the 2007 Arts Festival finally came to a close on Saturday (for me)...
and it ended with a big bang over the last week...
five plays and one orchestra in two weeks...
this year marks the festival's 30th anniversary...
and the theatre productions were better than past years...
Cogito started the ball rolling for me...
imaging yourself in a world where you have both a physical clone and a cyber replica...
scary, isn't it??
and how will you react when you have to come face-to-face with your doubles...
trying to figure out what happened in the past...
the worst is when you have to "kill" your cyber replica...
what does that tell about you??
Wong Kar Wai Dreams by The Finger Players touched a chord in me...
partly because of the theme of loneliness...
something i am going through at the moment...
soul-searching... self-love...
an exploration of the loneliness in everyone...
even when one is in a close relationship with a friend and her husband...
and how do you react when your best friend's husband dreamt about you??
or when your best friend declared her love to you??
the set decoration was superb...
The Finger Players will definitely go a long way...
Play! A Video Game Symphony conducted by Arnie Roth was cute...
was lucky to get tickets for the additional show...
i couldn't imagine how grand some of the pieces could be if not for this production...
it's refreshing to listen to the live renditions of these beautiful pieces...
the Singapore Festival Orchestra's debut performance provided an alternative to the orchestra scene in Singapore...
i didn't know Super Mario Bros and Sonic The Hedgehog had 3-D versions...
Full Frontal was two directorial debuts for Peter Sau and Li Xie...
Peter's Machine explored the intricate relationship between two couples of strangers...
the joy, pain (literally), betrayal and hatred developed within a couple of days...
do we indulge ourselves in these games??
or do we learn to protect ourselves by avoiding them??
Li Xie's Little White Boat was an adaptation of Kuo Pao Kun's play of the same name staged back in the 1980s...
Li's approach was taking snippets of the play infused into recordings of interviews with Chinese students about their passion back in the 1960s and 1970s...
Kuo Pao Kun's famous for his social and political satires...
something which Li managed to adopt in the play...
do we have the same kind of passion to fight for our beliefs and our rights??
maybe not...
Mabou Mines DollHouse was a classic...
reflecting the imbalance between the sexes which till this day is still relevant...
how do we break away from the repressions one imposes on us??
gender, race, sexuality or religion??
the use of various theatrical styles made this production a rich one...
and the performers were nothing but entertaining, professional and absolutely fabulous...
the post-show talk by Lee Bruer offered insights into his use of the puppets and operatic finale...
Beijing Ren... what can i say?? a near-perfect production...
grand set on stage... flawless performances by the actors and actresses... thought-provoking themes...
maybe a little draggy at times... but the humour made up for it...
wealth does not last forever... neither does love nor kinship...
the selfless sacrifices one makes for the love of one's life...
contrasting that with the hatred one develops for the lack of love from the love of one's life...
the circumstance makes the person or the person makes the circumstance??
on the whole it has been an eventful and rewarding experience at this year's Festival...
and the papers revealed that attendance this year has been much better than last year...
looking forward to another wonderful year at the Arts Festival come 2008...
