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SINGAPORE : What could be further from the creative freedom of art than the strict rules and regulations of the law?
Well the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival this year is going to explore the relationship between these unlikely bed fellows: art and the law.
A series of controversial and thought-provoking theatre performances, dance shows, music concerts and visual art exhibitions, both local and international, are going to ask difficult questions about what happens when art and law collide.
Apart from the obvious like works that touch on issues of legalities, the festival's co-artistic director and The Necessary Stage's resident playwright Haresh Sharma said the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival also touches on other aspects of laws like laws of nature, societal laws and familial laws.
"What we try to do with the festival is that we may have what may appear as a simple theme or a simple word, but we bring in art works that complexifies what the theme can be about," said Haresh.
"There are works that kind of open up the meaning of what law is about."
One such piece is "____ Can Change" which is made up of three plays about change – "Singles Can Change", "Homosexuals Can Change" and "Marxists Can Change".
It features an ensemble cast of Chua Enlai, Siti Khalijah, Rodney Oliveiro and Nora Samosir, and at the end of the performance, there will be a discussion where the audience is invited to share their views on the production and fill in their own blank in the title.
Written by Haresh and directed by The Necessary Stage artistic director Alvin Tan, the production looks at issues are that are very pro-family and pro-society.
In "Singles Can Change", a career-minded woman is persuaded by her family to get married and "contribute to society by having children" while "Homosexuals Can Change" sees a young man trying to change from a homosexual to a heterosexual for his mother.
"He goes through a process of trying to change through therapy, counselling, and eventually he does break up with his partner and he does find a girlfriend and gets married and he has children.
"So in that sense we are looking at what is the intrinsic law of a human being. If it is in his nature to be a homosexual, then is it going against his nature and then it brings up the whole debate of can they change, can they not change, or is it nature or nurture," said Haresh.
"The whole point of the fringe is to challenge. I think the audiences in Singapore want that challenge. There are commercial shows which they like but the whole point of having a festival and calling it a fringe festival is that it sets to provoke or to challenge mindsets so that people are ready to respond," he added.
"___ Can Change" runs from January 13 to 16 at the Gallery Theatre, National Museum of Singapore. More information on the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival at singaporefringe.com.
- CNA/il
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