GCE H1 GP Paper 1 2010

Would it matter if all the performing arts venues in your society, such as concert halls and theatres, were closed down?

Subject: it (wth does “it” mean???)

Context: your society (hypothetical)

Qualifier: would (or not) matter if all the performing arts venues, such as concert halls and theatres, were closed down

Logical test: How to determine if X does or does not matter (to whom)?

Essay approach:

Ø Identify function and role of performing arts venues in society

Ø Identify circumstances under which they might be closed down

Ø Identify implications closure might have on society

Ø Identify the likelihood of such widespread closure

Ø Hence, determine the importance and/or value of performing arts venues to society

(Not matter < importance/value < does matter)

Introduction:

Performing arts venues are community facilities housing the performance and display of ‘live’ aesthetic events ranging from music to theatrical productions. Because such performances are presented to paying audiences, performers and performances are expected to meet professional standards, implying that society is at a level of specialization such that we can spare a group of people to focus on and train in the arts without having to make a direct contribution to the economy – though many performers in our society still do, at least on a part-time basis. Even though there are free and amateur performances available in our society, the expectation of professional polish still holds or there would be little to attract an audience to public performances. Thus, as a society grows and prospers, it is able to channel an increasing amount of its available resources towards activities that are less crucial to developing the economy, but more enriching to quality of life. Therefore, the closure of performing arts venues is likely to hurt our society’s desirability as a place to live in but if we’re somehow struggling to shore up a declining economy, we are not likely to miss them very much.

Function and role in society:

Performing arts venues are basically spaces, generally designed to allow the audience to have the best possible view of the performance which usually takes place on a raised stage. The performances are often enhanced with specialized lighting and a sound system operated by an expert professional crew. Better venues are also capable of creating dynamic visual effects through specially designed stages and sets that mechanically conceal entrances and exits or split the stage by different heights and levels, depending on the requirements of the performance.

In Singapore there are performing spaces at the community level such as the public plaza in front of Ngee Ann City and on the roof garden of Vivocity; and various amphitheatres scattered around neighbourhood centres such as in Bedok and Toa Payoh, though these are seldom used for performances – in fact, they are seldom used at all other than to say that the neighbourhood has one. Singapore’s most successful outdoor performance space is probably on Fort Canning Hill which often hosts foreign guest artists as well as the locally produced “Shakespeare Under the Stars” event, though the large outdoor concert arena at the newly-opened Gardens-by-the-Bay looks likely to become a serious competitor with the inaugural performance given by Jason Mraz. In September, when the F1 comes to town, the Padang makes a temporary transformation into a concert venue hosting other chart-topping artists including LMFAO and Far East Movement (2011); while Katy Perry and Maroon 5 headline the guest list in 2012. Local production companies perform in smaller venues such as the Substation black-box; the Black-Box Theatre situated in the National Library; the DBS Auditorium; and recently the performing space at the School of the Arts. A few local academic institutions also boast of having a professional performing space on campus, for example the NUS Arts and Cultural Centre; ACJC and HCI. “World-class” performing spaces include the Esplanade which is shared by both local and foreign productions, while the international blockbusters of performing arts tend to now be hosted at our two Integrated Resorts: Marina Bay Sands (“The Lion King”, “Wicked”, “Avenue Q”) and Resorts World Sentosa (“Voyage de la Vie”).

Although it is clear what function performing arts venues serve, the role they play in Singapore society is more complicated. As we’ve seen, most of our performing arts venues showcase world-famous professional acts. Because Singapore is identified as an important destination for these performers looking to break into the Asian market, their concerts and performances here give us a lot of prestige in the international community, while the tourist dollar coming in from the better-off citizens of our neighbouring countries to enjoy performers they have heard about but are unlikely to make them a personal visit benefits our economy both directly in ticket sales and indirectly through hotel stays, F&B and retail shopping. Hosting such acts also gives our society vibrancy and makes us relevant to the trendsetters of the global community.

