The Singapore International Festival of Arts returns this month to refine the art of listening with a stage where small voices and undercurrents upgrade their thin slice in the noisy domain of discourse.

This year’s “They Declare” edition completes the three-part overarching theme, “Anatomy of Performance,” which, since 2022, has been laying out a parade of solid work about our relationship with each other against the backdrop of historical, mythological, ancestral and futuristic ways we occupy the world.

“[‘They Declare’] is about the multiplicity of narratives. The title reinforces a state of mind, invites a way of thinking about how we commune with each other through the language of performing arts,” festival director Natalie Hennedige told DAILY TRIBUNE.

“I believe that art is a way to bring us together without destroying each other.”

Where it’s hard to get a word in edgewise because ideas have become impenetrable fortresses, the collaborative carnival brings to the fore the virtues of connection and understanding by aggregating different belief spaces and artistic disciplines to deconstruct the creative process, an unlikely cocktail of the most svelte of contrasts that moves away from the silos of what’s strictly theater, visual arts, dance.

“It’s a more democratic [stage] — a microcosm where different artists can work together and become key collaborators. What happens when a visual artist works with [the ones who use dance as medium]; a fashion designer with a thespian?”

Hennedige dissolves the conventional hierarchies where the director and the playwright sit on top to orchestrate all the work, liberating collaborating artists from the script to tell a story in their own artistic vocabularies while internalizing everything they put in the anatomy of their creation.

Past the thrall of romantic myths and rosy rhetoric, “They Declare” takes our insulated view to the fringes and the outskirts to listen more with an intent to understand rather than an intent to reply.

“Think natural world and its muffled protest against the ravages of man.

“They Declare”, [it begs the question:] What are icebergs telling us? What is it that the ocean had been meaning to say? I’ve always believed that art is there to remind humans to be worthy of the things we inherit. To do that, we need to understand our relationship with the things around us. We can only turn down our own volumes to relate with each other.”

Giving a cursory glance at Singapore and the world’s frenetic theatrical energy, SIFA, like any international contemporary arts festival, has been pushing the envelope of performance to respond to the moment and issues of the day in ways that constantly rethink theater and stage.

SIFA emerged with this attitude from the recent global stasis and made sense of audiences glued to tiny screens, channeling the pandemic into collaborative, artistic creations.

It reframed an opportunity to explore the potential of digital programs and how technologies can be utilized as both the medium and the message.

“[In the thick of the pandemic], we found a way to still create and communicate by creating performances that could be viewed online. We define the stage in SIFA, where artists explore the digital language as part of their creative DNA and not because of social and physical restrictions. The digital vocabulary is like a collaborator, a performer in their work.”