6 On June 26, the 2024 Aranya Theater Festival launched for the first time the new professional drama competition unit "Future Drama Showcase" jointly planned by Directors Li Jianjun and Meng Jinghui, with special Future Drama Gold Awards, Silver Awards and Special Awards. An international jury composed of 7 international theater directors, directors, producers, critics, actors and professors from 6 countries will make selections. The shortlisted plays of 9 groups of Chinese young directors will compete for generous creative support prizes, and The opportunity to be invited to the special play section of the next Aranya Theater Festival.
html On June 26, 28, and 29, from 10:00 to 22:40 every day, the works of 9 competing directors and theater groups in the "Future Drama Showcase" will be staged at the Aranya Theater Festival in turn. Each group only has 4 hours of stage rehearsal before the official performance; each play has 40 minutes of performance time every day; and there is only 30 minutes to change scenes between two shows. These are the ultimate challenges they face."Will the future really be what they say? Or are we dreaming?" This is the first line of the "showcase" stage rehearsal, which comes from "McBay Project" brought by director Deng Hanbin and his enthusiastic academy. With McBay's destiny and the mission of observers, they ran around and played around the black box theater, and even improvised scaffolding on the stage. All kinds of complex emotions vibrated in the theater as they played. Dr. Deng Hanbin graduated from the Chinese Department of Peking University. He has a wide range of interests and multiple identities. He is also a technology and art worker.
Directors He Qi and Hu Xuanyi met when they were graduate students in Taiwan. After graduation, they founded "Bad Sleep Studio" together. The work "Phantom" they participated in this competition is a story about AI. They also participated in the "37°2 Environmental Drama Reading" unit of this year's Aranya Theater Festival and read their first work "A Spectator".
The only non-fiction work in this competition is "Time has come to the second half!" brought by director Wang Guanghao and his "Destroy the Bread Team". 》. They drew a football field about 7x5 meters in size on the stage. They used football, body, time and other media to present on the stage the time they spent with old football players and their thoughts during research.
《Time has come for the second half! 》Rehearsal photos
The day before the rehearsal started, director Wang Anbang was still "urgently asking for a bed" in the circle of friends. The story of his work "Victory" begins with a bed where his mother is lying, and through several different life fragments, he restores a complex image of a mother. Wang Anbang, who graduated from the Drama Department of Nanjing University, became a teacher in the Directing Department of Nanjing University of Communication this year. He said that his favorite job is that of an actor. He has appeared in He Qi and Hu Xuanyi's "Thunderbolt", and he almost starred in "The Time Has Come to the Second Half!" "The actors came to participate in this competition.
"The False Walker" has elements of opera. The director Wen Qi graduated from Beijing Institute of Technology. Because of his love for drama, he applied for the graduate school of Chinese drama many times after graduation, but failed, but he still chose drama as his career. In his work, accompanied by the sound of drums, a bright full moon appears on the black curtain. Under the moonlight, a story about Wu Song's bloodshed and struggle is unfolding on the stage.
"Silent and Sticky", which tells the story of children's growth in the 1980s, is one of the most abundant sets and props in this competition. From everyone wearing red scarves to retro hits from the 1980s, Director Cai Yiyun tried to interpret "the past is the future" while constantly supervising the entire crew to wear red scarves. This play was her graduation work many years ago, and it was also her first official work. The poster was drawn by teacher Zhu Jingyi, and the theme song was written by teacher Zhong Lifeng. At that time, everyone was unknown, but now it is famous far and wide.
Xie Yu, the director of the one-man show "Slaughterhouse Five", has a background in photography and has a rich imagination about lighting. Therefore, the process of combining lights is accurate to the last minute, and the basic lighting of the stage is used to the extreme through whiteboards and mirrors. When Yang Maoyuan plays the guitar and starts singing, Xie Yu will harmonize with him, and actor Wang Shaoyu will dance in the middle of the stage. The theater group of the three of them is called Underdogs Theatre.
Director Wang Haoran brought the only musical "The Cat Meets the Cat" in this competition, and it is also the crew with the largest number of people. The cats sang in Cantonese in the play: "There is hope on the street corner of Yau Tsim Mong. If the hope is too slim, you still dream and chase it." It won applause and tears from the audience.
"Shadow 3.0" is the only dance drama in this competition. As the birds chirp in the morning, the dancers put on masks and use their bodies to dance against each other, bringing the audience closer to the spiritual world of the elderly. Xiao Zhiren, the director of the play, came to Aranya this time. In addition to participating in the competition, he also wanted to learn some advanced business thinking and use it in his own theater company "Zhiren Experimental Theater" in the future.
"Shadow 3.0" rehearsal photos
These 9 directors, apart from competing, are also long-lost friends. They also communicate with each other between rehearsals and performances. After fierce competition, the results of the "Future Drama Showcase" will be announced and an awards ceremony will be held on the evening of June 28. It is exciting to see who will win the first "Future Drama Gold Award".
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-