Ong Keng Sen’s experience as director of the national festival has shed light on overt and covert censorship of the arts in Singapore

In many ways, theatremaker Ong Keng Sen was a natural fit to run the Singapore international festival of arts when it relaunched in 2014.

A recipient of Singapore’s Cultural Medallion, Ong’s company TheatreWorks signalled a new creative movement when it was founded in 1985. He was there for the birth of Singapore’s arts scene and 30 years later is still a major player within it.



But for a festival run by a famously restrictive government, Ong was also a risky choice: an outspoken artist known for avant garde experimental work, and for pushing buttons that others wouldn’t push.

Singapore arts festival was founded in 1977, organised and funded by the government and curated largely by bureaucrats. But in 2012, battling dwindling ticket sales, it was put on hiatus. The National Arts Council launched a six-month industry review, which recommended the festival be brought back with an international focus and the government kept at arm’s length.

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“You can’t go into a new festival with censorship hanging over your head,” Ong explains over lunch. “That was the only reason why I would take the job: if it was not going to be a government directed festival ... [but] the promise of no censorship evaporated within about 15 months.”

With his final festival closing this weekend, before the baton is passed to new artistic director Gaurav Kripalani, Ong is eager to speak about the arts in Singapore, and his history battling the various bodies which regulate it.

“I wouldn’t want to go on for another four years,” he says. “I feel drained by the fighting.”

‘You’re not told what’s not possible’

In just 50 years since independence, Singapore has established itself as a global city-state, one of the richest places on earth and one of the most expensive to live in. It’s clean, safe, multicultural and meticulously organised: a green city with nature parks, biodomes and waterviews, with gardens falling down the sides of skyscrapers built on reclaimed land, and some of the best schools, and food, in the world.

One marker of its economic success is the thriving arts scene, up to 85% of which is funded by the government according to its data. During the week the Guardian visited, there were at least three publicly-funded arts festivals being held, and many speak of the sector’s vibrancy. Writer Ng Yi-Sheng says on the whole, Singapore has become a more culturally healthy place thanks to the government’s arts funding. “Many people have benefited, many of my friends have benefited ... and having works officially valued by institutions gives the average person here more sense of wellbeing, belonging.”

But as many artists explain, that money comes with strings attached.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Singapore is this kind of garden paradise, but you don’t know where the landmines are.’ Photograph: Edgar Su/Reuters

Australian theatremaker Edith Podesta moved to Singapore a decade ago and was immediately struck by the government’s control over the arts. “At the beginning I remember it being quite shocking,” she says.

“The funding here is far better than in Australia – like, far better, and there’s lots of opportunity for someone who wants to do more experimental avant garde work to find their audience ... But it’s like constant juggling: where there’s a plus point there’s also a negative.”

Singapore has been under the rule of the People’s Action Party since it won self-governance in 1959, and society is still heavily regulated. Sex between men is punishable by imprisonment (prime minister Lee Hsien Loong maintains the law won’t be “proactively enforced”, but hasn’t changed it); protest is legal only in one designated park, subject to pre-approval; the press is categorised as “not free” by the Freedom House watchdog; and there are restrictions – formal and informal – on which topics are permissible for public discussion.

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These restrictions are known as “OB markers” – as in, out-of-bounds markers, and include issues of politics, race, religion and sexuality.

“Singaporeans are very aware of where they should align themselves without being told,” Ong explains. “You’re not told what’s not possible, but you are given an indication that that’s not the way you should go, and you just internalise it, and co-ordinate yourself and your desires.”

In the arts, those OB markers are regulated from above.

‘From 2015, the conversation became more restrictive’

Censorship is a two-sided coin for creatives in Singapore. On one side is the government grant application process, which can lead an artist to adapt their art to make it more palatable to the National Arts Council, and grants the NAC the right to take back funds if the work produced is in breach of their guidelines. And on the other is the Infocomm Media Development Authority: the regulatory body that issues licenses and audience restrictions before any performance, film, TV show or exhibition goes public.

TV or radio content that “promotes, justifies or glamorises” homosexuality is unacceptable under the IMDA and will be censored. For example, the Guardian was told of a Singaporean student who was surprised to hear there were gay characters in Glee, because they’d all been cut for local broadcast. Meanwhile, IMDA’s Arts Entertainment Classification Code regulates all live performances and exhibitions to protect the young from “unsuitable content” and to ensure that content will not not “undermine public order, national security and/or stability” or go against “prevailing community standards of morality and decency”.

Singapore is [portrayed as] this kind of garden paradise, but you don’t know where the landmines are.

In a statement to the Guardian, an IMDA spokesperson said: “The IMDA aims to strike a balance between reflecting generally accepted social norms, while giving due consideration to the events’ artistic merits.” But in effect, this means if a performance hits any of the “OB markers”, its creators will probably be asked to make changes, or will have their audience restricted to over 16s or over 21s. The show could even be denied classification, which results in an effective ban.

