Learning the Arts From the Best

200 students were mentored by 30 arts professionals for the Singapore Youth Festival (SYF) this year – an example of how SYF has been evolving over the decades. 

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It is a warm afternoon during the June school holidays, and Oliver Chong is deep in concentration, watching three students control a metre-tall puppet.

It’s a task that demands coordination—one student controls the head, another controls its arms, and one controls its legs.

“With more zen!” Oliver calls out, as he notices the students rushing through the rehearsal. Whenever they handle the puppet poorly, he points it out immediately: “Not standing straight.” “Look the other way.”

Oliver Chong is not a school teacher. He’s a playwright, actor and designer. He should know a thing or two about puppetry—he spent 14 years as the resident director of a renowned homegrown puppet troupe.

The students, however, do not. But they are all interested in theatre, and were brought together under the auspices of the Singapore Youth Festival (SYF). Their end-goal: a public performance at the Esplanade Concourse in July.

The Festival, now in its 53rd year, has been a rite of passage for many performing arts co-curricular activities in schools. Alumni may have memories of rehearsing for an annual showcase to see if they can achieve a certificate of Distinction, Accomplishment or Commendation.

That exercise still exists, but the SYF has diversified far since then. Three years ago, arts mentorships were added to its expanding oeuvre, to give interested students the opportunity to work with, and learn from experienced arts practitioners.

MOE’s Arts Education Branch plays the matchmaker here, inviting these practitioners to come on board. Applications are then open to students. Each mentorship typically involves a short, intensive series of workshops over a few weeks, conducted with students from different schools. Woodgrove Secondary School student Elaine Lua, one of Oliver Chong’s puppet trainees, enjoys the company of her new friends, and found that puppetry actually helped her break the ice: “I’ve not only learnt about the different types of puppets. I have also learnt to be more outspoken and try to communicate with individuals that I am not familiar with.”

Another mentorship this year sees music arranger Mr Shahneezar Shahnan work with students from Cedar Primary School, and the Association for Persons with Special Needs’ (ASPN) Katong School, on a performance using traditional Indonesian instruments such as the anklung and kulintang.

Like Oliver’s would-be-puppeteers, the secondary-level Katong students had no prior experience with those instruments, but got up to speed under Mr Shahneezar’s tutelage. He feels the most meaningful part of the mentorship was watching students “interact and help one another in reading the music scores and executing their parts”, bearing in mind their “different backgrounds, schools, and the age gap”.

The 30 mentors this year run the gamut of disciplines – from a cappella, to a fusion of traditional gamelan and modern electronic music, to traditional and contemporary puppetry.

It’s not every day that students can learn these things in their school – and from experts in their fields, at that.

Catch these students in action from 5-7 July at Esplanade – Theatres By the Bay!