While it is necessary for Singapore to maintain its reputation as a world player, the way we utilize our performing arts arenas primarily as revenue generators for our tourist industry tends to dampen our enthusiasm to develop our own home-grown cultural and artistic identity. Because of their professional set-up, many of our performing venues are prohibitively expensive to stage local productions in. Besides, with so many “world-class” performances going on around us all-year round, it is not easy to attract an audience to enjoy a local production, few of which can match the experience offered by our foreign competition.

This is not to say that we have had no local successes. Dick Lee’s “Forbidden City” is arguably our best theatrical endeavour to date; Ekachai Uekrongtham’s “Chang & Eng” has likewise gained some international attention. Other notable local theatrical companies that deliver quality productions are Theatreworks; Singapore Repertory Theatre; The Necessary Stage; I Theatre; Toy Factory Ensemble; and The Theatre Practice. However, local theatre tends to be fragmented in its appeal due to different groups incorporating and adapting different influences and theatrical styles and catering to rather specific language groups. Thus, lacking in universal appeal it is difficult for any of these companies to organize a truly Singaporean ‘blockbuster’ that everyone can get behind. Hence the support and audience for local productions often limits our productions to smaller venues such as the Substation, the NLB’s Black Box Theatre and the tiny studio theatre at the Esplanade where seating capacity numbers in the low hundreds.

At the current moment, performance venues in Singapore tend to play the role of status symbols contributing towards our criteria for considering ourselves among the Developed Nations, but in terms of contributing towards the creation of a national identity and a culture to call our own, there are barely enough affordable venues to go around in which local productions can match the expectations of local audiences spoiled by our competitors’ budgets for bigger and better production values.

Factors for the closure of performing arts venues:

The kind of performing arts venues we have are expensive to build, maintain and operate. Hence, they are run as long as proceeds from the productions they host keep them viable. For the bigger productions, ticket prices are very high, as with the price of merchandise and memorabilia at the gift shop. The most likely reason for closing our performing arts venues is therefore economic. In times of economic crisis, people focus on spending on what they consider to be necessities. With the perception that arts events are expensive to attend, the pragmatic Singaporean (or any other sensible person, for that matter) is likely to tighten his belt and forego enrichment for needs. As the audience dwindles, so too is the ability of a venue to continue functioning.

Another possibility is that the audience could dwindle due to competition from recorded, broadcast, and now social media which offer audiences more convenient and affordable experiences tailored specifically to their individual tastes. With mobile devices, information, culture and entertainment are easily downloadable end enjoyed in high quality video streams on demand wherever a person is. A single purchase of a smartphone and a subscription to a reputable service provider could be worth the cost of a just a few tickets to a ‘live’ performance that has to be experienced only once synchronously with the venue, the performers and fellow audience members in an environment that frowns on snacking and side-conversations. Besides, with Singapore’s strict policies on media content, particularly those presented at ‘live’ performances, Singaporeans with more… particular tastes may not find a ‘live’ public performance to their preference as easily as they would online in the privacy of their own home. With an increasingly small audience that can appreciate ‘live’ theatre, it is possible that theatres could become redundant and close in time.

A more drastic reason for the widespread closure of performing arts venues is a political upheaval followed by some kind of extremist regime change. As with the Chinese Cultural Revolution and with the cultural purge in Cambodia when the Chinese Communist Party and the Khmer Rouge took power in their respective countries, the intention was to make the people ‘forget’ the past and force everyone to look forward to a bright new future with the new leadership at the helm. Likewise, certain extreme subversive elements like the Taliban and the groups they inspire (e.g., Jemmah Islamiyah, Abu Sayyaf) would ban public artistic performances if they were ever to take control of a country as they believe their religion forbids such practices.

Impact on Singapore society:

The closure of performing arts venues due to economic reasons will have less impact on us compared to the economic reasons themselves. If such a contingency should arise, it has got to be due to some global catastrophe, in which case losing spaces for performers to prance around and entertain the rest of us in the audience would be the least of our problems. How to maintain order in a state of cannibalism would definitely rise to the top of our priority list – unless somehow our criteria for who eats whom has something to do with who can entertain hungry people best.

