After 4 years, the "act Shanghai Contemporary Theater Festival" has finally returned. On the evening of September 6, "The Angel of History" from the underground theater troupe (sotterraneo) in Florence, Italy, was performed in the D6 space of the Shanghai Dramatic Art Center. It became the first play to be performed at this year's Act Theater Festival.
Stills from the opening performance "The Angel of History"
This year's drama festival takes "Field of Memory" as its theme and explores the power of theater as a public memory. From September 6 to October 13, 9 contemporary theater works from 7 countries including Italy, Thailand, Greece, Portugal, Australia, Croatia and China will be brought together. It covers different forms of performing arts such as drama, mime, contemporary experimental performance, dance theater, and cross-media live performances. It was performed at the Shanghai Dramatic Art Center, Shanghai Jasmine Theater and Shanghai International Dance Center.
"Our theater festival has always focused on contemporary drama, and the program selection has always highlighted contemporaneity and forward-lookingness." Act Shanghai Contemporary Theater Festival program director Huang Jiadai said when talking about the theater festival's program selection criteria, "On the one hand, we hope The performance of the theater festival can spark discussions in the current society and resonate with the audience. On the other hand, we hope that it is relatively new in form and can break some of our existing boundaries, or presuppositions, about theater.”
Starting from the predecessor of the "Asian Contemporary Theater Festival" in 2005, the act Shanghai Contemporary Theater Festival has gone through a full 20 years, and this year has also been held for the 15th time. As a non-profit art festival, act Shanghai Contemporary Theater Festival is the earliest theater festival in China dedicated to promoting foreign contemporary plays. It is also the forefront of Shanghai's introduction of outstanding contemporary performing arts works to domestic audiences every year. It has been redefining the concept of "seeing". The boundary between "acting" and "acting". Yu Rongjun, the original initiator and planner of
act and artistic director of Shanghai Dramatic Art Center, lamented, "It is not easy for our drama festival to reach this year. Although it has been 20 years, I feel that our drama festival is still young."
" We often say that you can see some "demon dramas" on the Act platform. This is the audience's evaluation of us. In fact, there are some dramas on this platform that we cannot usually see. The most distinctive, experimental and innovative works in Drama Frontier are presented to the audience. Many works are the only ones we Chinese audiences can see in China,” said Yu Rongjun of
. In the past year, the drama festival has been changing, because it has to face new creative environments, repertoires, audiences and times are all changing. "But one thing remains unchanged, that is, our original intention remains unchanged. We must introduce the latest, The most interesting and distinctive work is introduced to our audience. What is different about its creativity and innovation can bring us Chinese drama and our audience, which is what we pay more attention to "
Italian Underground. The troupe's new work "The Angel of History" opens act
After more than a year of preparation, this year's act Shanghai Contemporary Theater Festival has selected 9 works from around the world, of which 3 plays were performed in mainland China for the first time, while 2 plays were The first show in Asia shows the cutting-edge trends of global performing arts. In addition to performances, the
Theater Festival is also a platform for exchanges and cooperation. This year, it will continue extension activities such as lectures, public seminars, and international forums to promote creative exchanges and public discussions in the field of performing arts.
Many of the theater groups invited this time are influential performance groups in the international theater world. The first play at the opening, "The Angel of History," comes from Italy's sotterraneo (underground theater group). The Underground Theater was formed by a group of artists in Florence. They are committed to exploring the expressive possibilities of theater language - a space defined by physical and intellectual time, which is both ancient and hopelessly contemporary.
"The Angel of History" poster
The underground theater group likes to use different forms to conduct theater experiments, creating both regular theater works and environmental works in a given space. This theater group that focuses on exploring and researching modern people has won many Italian and international theater awards in recent years.In 2019, they produced "Crack!", an imaginative work that uses "human hyperlinks" to text in the theater. Snap! Bang! ” is loved by Shanghai audiences. "The Angel of History" performed by
this time is the troupe's new work in 2022. They pursue history with their unique jumping thinking and collective creation methods. The crew "followed" the philosopher Benjamin and picked up the fragments of history to form this work that has a profound insight into the relationship between time, memory and history. The audience's thoughts also shuttle freely between history and reality. In this process, they are not only observers, but also participants.
