Set on a fictitious final day on Earth, Sun & Sea, a collaborative opera-performance between Lithuanian filmmaker and theatre director Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, librettist Vaiva Grainytė, and artist and composer Lina Lapelytė, transformed the Esplanade Theatre stage into an artificial indoor beach with 26 tonnes of sand. From the dimly lit seating hall, gentle music played in the background as spectators wound their way through a darkened pathway and up scaffolded steps to emerge onto a brightly lit raised platform that encircled the crowded ‘beach.’ From this elevated vantage point, the audience gazed down upon the manufactured sun-kissed scene. Two LED screens displayed English subtitles of the hour-long performance.

Since its debut in 2017 at the Lithuanian National Gallery of Art in Vilnius, Sun & Sea has captivated audiences worldwide through its poignant and relatable way of addressing climate change. The work’s most notable presentation was at the Venice Biennale’s Lithuanian Pavilion in 2019, where it was awarded the prestigious Golden Lion for Best National Participation. This accolade propelled Sun & Sea to global prominence. As part of the 2024 Singapore International Festival of the Arts, an annual, two-week-long festival of theatre, dance, film, and visual arts that was first launched in 1977, the performance made its Southeast Asian premiere following its tour to numerous cities, including Zurich, Sydney, Taipei, London, and Berlin. The cast of the Singapore production was 17 strong, mostly Lithuanian. More than half were part of the group that Barzdžiukaitė, Grainytė, and Lapelytė had worked with from the start.

Against a vibrant backdrop of colorful parasols and beach towels, the cast, lounging on beach chairs, took turns delivering solo vocal performances that were oddly reminiscent of pop songs from the past. Occasionally, other characters joined in to harmonize with the soloist. Each solo was about three to five minutes long, and each melody was sung twice with contrasting lyrics. The first refrain was often playful and light-hearted, with banal lyrics detailing gripes about beachgoers who refuse to clean up after their dogs, elaborate vacation plans at the Great Barrier Reef, and uncooked vegetarian diets, while the second version more starkly outlined the pressing issues of pollution and climate change, symptomatic, for instance, in corals that are being bleached a pallid white. The fact that the urgency of climate change was seamlessly woven together with mundane daily issues only served to reinforce the tremendous impact of climate change on our daily lives, from erratic weather patterns to bewildering changes in our everyday environmental landscape. As one performer sang: “The beginning of May brought frost and snow, and winter gives us buds and mushrooms,” while another was shocked that “the colors of the sea and sky have changed!”

The main ensemble was also joined on the ‘beach’ by supporting singers from the Singapore Lyric Opera and local volunteers of all ages. Interacting with and interspersed among the main cast, the volunteers engaged in routine activities like chatting, reading, playing cards, and snacking on fruit and chips. Barzdžiukaitė, Grainytė, and Lapelytė shared that local volunteers are engaged in each production to bring their own habits and networks to the ‘beach,’ adding another layer of realism that both naturalizes and complicates the work’s storytelling around imminent environmental crises.

The scorching artificial beach in Sun & Sea is uncomfortably close to spectators. The ordinary routines of its constituents serve as a stark contrast to the extraordinary and impending threat of environmental disaster that they are aware of but are unable to halt. By blending installation, music, performance, and theatre, Barzdžiuaitė, Grainytė, and Laplytė confront audiences with the harsh, lived consequences of our shared environmental challenges. Singing about their fatigue while lounging on the sweltering beach, the cast of performers eerily evoked the image of an exhausted Earth overheating on her final day, her ‘sea’ invisible, perhaps evaporated, nowhere to be found. By mixing fact and fiction, Sun & Sea reminds us that the reality of climate change is an unsettling truth that permeates every aspect of our daily lives.