In 2020, Gaurav Kripalani and his team were in the midst of preparing for the Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA) when the dreaded pandemic struck.

The festival – one of the world’s largest of its kind – scheduled to take place between 15 to 31 May 2020 had to be cancelled as Singapore entered into a nationwide lockdown. To the Festival Director Gaurav Kripalani and his team, it was a “gut-wrenching” experience.

“The whole SIFA team has been working tirelessly for three years to bring this festival to you. To have it not go-ahead two months before it was to take place is gut-wrenching for all of us, as well as a huge disappointment to all the artists involved. But all of us fully support and recognise that these are extraordinary times that require extraordinary measures in order to keep everyone safe. I look forward to working with NAC, AHL, and the arts community to make sure our national arts festival grows from strength to strength when we overcome this current challenge,” he had said in 2020.

A year later, Gaurav and his team returned with a vengeance. This time, they were much better prepared to counter any form of eventualities the pandemic was to throw at them. COVID-19 was not going to stop the festival from going ahead. Not this time.

Here’s Gaurav, in his own words, on how SIFA quickly regrouped and planned their programmes for 2021’s edition of the festival digitally.

Copied and pasted from Eksentrika.

Copied and pasted from Eksentrika.

Gaurav, first up, congratulations on a well-curated SIFA despite the challenges stacked against you and your team. Was there any moment where you felt like cancelling SIFA again because of the pandemic?

Thank you! I was fortunate to have an incredible team around me who remained positive despite everything that was thrown at us, so no, we never felt like cancelling. After the disappointment of having to cancel the festival in 2020, one of the central programming decisions for SIFA 2021 was to have in place Plan A, B, C, D etc so that we would be prepared to mount the festival regardless of what happened.

Nothing beats the physical experience of catching a show, as many would say. What were some of the innovations that SIFA explored and implemented to ensure that festival-goers were still able to retain the joy of catching a show in real life?

We programmed 60 productions, over 300 performances in SIFA 2021. I was told it’s one of the largest art festivals with both live and online events to take place anywhere in the world since the start of the pandemic last year. To ensure that everyone stayed safe, we implemented safe distancing in venues, pre-event antigen rapid testing, thorough sanitisation between performances, temperature taking, and ensured that everyone checked in with their TraceTogether app.

Copied and pasted from Eksentrika.

Copied and pasted from Eksentrika.

How did the team go about selecting the performances and shows? What was the priority this time around when it came to the curation of these shows?

When I was asked to stay on as Festival Director for SIFA 2021, the initial brief was to move as many of the programmes from the cancelled festival in 2020 to 2021. As this pandemic continued, I realised we needed to start from scratch. We needed to programme a festival that was a direct response to the here and now; to the world we were all living in. We wanted to re-invent how festivals are conceptualised. We chose to collaborate with exceptional artists and companies who could adapt to this new world by creating work using a variety of technologies to serve their art. And we also focused on care, compassion and community. Art can serve to heal, to allow one to care for oneself, to care for each other, and to care for our environment.

The world has suddenly shrunk. Due to the pandemic and technology, many are able to connect with people across the sea virtually. Were there more non-Singaporeans this year compared to previous years? What was their response like?

While the bulk of viewers are from Singapore, we are heartened to see audiences from Malaysia, the US, UK, Japan and many more countries.

One extremely clever initiative is the SIFA Video On Demand. Can you please share what was the inspiration behind this idea and how did it even come about?

One big lesson the arts community around the world has learnt from this pandemic is that we all need to have better archive recordings of our shows and that they should be of broadcast quality! We made the decision to professionally film 17 Singaporean festival commissions. This would be our gift to the Singaporean artists who were part of SIFA this year. Because of the limited seating capacities in venues, SIFA On Demand would allow many more people an opportunity to enjoy the work of these artists. And with all the travel restrictions in place, all these artists would now have a global audience for their work.

Copied and pasted from Eksentrika.

Copied and pasted from Eksentrika.

How much profit would the artists and productions be able to generate from the purchase of these shows on SIFA Video On Demand?

The motive behind filming these shows was never profit. The cost of doing a multi-camera professional recording is quite high. The reasons for doing it are what I’ve mentioned in response to the previous question. One thing we did implement was a slide at the start and end of each recording encouraging viewers to make donations directly to the artists to support their work.

I noticed that these shows on SIFA Video On Demand will be available for a limited time only. How long is “limited” and are there plans to make them available as pay-per-view?

These 17 festival commissions are up on SIFA On Demand till 20 June and tickets can be purchased here.

Copied and pasted from Eksentrika.

Copied and pasted from Eksentrika.

Gaurav, final question. Since you’ve had a front-row seat (and stage experience too) in taking an arts festival virtually, what is your advice to our regional friends who might be considering doing the same thing? What are some things they should be mindful of? Feel free to elaborate on the do’s and don’ts, Gaurav, as I feel your insight would be extremely valuable to them.

One of the key decisions I made when we set out to programme SIFA this year was that none of our virtual programming would be passive. What I mean by that is all our digital content featured the artists appearing live. You would have to interact with them. You could not just sit back on your couch and watch passively. I feel this is going to become a key element of festival programming going forward. Finding and working with artists who are able to adapt their work in a way that allows them to engage with audiences digitally.

Only after our live performances had taken place, we then made them available via SIFA On Demand. We consciously chose not to live stream stage productions. We chose to properly film, edit and then present the work. As an audience member, I would rather watch a well-edited show with good lighting and sound rather than a live stream which could hang due to a poor internet connection.

One of the big advantages of presenting work digitally is that you can have a global audience.

I am also proud of the fact that we did Creative Captioning for most of the shows in order to make them more accessible to audiences with special needs.

Copied and pasted from Eksentrika.

All images in this feature were supplied by Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA). 

Copied and pasted from Eksentrika.

You can enjoy well-curated performances on SIFA On Demand. If you’re a creative who wants to be featured, get in touch with us here.