More Than Ever

Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA) returns from May 16 to June 1, 2025 with the theme More Than Ever. Organised by Arts House Limited, a not-for-profit committed to enriching lives through the arts, and commissioned by Singapore’s National Arts Council, this edition of the country’s pinnacle performing arts festival spotlights Singapore’s cultural vitality and boldness in defining its present and its vision for the future. In Singapore’s 60th year of independence, SIFA marks this milestone with its largest ever showcase of homegrown talent, featuring 15 commissioned works by Singapore artists—the highest number in the Festival’s history.

Speaking on the Festival’s theme Festival Director Natalie Hennedige shared, “In a world afflicted with the rhetoric of divide, More Than Ever, we need to resist limiting binaries and relate to each other in nuance. In doing so, we uphold the station of the Arts as a vital space in society that explores differences in opinions, accepts otherness and maintains the past, present, and future as entities that perpetually influence and shape each other, engendering new narratives on a supple timeline that moves forwards, cyclically or in any imaginable configuration.”

Continuing its tradition of fostering creative dialogue between international and local artists, SIFA 2025 showcases a diverse line-up through six curation strands: New Urban Realities: Classics Reinvented; History Reimagined; We, International; State of the Arts; and PRISM 48. The line-up includes:

Animal Farm (Singapore commission) by The Finger Players fuses masterful puppetry with rich theatrical storytelling to offer a fresh, visually stunning take on George Orwell’s cautionary parable.

LEAR (Singapore commission) by Ramesh Meyyappan is a bold contemporary reimagining of a Shakespearean classic told through Meyyappan’s trademark visual storytelling.

Umbilical (Singapore commission) by Rizman Putra, Zul Mahmod, and thesupersystem presents a dynamic blend of movement, music, visual projections and AI integration that explores identity, belonging and relationships, with a focus on Singapore and Malaysia’s Separation (1964–65).

A Thousand Stitches (Singapore commission) by Kaylene Tan and Alan Oei is a moving story of friendship, heartbreak and loss told through performance, painting and live cinema, set against the Japanese Occupation of Singapore.

COLONY—A True Colors Project (Singapore commission) is an explosive fusion of dance, music, movement where dancers from Southeast Asia and Japan create an imagined world—a colony—in movement.

HOME by Geoff Sobelle (US) is a large-scale performance work that explores and explodes the relationship between “house” and “home” through dance, illusion, live music and homespun engineering.

Told By My Mother by Ali Chahrour (Lebanon) is a a dance ode to the everyday heroines in our lives. Chahrour draws from his own family history and in torn-up Lebanon to weave a tapestry of stories.

VAMPYR by Manuela Infante (Chile) is a mockumentary about stubborn shapeshifting creatures—half-dead, half-earth—that refuse to obey the mandate of the nature/culture divide.

LATTICE (International commission) by Tokyo-born, New York-based artist Karyn Nakamura (US) is a video installation with mesmerising visual abstractions capturing the urban milieu.

SIFA 2025’s opening performance The Sea and the Neighbourhood—a multidisciplinary work inspired by coastal heritage, neighbourhood charm, and modernity—takes place at the SIFA Pavilion, designed to be a transient arts space in the Singapore heartland. This colossal gathering of multidisciplinary expression has as its centrepiece a large-scale art installation that doubles as a performance stage by Singapore visual artist Wang Ruobing, and features composer Philip Tan, choreographer Christina Chan with Singapore Ballet, and video artist Brian Gothong Tan, capturing the ebb and flow of Singapore’s collective past, present, and future.

Little SIFA returns for its second edition, setting up camp at Empress Lawn and offering free family-friendly programmes. Little SIFA’s programmes include a kinetic soundscape installation The House Between the Winds by Singapore artist Yang Jie, a special presentation by Singapore’s first all- inclusive orchestra The Purple Symphony, and a variation of The Finger Players’ Animal Farm.

For the full festival details, please visit sifa.sg / media kit.