KC Arts Centre – Home of SRT

Robertson Quay does brunch, bikes and riverside beers. It also has a 380-seat theatre with a longer CV than any of the bars.

Book KC Arts Centre when Singapore Repertory Theatre has a play on that you would choose anyway: 380 seats on Merbau Road, on the river at Robertson Quay, close enough to watch the actors sweat and big enough to carry a proper production. The building is only as good as its current play, so the next step is srt.com.sg, not turning up. The catch for families is that not every Little Company show plays here.

SRT has been staging plays since 1993, and its record is out of proportion to the room. Under artistic director Gaurav Kripalani it brought the Royal Shakespeare Company here in 2007 with Ian McKellen in King Lear, co-commissioned Peter Brook's Battlefield, and staged Singapore's first Broadway musicals, RENT in 2001 and Avenue Q in 2008. Past titles include The Pillowman, God of Carnage and Venus in Fur. The name on the building honours the Kewalram Chanrai Group.

Next up is Eureka Day, from Wednesday 18 November 2026: a comedy about a school vaccine debate, built around the internet wisdom of "don't read the comments". That is SRT at its most useful to us – talky, sharp-edged and about something – and a play of that size suits a room this close better than a big hall does. Expect the season to swing between plays like that and bigger crowd-pleasers.

The other half of SRT is The Little Company, set up in 2001 to make theatre for children aged three and up. It stages three to four shows a year, one of them in Mandarin, and reaches up to 70,000 children and adults annually. Its shows are built around interaction with the audience, which is what makes them a good first taste of theatre; check the running time of each show before you book for small children. Not every production plays here: Junior and the Holiday Magic, for one, is at Drama Centre Theatre. SRT also runs holiday stage camps and drama classes.

Then there is the outdoor tradition. SRT's Shakespeare in the Park began at Fort Canning in 1997 with Hamlet, became biennial and then annual, paused in 2017 for lack of funding and came back the following year through crowdfunding. It isn't held every year, so watch SRT's announcements rather than assuming.

How to do it well: the doors open only 30 minutes before each performance, so eat first rather than plan on lingering in a foyer. For a date, that means dinner along the quay, the play, then a walk back by the water. Fort Canning and Great World are the nearest MRT stations, and the river path is the nicer way in.

Good to know KC Arts Centre is at 20 Merbau Road, Robertson Quay; Fort Canning and Great World MRT are the closest stations. See srt.com.sg for what's on, venues and tickets, as not every SRT show plays here.

KC Arts Centre – Home of SRT | 20 Merbau Road, Singapore 239035 | Nearest MRT: Fort Canning, Great World