Arts industry kicks back into gear, but not without a hitch

SINGAPORE — The prospect of filling every seat in the theatre seemed bright for theatre practitioners in the last week as companies prepared to stage performances to a full house and freelance industry practitioners resumed long-lost roles.

However, the revival of the arts industry, which has been battered by the Covid-19 pandemic in the last two years, is not unfolding without a hitch. 

On Thursday (Feb 24), the Ministry of Health announced that the streamlining of Covid-19 regulations, due to have kicked in on Friday, will be postponed to a later date in view of the current surge in daily cases. The new date will be announced shortly. 

The Government earlier gave the go-ahead to lift seating capacity restrictions in performing arts venues with fewer than 1,000 audience members. 

Despite this, those who receive approval from the National Arts Council (NAC) under its pilot scheme can still go ahead with full capacity audiences.

NAC indicated that all applications are still pending approval, including Singapore Ballet's Gala 2022 that will have 660 audience members, and a performance by Singapore Chinese Orchestra with more than 700 in the audience. 

The NAC scheme, which has received more than 30 applications since its launch last month, will lift the limit on the number of performers that can be unmasked on stage and allow full capacity audiences — so long as they are fully vaccinated and get a negative result for an antigen rapid test.

For the performing arts industry, optimism does not come easily as it has dealt with constantly changing restrictions on live audience capacities in the last two years.

As it is, the latest development on Thursday has put a damper on the already-adjusted plans of several theatre companies.

Mr Adrian Pang, co-artistic director of Pangdemonium, said that the group is now “in yet another state of flux” because it has already made arrangements with ticketing agent Sistic and the show venue to open its staging of The Glass Menagerie at the Victoria Theatre in March at full capacity, following the easing of restrictions last week. 

Mr Pang said that tickets have also been sold at full capacity with no mention of pre-event testing for Covid-19 and the public response has been encouraging.

He added that if the group were to apply for approval under NAC’s pilot scheme, which requires all audience members to undergo pre-event testing, it would cause an issue. 

“If we now say that everyone has to do a a test, there is going to be a huge uproar, not merely about the cost but also the process and the trouble — which the ticket buyers have not had to factor into their decision to buy a ticket," Mr Pang said, adding that ticket sales have been halted.

Ms Melissa Lim, general manager of The Necessary Stage, said that seating capacity for the staging of its show Opposition in March was about to be raised from 30 to 50 people before the news broke on Thursday. 

“So we had to cancel that plan, especially since the Government hasn’t issued a new date (for the easing of measures). We are sort of in limbo because our show is happening really soon, but we can’t keep static as well. We have to plan as-is.”

Mr Ivan Heng, Wild Rice’s artistic director, said that the theatre company will hopefully go ahead with ticket sales for the staging of its show Tartuffe in April at full capacity. 

“We have had numerous starts and stops in the last two years. We have returned tickets and shifted tickets, it has been exhausting,” he added. 

“But we have gone through the Delta wave and now it’s the Omicron wave. In Broadway and West End theatres, they are dealing with Omicron, too, but they still allow full capacity, for people to sit side by side. Because this is what it means to live with the virus. Mask up and go.”

SOME STAY, SOME LEAVE

As the industry kicks back into gear, freelancers — both actors and backstage crew members — who are the lifeblood of the arts industry and make up almost half of arts practitioners here, have been eager to return. 

One of them is theatre technician Kim De Silva, 32, who in the last two years has worked as a part-time barista at a cafe and doing food delivery with GrabFood to replace the income she lost.

Ms De Silva said that she has seen a 30 per cent increase in the number of hours she gets scheduled for a week as the number of shows increases. 

“It’s safe to say that things are slowly starting to fall back in place, in terms of the number of shows coming in, the number of hours we work for and also the different types of shows that can be made possible with the safe management measures,” she added. 

Things are also starting to look up for Ms Neetasha Zam Zam, 27, who has returned to the industry after quitting her administrative job. Though it has only been a week since she took up theatre calls, the staging technician said that her colleagues have been “busier than ever”, working on back-to-back shows.

Ms Neetasha said that she returned because the jobs she had to take up in the last two years — such as working in a production line at a factory, doing quality checks for swab tests and telemarketing — could not match the pay and flexibility that backstage work provides.

The same goes for Mr Krish Natarajan, 26, a freelance actor and artistic director of youth theatre collective Patch and Punnet.

“Sometime last year, I wanted to quit the industry altogether because it started with a lot of promise and then things fizzled out. 

“I thought about finding a full-time job because at that time, my theatre and events company were affected... but at the end of the day, passion overrides. So I looked for temporary solutions as compared to throwing in the towel.”

While some have returned due to passion for their work, many have had to rethink this path, especially since they have found something else in the last two years. 

This was the case for Mr Juhari Adam, 45, who had found another job in healthcare when the closure of theatres took a toll on his income for six months in 2020.

Mr Juhari said that although his passion for the arts remains, and he has since taken up some theatre calls as and when, he is not inclined to make it his full-time gig.

This is because he still feels scarred from the disruption to his livelihood. Now, paying bills and putting food on the table takes priority.

Like Mr Juhari, Ms Muslihah Mujtaba, 28, also shows up when she is called to work as a production and stage manager, but she has moved on to teaching an arts co-curricular activity in schools.

This is after a weary two years, where she worked as a delivery rider, started a home-based business and began teaching arts education.

“I don’t think I will ever really feel what normalcy is, because it looks like the situation will not change in the long run and that this virus is here to stay," she said.

"So as long as that’s the case, I’m always going to have to take it one step at a time, one project at a time and one pay cheque at a time.” 

‘CAUTIOUSLY OPTIMISTIC’

The return of the industry is unfolding with an abundance of caution, especially since the theatre companies that spoke to TODAY said that they have been conditioned to do so in the last two years.

They added that the road to recovery will not be an easy one, especially with many talents gone. 

Ms Kuo Jian Hong, artistic director of The Theatre Practice, said: “In the last two years, we lost many people. People left the industry and people have changed their profession or speciality. 

“So you lose people you have been nurturing, you lose skills and craft that you have been practising and building… it takes a long time to build something and a very short time to destroy it.”

This is also what spurred Mr Heng from Wild Rice to continue to put on shows even when it is operating at a loss. Since its staging of An Actress Prepares in November 2020, the group has put on 20 shows, though not all of them at full capacity. 

Mr Heng said that Wild Rice has 12 productions lined up this year  — the same number of shows they would have staged in a pre-pandemic year. 

These would include its one-woman show Faghag, which was postponed twice and ultimately cancelled last year, and Don’t Call Him Mr Mari Kita, which was a musical tribute to Singaporean composer Zubir Said, staged only for four performances.

“We have planned on working the whole season now that we have some kind of indication of the path ahead,” Mr Heng said.

Wild Rice, which was able to provide 550 jobs to freelancers since November 2020, would continue to engage them as the industry recovers, he added. 

For Mr Pang from Pandemonium, he had hoped that the road to recovery for the industry would not be filled with companies taking one step forward and two steps back. 

“There have been many patrons of our shows from 2021 who have told us that they miss being in a full, packed theatre, sitting shoulder to shoulder with strangers who have come together to commune in a shared space, for a common purpose of sharing the experience of live storytelling…And we have really missed feeling their energy at full force.

“So I sincerely hope that people will now flock back to the theatre so that we can once again have that visceral shared experience of a live performance that is not only entertaining but ultimately, also enlightening and transformative,” he added.