These restrictions, Ong says, have huge consequences for the quality of art produced, and its potential for critique.

“Singapore is [portrayed as] this kind of garden paradise, but you don’t know where the landmines are. And of course most tourists won’t step on them, but for locals there are lots of controls ... I want to reveal them, to have a more transparent society.”

Until Ong came on board to revive the festival, it had been curated by the government and had therefore been exempt from licensing restrictions. “They forgot about that for the first year, and in the first year we had carte blanche,” Ong says. “But in my second year, the censorship came back.”

An IMDA content checklist that artists must complete before receiving a license. Photograph: IMDA

In February 2015, it was announced that Sifa would need to apply for licenses for each event – which this year numbered more than 90, including 16 commissions. In what’s widely regarded as an administrative headache, the IMDA asks for finalised scripts and content checklists to be sent in at least two months before opening night. As many theatremakers know, a work can change dramatically during this period – even during dress rehearsals.

“We were quite shocked,” Ong says. “In the first place, it’s impossible to commission effectively that way.”

In 2015, two foreign films were withdrawn from Ong’s festival after the IMDA refused classification. The following year Sifa brought Swiss director Milo Rau’s Five Easy Pieces to Singapore – a challenging work about a convicted murderer and paedophile, which features seven young performers aged eight to 13 telling the story themselves. The IMDA slapped it with an R18+.

“It was ridiculous. The only children allowed in the theatre were performing for the adults,” Ong says. “It became cannibalistic. We were consuming these children, who were performing for us what was meant to be a morality tale for them.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘We were consuming these children, who were performing for us what was meant to be a morality tale for them.’ Photograph: Ted Oonk

Also that year, the IMDA requested the removal of work from Iranian photojournalist Newsha Tavakolian. The official line was that her portraits of female Kurdish soldiers fighting against the Islamic State had the potential to “undermine public order, national security and/or stability”.

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But instead of cutting the show, the organisers and the artist replaced each censored photograph with a black card. The exhibition became a statement about censorship itself.

“One of the first steps towards compromising the integrity of the festival is when you try to hide the censorship as it occurs,” Ong explains.“I think it’s very important to know when there has been a public disappearance.”

When Singapore’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew died in 2015, Ong says, it led to “a kind of tenuousness”, or loss of identity, that was felt throughout the city-state – and led to a government more afraid to take risks: “We started again after LKY passed away ... and from 2015, the conversation became more restrictive,” he says.

It’s very important to know when there has been a public disappearance. Ong Keng Sen

“I feel like the officials are closing the spaces quite quickly ... it’s not getting better, let’s put it that way.”

With a high profile and proven track record, Ong is able to take more risks than others, and be more outspoken. But with the huge audience provided by Sifa, he also is less likely to fly under the radar – and his frequently critical Facebook posts are now preceded by a disclaimer: “The postings on this site are my own and do not represent [the government’s] opinions or positions.”

“There have been several feedback sessions where I got the sense of what the borders are,” Ong says carefully. But he fears that once his tenure at Sifa is over, there will be real consequences.

“I have this fear that once I leave the festival, they will punish me ... They won’t punish me directly, but through my company TheatreWorks. Withdraw funding. Withdraw our space,” he says. In a high profile story in 2010, theatre company W!ld Rice had $20,000 of its annual funding cut for projects “incompatible with the core values” of the government.

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“I’m very aware that everything I say now affects the company later,” Ong says. “I’m just waiting for it to happen. And it may never happen. But it’s a fear I live with.”

In a statement to the Guardian, a spokesperson from the NAC said: “Apart from our funding conditions, we do not have any theme or issue which is deemed ineligible for funding ... We respect the artistic direction made by various artists and arts companies.”

‘It’s better to work with them than against them’

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Perhaps unsurprisingly, a major theme running through Ong’s 2017 festival was “transparency”.

In The Making of Enchantment Moments, Filipino director Lav Diaz opened the set of his forthcoming film to the public, to watch the making of it; in Open Homes, everyday Singaporeans invited 20-30 strangers into their private lives and told them their story; and in collaboration with Podesta, graphic novelist Sonny Liew’s stage show Becoming Graphic became as much about his new book as the process of creating it.

When Ong launched Sifa, he also launched the Open: an annual pre-festival of ideas aimed to encourage public dialogue. This year the Open kicked off with a public forum held across two nights, tackling taboo subjects including LGBT representation and plurality in Singapore, and Singapore’s ageing population. It took two months of internal meetings with high ranking officials before they could get a license – and by the time it was green lit, its original vision had been watered down.

