Interview: Singapore Repertory Theatre’s artistic director Gaurav Kripalani

The late Petito, the founding director of SRT, had been leading amateur theatrical group Stars since the 1980s. With the aim of wanting to professionalise the scene and showcase Asian actors on the international stage, Petito formed SRT in 1993 and produced musicals, including Sing to the Dawn and A Twist of Fate. He often collaborated with top Asian talents such as Lea Salonga, and many Singapore artistes who have since become household names, including Dick Lee, Adrian Pang, Hossan Leong and Ivan Heng. 

One example of the “phenomenal risks” the company took back then was getting onboard as associate producer of David Henry Hwang’s 1998 Broadway production of Golden Child, making it the first Singapore theatre company to get on Broadway. The production, which starred Ming-Na Wen and Randall Duk Kim, went on to garner three Tony Award nominations that same year.

Despite what Kripalani says about having to be more cautious and calculated, the company’s ambitious approach to producing and programming has been nothing short of bold and visionary over the years. In 2007, SRT collaborated with Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay to make Singapore the only Asian destination for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s world tour of King Lear and Anton Chekov’s The Seagull, starring Ian McKellen.

What quickly followed was The Bridge Project, a co-commission with the Brooklyn Academy of Music and The Old Vic of three standout productions by Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes, staged yearly from 2009 to 2011. Two years later, in 2013, SRT celebrated its 20th anniversary by partnering the Esplanade again to present 3 Titans of Theatre—a season of three productions by legendary directors Peter Brook, Yukio Ninagawa and Simon McBurney.

I jokingly remark to Kripalani that he must have had many martinis in the past two decades. He laughingly agrees that those were some of the high points in SRT’s 30-year journey, but goes on to explain that the underlying objective of these international collaborations goes much further than simply exposing Singapore audiences to such shows. The main aim is to build a theatre company that would become a household name around the world, and to transform Singapore into a cultural destination. This is the shared vision he had with Petito many years ago. “How do we make sure that people are coming to Singapore to see our shows, to watch our theatre?” he asks. “I’m not sure people are doing that yet, but we’ll get there.”

Given our limited market and small population size, I am less optimistic. Does he really think Singapore could one day be a cultural capital like London or New York? “Yes,” he replies confidently. “But we have to change the paradigm. The reason for visitors to come to Singapore and stay an extra night must be to see something they can’t see anywhere else. But [the show] has to be good enough, and exciting enough. The reason why Taylor Swift is sold out here is because her concert in Singapore is the only stop in Southeast Asia. That’s why everyone is willing to fly in. It needs to be the same for our performing arts scene. If you can see a show somewhere else, why come here?” The key ingredient, in his view, is in presenting the Asian premieres of acclaimed productions from around the world—shows you cannot catch anywhere else in the region.

I ask him about the potential of developing compelling, original Singapore stories for the world stage. Compared to 30 years ago, Singapore now has a much bigger pool of acting and writing talent. Kripalani does not doubt it. “We have phenomenal talent,” he concedes, “but why aren’t we recognised for it yet?”

He raises the example of Forbidden City: Portrait of an Empress, a large-scale musical about Empress Dowager Cixi that was produced by SRT as part of a performing arts festival that marked the opening of the Esplanade in 2002. Starring Singaporean singer-actress Kit Chan, the musical featured the work of Olivier Award-winning lyricist Stephen Clark, London-based director Steven Dexter, and well-known Singapore composer Dick Lee. “Everyone said, ‘Hey, this show is great. You should tour it.’ We spent two years going around the world trying to tour the show. Nobody touched it. No one has ever heard of a musical coming out of Singapore. It was too big a risk.”

The lesson he learnt from that exercise was that SRT, and Singapore too, needed to build a brand that people could recognise and trust when it came to cultural production. Referring to The Bridge Project, he believes the collaboration has built a network for SRT, and opened many doors for them. “It’s a great calling card,” he says. “Now, it’s so much easier for us to go into conversation with international partners. When we have our own show that’s ready to tour, we’ll have contacts at major presenting houses around the globe.”

If you think the company does little more than bring in foreign blockbuster productions for the mainstream market, think again. Kripalani says his vision is to have “a SRT show that’s touring the world”. In 2015, SRT produced The LKY Musical, a multimillion-dollar home-grown production, presented in partnership with entertainment production house Aiwei, that tells the story of modern Singapore’s founding prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew. Performed by a Singapore cast, the musical defied critics’ expectations and drew packed houses when it opened, attracting an audience totalling close to 54,000 over its run in 2015. While the company may no longer be flying by the seat of its pants, neither does it embark on anything in half measure.

