Chong Tze Chien on the next crisis facing the performing arts
In a wide-ranging new essay for ArtsEquator, Singapore playwright, director and Singapore International Festival of Arts Festival Director Chong Tze Chien asks whether the 'next pandemic' for the performing arts may already be here.
The piece reflects on the lasting impact of Covid-19 on Singapore’s performing arts sector, including disrupted touring, fragile audience recovery, the loss of spaces and sponsors, changing social habits, rising costs and the growing pressure to justify the arts through economic and impact-based metrics.
Chong also considers how volatility can create new possibilities, pointing to cross-border collaboration, co-commissioning, festival networks, hybrid artistic forms and the historical ability of the arts to renew themselves in moments of crisis.
The article is a useful wider-sector reflection on questions that affect choirs, festivals, schools, venues, artists, educators and cultural organisations alike: how live performance is valued, how audiences are rebuilt, and how the arts can make the case for being essential rather than expendable.
**Read the full essay via ArtsEquator**
Source note The essay, ‘When’s the next pandemic for the Performing Arts? In a crisis, the seeds of hope’, was published on 30 April 2026 and co-presented by ArtsEquator and Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay as part of the ArtsEquator-Esplanade Offstage Fellowship 2026.