The Arab spring, Robert Lepage and a mass bed-in: how Singapore is rethinking festivals

The Singapore International Festival of Arts is a six-week slow burn but a brief fling with key performances proves rewardingUnlike the prevalent model in the UK, the US and Australia, where festivals occur in hyper-concentrated bursts of creative energy, Ong Keng Sun builds his festival with a slow burn.Now in his third year as director of the Singapore International Festival of Arts (Sifa), Ong languorously stretches its 20 works out over a six-week period, itself proceeded by a “pre-fes