Noorlinah Mohamed, the Open’s artistic director, believes Singaporeans are much more open and progressive than the government gives them credit for – but she says many do internalise top-down restrictions.

It becomes mythologised in our psyche that these are areas we should leave alone; that our government knows best for us. Noorlinah Mohamed

“We’re taught to say, ‘Oh we should not challenge authority,’ or, ‘We should not question race or religion, because that might lead to the race riots of 1964’ ... It becomes mythologised in our psyche that these are areas we should leave alone; that our government knows best for us. And because of that we tend to censor ourselves a lot more.”

The artist, she explains, constantly has to weigh up which is more important: having the work go ahead as intended, or making requested changes and reaching a bigger audience. “You start to become preoccupied with these questions. You add them into the equation of every single creation.”

Another Sifa commission this year was Dragonflies: a geopolitical work written by Stephanie Street and produced by acclaimed Singapore theatre company Pangdemonium, which is run by the husband and wife team of actor Adrian Pang and theatremaker Tracie Pang.



Tracie Pang believes the government’s restrictions are unnecessary: “We have a community of arts goers who are intelligent enough to make up their own minds.” But, she adds, they can have positive consequences for the work as well – if artists “box clever” enough. Their first commissioned work Tango, which dealt with gay themes, was an example of that.

“I would say it makes us work harder to ask the same questions but in a different way, which then makes the work become intellectually more stimulating,” she explains.

“As a company, we feel it’s better to work with them than against them ... The people [at the IMDA] kind of have their hands tied. When we talk to them there is a sense of, ‘Guys, we really want to help you, but we have this rule book!’”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Dragonflies by Pangdemonium, commissioned by Sifa 2017. Photograph: Crispian Chan

‘I thought we were safe’

When Singaporean graphic artist Sonny Liew first heard the government was taking back his $8,000 grant, in May 2015, he was surprised.



“I thought we were safe,” Liew says. “I had my editors look at it, and historians, lawyers – everything was fact-based and well-researched.



“So when a friend texted me a few days before the book launch and said ‘I hear your book is getting withdrawn’, I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’”

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The book in question, The Art Of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, went on to win the Singapore literature prize and recently took out three of its six nominated categories at the prestigious Eisner Awards at San Diego’s Comic-Con. It follows comic book artist Charlie Chan on an unblinkered journey through Singapore’s post-independence years, featuring Lee Kuan Yew as a character.

It was the reinterpretation of Singapore’s official history, Liew presumes, that got him into trouble. But all he can do is guess. The National Arts Council released a statement saying Liew’s grant, which had been awarded to publisher Epigram Books, had been revoked because of “sensitive content” that “potentially undermines the authority and legitimacy of the government and its public institutions”.

The problem is that there’s no dialogue about any of the process. Sonny Liew

The final version didn’t deviate from the draft which had won the grant, Liew says, so he assumes someone higher up got their hands on the book and vetoed the money. “The problem is there’s no dialogue about any of the process, so we don’t know anything – but that’s the impression we have.”

When Liew became the first Singaporean to win at the Eisners, the NAC published a clipped congratulatory post on Facebook – but as many noted in the comments below, it failed to mention the book.

The NAC has offered to fund one of Liew’s next works, which he says he’s “grappling with”. Self-censorship, he says, is real.

“Let’s say for example I wanted to make a movie of Charlie Chan. That would require a lot of funding, right? ... So do I now become a bit more well-behaved, so I don’t tread on toes? Or do I just do what I want to do?

“[Charlie Chan] has become part of the conversation about arts and censorship in Singapore ... so now I’m just trying to figure out [what to do].”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sonny Liew, whose work Becoming Graphic featured at Sifa, is considering whether to continue working with government grants. Photograph: Kong Chong Yew

In a recent editorial for Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, poet Toh Hsien Min argued that artists shouldn’t expect money to come for free. “The NAC may be the only organisation funding the arts whose grant recipients routinely expect to have no stake in the outcomes,” he wrote. “If artists are not happy with the conditions set by whichever organisation is offering funding, the only real option is to decline that funding.”

But in a young arts economy that has few funding alternatives, only the privileged can afford to say no to a grant. “If [young artists] behave, they will get the funding – and naturally, as a young artist, you need the funding,” Ong explains. He has proposed an alternative model of funding, where the government sponsors only operational aspects such as studio space and administrative costs, leaving the artists to create what they want.

For Sifa, it remains to be seen what incoming festival director Gaurav Kripalani will bring. But as the artistic director of Singapore Repertory Theatre, he comes from a more commercial space, and in a March interview made his approach clear: “I think it’s safe to say that I have a reputation of not doing weird shit,” he said. “I do love mainstream work. I don’t think it’s a dirty word.”

• Singapore international festival of arts closes on 9 September. The Guardian visited Singapore as a guest of Arts House Ltd, which presents Sifa