Likewise, should there be an extremist regime change, our immediate survival trumps the need to be entertained and maintain some kind of culture for ourselves. Besides our new overlords would be dictating what kind of culture we should be embracing, and if it isn’t ‘live’ entertainment, then perhaps a life of prayer, fasting and self-flagellation would be just as appealing to us, considering which end we are likely to be of an AK-47.

The impact of more concern for us would be if we closed down our performing arts venues voluntarily or by default. Regardless of how foreign-dominated our performing arts scene is and how spoiled our audiences are, our smaller companies are still making headway in getting our fellow citizens to appreciate a collective (if not necessarily universal) Singaporean experience. Performances of “Army Daze”; “Emily of Emerald Hill”; “Fried Rice Paradise”; and artists such as Hossan Leong, Sebastian “Broadway Beng” Tan and the Dim Sum Dollies capture local grassroot sensibilities from uniquely Singaporean behavioural quirks to our historical mythologies to current domestic politics, resonate with the Singaporean public and in a small way are distilling our cultural identity and making us proud of who we are, warts and all.

While it can be argued that all of their performances can easily be put on video and streamed online, our performing arts venues put Singaporeans together at the same time. We see what everyone else sees, hear what they hear, laugh when they laugh and cry when they cry. Thus ‘live’ performances unite each separate audience member with every other audience member, and bind them together in a shared experience that recorded media is currently unable to match. Losing our performing arts venues will mean losing yet another opportunity for our disparate people to learn about one another, to socialize with one another on a real-time f-2-f basis, and instead further reinforce the general consensus that we live in a dog-eat-dog, winner-take-all, every-man-for-himself society. Such a society is not healthy for us, especially so as we are already a nation of immigrants with little else to bind us together apart from the colour of our IDs and passports, our strange accent, and the mania to accumulate our own wealth and feather our own nests because “nobody owes us a living”, as one of our National Education tenets tell us.

The likelihood of closure:

Given that it has taken roughly 40 years since independence for us to invest in performing arts infrastructure – and such lovely ones too – there is a palpable confidence in the economy to both aspire towards becoming an arts hub in Southeast Asia and to put so much of our resources towards developing it to “world-class” standards. Despite the recent recession and global economic crises, the demand for ‘live’ arts events remains strong. Part of this success is due to public schools that are training and exposing their students to the performing arts through subsidies like Edusave and the Opportunity Fund to offset the cost of attending such performances.

The local theatre community is also partly funded through offering their expertise to schools’ via various Arts in Education programmes. Their involvement in schools is also aimed at growing the ‘live’ performance audience, hence keeping alive the need for performing arts venues in our society. In the meantime, while our regional neighbours play catch-up with us, their better-off citizens still take the opportunity to catch the must-watch spectacles that we host here, or else they would have to travel to Europe or the USA at a much greater expense.

Beyond being the anathema that social media is perceived to be, it is instead pushing our people to appreciate being present at ‘live’ events, if only for the Instagram opportunities that tell their friends “wish you were here”, though what they really mean to say is “be jealous ‘cos I’m here and you’re not”. And who can resist the glimmer of the possibility of being photographed or, even better, video-captured with a superstar performer in person? People today live to post such experiences on their Facebook wall for the ‘likes’ and comments they attract.

Conclusion:

It is highly unlikely that all performing arts venues would ever be closed in Singapore. Due to the vagaries of the market, it is possible for a few to experience income flow problems, sufficient to warrant closure, but on the whole, there will be continuous demand for the big ones bringing in international performers to remain viable. To close all performing arts venues would require a major catastrophe of apocalyptic proportions such that few would notice, let alone miss the “Durian” or the big shows at the IRs. What would matter, however, is the potential loss of smaller, cheaper performing arts venues which house our truly local productions. Their loss could spell disaster for the development of a cultural and artistic expression of our own, thus losing one crucial way in which we can unify our people through a shared and common experience we can all identify with and rally around. But with the efforts of the National Arts Council, schools and the theatre companies working together, we are doing what we can to avert this unnecessary crisis. Knock on wood.

Xmac2006 (13 Sept 2012)