The third and final piece of the Singapore Arts Fest puzzle has just been announced and the theme for next year is… Our Lost Poems. So there you have it folks, the 2010-2012 festival trilogy envisioned by general manager/artistic director Low Kee Hong will be “Between You And Me, I Want To Remember, Our Lost Poems.” The lost poems bit has something to do with the Taiwanese phrase for myth – and lots of explanations about the play on the Chinese characters, which I won’t go into in case I sound like an idiot. The organisers also released its figures for the festival. And if you’re a voracious consumer of numbers, it doesn’t look appetising. Ticket sales were at 50% and only five of the 35 ticketed productions sold out: Re: Almost Left Behind, Internal, The 1955 Baling Talks, A Game Of You and SINGAPORE -- most of which were small shows. Attendance figures for ticketed and non-ticketed productions were approximately 49,000. Meanwhile, the Festival Village drew 20,000 people, with the new Kids Arts Village attracting 2,700. Their big hit, according to the release, was the non-stop touring People’s Exhibition, which was viewed by 300,000. Let’s go back to the previous bit. What do you make of the 50% figure? I have to admit I’m not in the position to comment about the quality of shows as a whole seeing as my intended festival marathon fizzled out halfway through. I’ve been told I missed a number of very good ones. But just as a basis of comparison, the 2010 edition had 71% in overall ticket sales and nine of the 29 productions were sold out, many of these held at bigger venues. Overall attendance for both ticketed and non-ticketed, was 80,000. And this batch of numbers already came after a major shake-up in how the festival assessed its audience figures. If you remember, the whole “come one, come all” strategy of the year before, where attendance was pegged at 800,000, was replaced by a more stringent evaluation. The 2009 edition also officially saw 92.5% in house attendance and 14 of the 26 productions were sold out. Early on, when the national newspaper reported about the lacklustre ticket sales and half-filled venues midway through the festival, I was trying to figure out the possible reasons for it. Too many dance shows – which arguably may have a smaller audience base than theatre -- at the start of the festival? More conceptually challenging works in big venues instead of the more safer smaller venues? But now that the final count is out, it doesn’t look like it actually recovered from the initial low. Was this year’s unapologetic, forward-thinking programming a bit too much for audiences? Was it poor marketing? Lack of publicity and buzz? Did the national preoccupation with the General Elections really take away attention in the lead up to the festival? Did reducing the festival duration from four weeks to three – thereby cramming many of the shows back-to-back-to-back have a hand as well? Or is it really just time to re-jig our expectations? I’ve said before that the Singapore Arts Festival 2011 was the edition to keep tabs on. It's the first complete break in terms of its previous identity as the national performing arts festival. No issues with how it connected to people. Personally, I did feel the festival was something special -- its focus on commissioning works and on opening up more space for works from the region. And I'm quite sure many others would agree that it has been a tightly curated event with a specific point in mind. But you have to admit that the 50% bit definitely throws up a lot of questions.  Not just for the organisers but for everyone who has a stake in the festival, which includes us audience members. What are your thoughts on the Singapore Arts Festival 2011?