The critical success of The LKY Musical is a perfect example of what differentiates SRT from most theatre companies in Singapore. It is one of the very few who is able to present a three-week run in a 2,000-seat theatre. Yet, Kripalani recognises that brand-building and growing audiences both locally and internationally, is an arduous and long-term journey.

“We get so many people calling us for suggestions on what to watch on the West End in London,” he says. “When I ask them if they’ve gone to the theatre here, they tell me they don’t watch shows in Singapore.” He feels that while the Singapore audience base has certainly grown over the years, there is still a lot of work to be done. His dream, he shares, “is that the first thing that every Singaporean does, when they have a free evening, is to check what shows are going on”.

While he concedes that this will take a generational shift, he believes that Singapore will get there through education and exposure. This is why SRT has continued to invest in building and expanding its audience base through the work of The Little Company, a division that creates shows and entertainment to foster creativity and imagination in young children. Similarly, SRT’s hugely popular outdoor theatre show, Shakespeare in the Park, first staged in 1997, continues to be held at Fort Canning Park today despite its hefty price tag—it costs more than $1 million to stage the Bard each year.

“I think of Shakespeare in the Park as the great leveller,” Kripalani shares. “The perception of Shakespeare is ‘Wah, so cheem (Singlish for “hard to understand”), don’t want to go, don’t want to sit outside, don’t want to watch’. But I think you can’t find anything more accessible than Shakespeare in the Park. You can bring your picnic blanket, you can bring your makan (Malay phrase for “food”) and you can lay on the grass. If you want to take a nap, you nap. If you want to watch, you watch. You can have a picnic with your friends. And if we’ve done our job right, we’ll mesmerise you, change your mind, and hopefully get you hooked on going to the theatre. Ultimately, Shakespeare in the Park is about building an audience.”

The outdoor production, which draws about 25,000 people annually, counts as one of Singapore’s most anticipated events on its cultural calendar, so much so that in 2017, when the production had to be put on hold due to insufficient funds, a crowd-funding campaign to “Save Our Shakespeare” successfully raised more than $100,000 to bring the Bard back to Fort Canning Park in May the following year.

When the conversation turns to what some of the lowest points have been in the company’s history, Kripalani, who considers himself “an eternal optimist”, pauses for a long while before answering quite definitively: “One of the lowest points was Sars,” he says.

His answer surprises me. In light of the more recent Covid-19 pandemic, the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) outbreak, which occurred in Singapore in March 2003, feels almost short-lived by comparison. “Sars almost shut us down. The country shut down, we had no income, I didn’t know how we were going to pay the bills. We didn’t get paid for months. I really thought we’d lose the company,” he says. In fact, Kripalani explains, it was Sars that had prepared the company to deal with the fallout from Covid-19. “Sars happened in March, and we had made plans to re-stage Forbidden City in September.

We took a huge gamble that the outbreak would pass, and audiences would be desperate to go back to the theatre. Thankfully, it did. But if Sars had continued, we would have been bankrupt.”

He describes how that moment became a critical inflection point for the company, transforming the way SRT managed its finances and business model. “From the time SRT started until 2003, we would use the revenue from our March productions to pay the January bills, and then the June production revenues to pay bills from March. If we had two shows in a row that didn’t work, we’d be six months in the red. I literally spent the first five years at SRT making calls every day, from 10am to [midnight], begging creditors for extensions. I was 25. It was character-building. Forbidden City changed all that because we went from being half a million in deficit to having half a million in profit. From that day on, we decided we’d never be late on a payment again, and everyone will be paid fairly, and on time. That was how we wanted to build the reputation of the company. When we started doing that, I think it changed the operating model for many other arts companies as well.”

Today, SRT has sufficient reserves to see it through rainy days, including Covid-19. While he feels that the pandemic had set back the arts industry in terms of audience development, with audience numbers still not back to pre-pandemic levels, Kripalani says the friendship and camaraderie that SRT has built with Wild Rice and Pangdemonium is one of the biggest highlights of the pandemic. The three Singapore theatre companies had come together to collaborate on two productions during the pandemic: The Pitch in 2020 and The Commission in 2021. Kripalani clearly has a knack for turning low points into life lessons and seeing the silver lining in any crisis.

At the close of our interview, I ask this eternal optimist what we can expect from SRT in the next three years now that it has turned 30. Kripalani cheekily offers this as a parting shot: “I want there to be a SRT show that tours the world, and global recognition, not just for SRT, but for Singapore as a cultural destination. I would love for Singapore playwrights to be known internationally and for Singapore talent to become household names around the world. We’re not looking at the next three years, we’re looking at the next 30! I sincerely hope I won’t be here then. But we have the building blocks to make all these amazing things happen because we’ve been putting them in place for 30 years. That’s what we’re working on!”

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