New arts festival director Kripalani to stay involved at SRT

SINGAPORE — Gaurav Kripalani, the recently appointed Festival Director for Singapore International Festival of Arts (Sifa), experienced internal debate before making the decision to become involved with the festival.

He was worried that he would have to give up his commitment as artistic director at Singapore Repertory Theatre (SRT) while running the annual festival. But Kripalani has been given the green light to stay involved with the drama group, while with Sifa.

“Over the past 20 years, I am still excited to go to work ... One of the key things that swayed me to say ‘yes’ to Sifa was the Arts House’s willingness to allow me to carry on doing work (with SRT).”

Kripalani takes over the festival director role at Sifa from Ong Keng Sen, who will be the helming the fourth edition of the fest this year. Ong took a four-year leave of absence from homegrown theatre company TheatreWorks, where he was artistic director, to run the festival.

SRT will be celebrating its 25th anniversary next year, but because the next three years’ worth of production programming have been cemented, Kripalani is confident he can span dual roles.

At SRT, “a phenomenal season of blockbusters” has been planned, said Kripalani, including Hand to God, which will be staged in May. Forbidden City will also make a comeback at the Esplanade in August.

“Kit Chan is going to come back, (actress) Cheryl Tan is going to share the stage with her. We’ve got (West End actor) Earl Carpenter who did 2,000 performances of Les Miserables,” said Kripalani.

He intends to continue in the tone set by Ong in his term at Sifa. Under Ong, Sifa has seen record-breaking numbers in attendance. Sifa drew 155,000 people in 2016, up from 62,000 in 2015.

Kripalani said Ong has also helped provide local arts practitioners “with resources and a platform to do work they would not be able to do otherwise”. That “should be definitely be the purpose of the festival”, he added. He will spend the next few months “meeting all the relevant stake-holders and sponsors, and find out what excites them all and then create the programme that best marries all those enterprises”, he said.

In the meantime, Kripalani laments that he cannot take to the stage himself again, given the turn of events in his appointments.

Even though the veteran theatre practitioner made his acting comeback in the play Disgraced last year, he said: “I can safely say I will not be acting for the next three years.

“Just to act in a play for me takes 100 per cent of my life. Given what it takes to run Sifa successfully, I don’t think I will be acting. Maybe in four years’ time,” he said. Reena Devi