every festival has its blockbusters.

At Singapore International Festival of Arts 2026, tickets for Singapore playwright and translator Jeremy Tiang’s Obie Award-winning play Salesman之死; jazz singer Jacintha Abisheganaden and former husband Dick Lee’s rare concert-biopic Lush Life; and South Korean actress Lee Hye-young’s take on Norwegian playwright Henrik ibsen’s proto-feminist play Hedda Gabler are already being snapped up.

The more experimental can look to Last Rites, in which five Asian performers enact their swansong; and T.H.E Dance Company’s Strangely Familiar, an imagining of five dancers’ encounter with an otherworldly ecosystem.

But festival director Chong Tze Chien has also ensured other unorthodox experiences are in store. Here are three events that might have flown under your radar.

1. Festival Village

Keen to ensure continuity in Singapore’s arts heritage, Chong has restored the festival village of the 2000s. In front of the Victoria Theatre, and stretching further to Esplanade Park, expect a wayang stage, a market and a carousel.

Chong wants to recreate the “festival vibe”, which entails people simply hanging out. Ninety per cent of festival village activities – including those stretching till late so people have a space to discuss what they have just watched – are free.

Several events taking place on festival grounds include Noli Timere, an aerial performance on a net sculpture, and Just Keep Swimming, Just Keep Swimming by The Theatre Practice that comes with movement and soundscapes to stimulate intergenerational conversation.

Wake at dawn on May 28, 29 and 30 for The Observatory’s two hour volcano-inspired sound installation and performance Rupture, an arty caffeine shot to start the day.

2. Makan Culture

This is a $20 interactive feast of Singapore’s iconic dishes conceptualised by versatile home-grown theatremaker Jo Tan.

Its “low-brow” premise is a meta one, starting off with a community performance before a critic disrupts proceedings with her ideas of “worthiness” and art.

Tan dines the audience and performers into answering the question of what constitutes prestige. Its cast is a multiracial one: actors Krish Natarajan, Fahim Murshed, Ellison Tan, Dennis Sofian and Masturah Oli.

There will be halal-friendly bites such as rojak, kaya toast and dry laksa to go with raucous theatre and puppetry.

3. Hamlet

A cast with Down syndrome reimagines William Shakespeare’s existential Hamlet.

At Sifa in 2025, Singapore theatremaker Ramesh Meyyappan, who is deaf, gave a wordless but stunning iteration of King Lear.

In perhaps the same spirit, this work by Peru’s Teatro La Plaza is guaranteed to be another frontier-pushing one that again proves the Bard’s endless potential for reinterpretation and contemporisation.

Featuring child actors, it leans heavily into critique of how society treats disability, drawing a parallel between the outsider Danish prince and these children’s place in the world.

Go to sifa.sg for more information