SINGAPORE — Heads up, another arts festival is in town — especially for those of you who live in Serangoon and Hougang.

Yes, sandwiched between SIFA’s The OPEN pre-fest, which wraps up today, and next week’s M1 Chinese Theatre Festival is, to my mind, one of the most important festivals to take place this year — and not only because we *finally* get to see those cute white-and-green inflatable tents being used.

Drama Box’s inaugural SCENES forum theatre festival is, in a sense, like a weight being lifted off the shoulders of proponents in Singapore. Over this weekend, all those issues of the past are set aside (well, mostly) as forum theatre is played out in the open — that vast open field beside NEX and Serangoon MRT station — on a big, public scale with both amateurs and professionals (including guests from the UK, Taiwan and India) offering so many stories that audiences have a hand in shaping. The area is so big that it’s not just all theatre: There are installations and interactive areas for children as well as a playGROUND area where various organisations have also set up stalls. (And actually, the entire event extends all the way to Centre 42 in town, where discussions on forum theatre will be held.)

Of course, the official debut of the GoLi tents (a big one and a small one) ties in with all these in a symbolic, and not just functional, manner — its designers, Atelier Watt, were so impressed by Drama Box’s community theatre efforts they wanted to design a performance space that would become synonymous with the theatre group, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary, by the way. Mobile and welcoming, there’s also a certain hipness in how it looks, which is positively now.

The choice for the opening show, too, carries weight. Trick Or Threat! is the group’s longest running show but it has never been staged outdoors until now, thanks to an MDA advisory that it be always staged indoors because of its supposedly tricky subject matter.

For SCENES, simply closing GoLi’s flap apparently makes a show an “indoor” event. Closed or not, one can understand just how potent Trick Or Threat! is (it was my first time catching it): A “what if” terrorist bombing premise that puts multi-cultural, multi-racial Singapore on the edge inside a stalled MRT train, where being a hirsute exclusively Malay-speaking male Malay, carrying a bulky black bag and wearing a songkok, automatically makes one a “suspicious-looking” character — causing panic among fellow commuters.

This, of course, is just one of the many social tensions — primarily race-based — that Trick Or Threat! presents. In the most simplest of ways, it points how these issues pervade not just public spaces but the domestic space and workplace as well, which, this being forum theatre, calls for some creative intervention.

“A democratic theatre will give us a democratic audience,” Drama Box artistic director Kok Heng Leun said at the start of the show. And there really is something special about people giving their two cents worth on what could be changed in a work of art. Even more special is the sight of an audience member empowered enough to re-mold a worldview by stepping into the shoes of the actor and becoming, in forum theatre parlance, a “spect-actor”.

Forum theatre’s back in full force this weekend, and with the GoLi spaces all ready for more such events, it looks like it won’t be going away anytime soon. More like, going around.

SCENES Forum Theatre Festival runs until Sunday, 10.30am to 10pm, at the open field next to NEX Shopping Mall. Free admission with limited seats on a first-come-first-served basis for the shows. The events at Centre 42 will continue until next week. For more information, visit http://www.dramabox.org