A collection of many new international contemporary works to present the latest creative trends
"The Song My Dad Sang" (Three Days in May), directed by wichaya artamat, a representative of Thai contemporary drama, is a drama that has been praised by major international dramas in recent years. The Asian small theater works competitively invited by the festival focus on the relationship between personal history and era, ritual and banality, and time.
Poster of "Songs My Father Sang"
The actors and choreographers of the Portuguese ghost theater company mala voadora (Flying Box Theater Company) created "Wilde" based on Oscar Wilde's comedy "Lady Windsor's Fan". The play combines radio drama elements to reshape the ideal image of women and explore the boundaries between good and evil, gender and age.
"Wilde" poster
Back to back theater is Australia's most internationally influential theater company in recent years. They won the International Ibsen Award in 2022, known as the Nobel Prize in the field of drama, and also won the 2024 Venice Winner of the Golden Lion Theater Lifetime Achievement Award. "Catching the Hunter's Shadow" is the troupe's new work. This work is full of black humor and tells the story of a gathering of social activists. They went from polite discussions to chaotic quarrels, and finally discovered that their own prejudices were the biggest obstacle on the road to saving the world. This professional theater company, which has been around for thirty years and is mostly composed of neurodivergent people, has weaved discussions around rights, gender and the prospects of artificial intelligence into a narrative through two and a half years of dialogue and creation, which will also be an attraction. One of the highlights for the audience entering the theater.
Poster of "Capturing the Shadow of the Hunter"
The masterpiece of absurdist drama "The Bald Showgirl" presented by the Zagreb Youth Theater in Croatia also came to the stage of act. "The Bald Showgirl" explores the meaninglessness of people's communication and the alienation of people in the technological era.
Poster of "The Bald Showgirl"
The theme of this year's drama festival is "Field of Memory". Myth is the common ancient memory of mankind. There are also two related works in this year's drama festival.
Greek director and actor Euripides Laskaridis is praised by critics as a "craftsman of time and atmosphere". He has long-term cooperation with visual theater masters Papaioannou, Robert Wilson and others, and is good at Using absurdity and transformation as techniques, he creates a series of otherworldly characters in the theater. "Titans" directed by him uses the oldest gods in the ancient Greek creation myth as its theme. Through body parts, light and shadow, and simple props, it creates a theater experience as distant and unforgettable as the beginning of creation.
The poster of "Titans"
"I Envy the Nightingale's Fate" comes from the old Italian avant-garde theater group motus. In mythology, Cassandra had the power of prophecy, but she was cursed for offending the gods so that her prophecies would never be believed. In ancient Greek drama, the chorus compared her lamentations to the song of a nightingale to portray the sadness and obscurity of her prophecies. In this work, dancer and choreographer Stefania Tansini combines female vulnerability with a fiery spirit of revenge, interpreting Cassandra's final moments like a shamanic ritual.
Poster of "I Envy the Nightingale's Fate"
Two local independent productions break the boundaries of theater from subject matter to form
Although act has always been mainly inviting international plays, act has also paid attention to local independent productions in recent years. The two Chinese works specially invited by this year's act not only break the boundaries between dance and theater presentation in terms of genre or form, but also reflect the general concerns of the current society.
"A Rose for Emily" poster
Suspenseful new circus dance theater "A Rose for Emily" is a new dance theater work commissioned by Shanghai International Dance Center Theater and looklive. Performed by Jürger Dance Theatre. The work is inspired by the novel of the same name by Nobel Prize winner John Faulkner, which presents a deformed society from a woman's perspective in a magical and realistic way. The whole play combines high-skilled and difficult acrobatic movements with modern dance and physical drama, using bold and adventurous experiments to deconstruct and reconstruct the body, using extremely tense limbs to create a full sense of suspense, horror and absurdity. .
"Interface Spirit‰" is a cross-media experimental scene presented in a non-traditional theater space. It was created by artists from Dongwuxitu Art Center and ufo Media Laboratory based on the contemporary issues of artificial intelligence and "digital labor". The performance will be presented at Tank No. 1 in Shanghai West Bund Tank Art Park. The work discusses "people trapped in the system", an extremely urgent issue that everyone has to face. In the space of ufo terminal's 360-degree circular screen, an immersive sensory scene is constructed through the interaction of body, vision and sound, and the nature of "humanity" in the digital age is explored in this artificial digital cave.
Theater Festival Performance Schedule
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