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About the event
Pompeii is a meditation on the archaeology of intimacy. Played out on a live soundstage, in which the lives of an imagined apartment building’s inhabitants materialize before us, the work invites audiences to question if the objects and spaces that we leave behind in death represent that which we were or betray the true nature of ourselves, denied in life.
Trapped in a bomb-shelter, a narrator tells us the story of an apartment block in which the lives of its residents were anything but - until a catastrophe reduced them to the inanimate, their lives existing only as object and memory. A still-life painter ponders the permanence of objects; a husband and wife negotiate the vastness between them within the confines of their tiny apartment; an old man coming to terms with his own end forms a relationship with a child who is unaware of hers. As they hurtle towards their inevitable end, the apartment is transfigured into a museum celebrating the beauty of quotidian human banality.
About the organizer
SIFA 2023: THE ANATOMY OF PERFORMANCE - SOME PEOPLE
This year's title engages with the idea that the human experience exists on a spectrum. We are the sum of all the narratives that chapter and alter our lives; each trial and transformation, what our ancestors and communities have had to struggle through, our experiences as children and adults, things inherited and circumstances imposed on our lives shape how we move through life and experience the world.
When we encounter performance, we witness perspectives we can relate to, or that differ from our own, maybe even challenge our held beliefs, yet when we agree to remain in the performance space together, our personal worldview expands as we take in another’s.
Each SIFA edition features three tracks of curated offerings: CREATION, Life Profusion and SIFA X.
Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA) returns from 19 May to 4 June 2023 with the theme The Anatomy of Performance - Some People. The festival will feature many exciting Singapore and International productions such as Pompeii by Edith Podesta (AU/SG) and K. Rajagopal (SG), Materia by Andrea Salustri (IT), Angel Island by Huang Ruo (US) and Brian Gothong Tan (SG) and many more.
Tickets start from $25. For full festival line-up or to book tickets, visit sifa.sg!