The Theatre Times: Mythic Stories of Fanling Township is the latest production to tap into Chinese theatergoers’ craving for interactive and unique cultural experiences.
Liaoning, Northeast China — A man in ragged clothes peers through a crack in the window of a brick house, inside which a man and a woman are conducting a sordid love affair. The couple is oblivious to the doleful onlooker, just as they appear unaware of the dozen audience members huddled around them, watching from behind black face-scarves as the two fool around.
4 comments:
This article is incredibly interesting and I think it is very important to read about international theatre to remind us all that the world is filled with beautiful art and artists that work outside the ‘traditional American’ realm of theatre we are used to experiencing. This article made me think about the amount I know about international theatre and the international entertainment industries, and it is truly very little. I think theatre reflects culture and what a culture is asking for, just as any art does. So studying the kinds of theatre and art being produced in a certain area can tell you a lot about the feelings in that certain area. Immersive theatre is escapism at its finest. It brings magic to the audience’s fingertips. The author mentions the need for face-to-face communication in the digital age, which I think is a theme that we will quickly begin to see worldwide.
The idea that audiences' desire for deeper communication is driving immersive theater is something that sounded really familiar to me when I was reading this article. It reminds me of what I have read in other articles about immersive theater experiences in the United States, which is a great reminder for me that though we may view our cultures as very different, the people of the US and China are affected the same way by this digital age. And I think that Hanna Lund and the scholars she refers to in her article are definitely right that the success of immersive theater can be tied to a desire to be a part of something rather than sitting in a seat watching things happening inside a rectangular frame. That's what people do all of the time now, and immersive theater is an opportunity for people to connect with what they are viewing on a deeper level, which is obviously what audiences are craving.
What I thought was particularly interesting about this article was how it said that Sleep No More had been a major success in Shanghai and was probably a leading factor into the rise and popularity of immersive theater there. People were so intrigued by Sleep No More because it wasn’t something they could really describe, it was just something you could experience - and this became a selling point, how exclusive this experience became. People can just open their computer or turn on their tv or phone and they have access to many sources of entertainment. The rise in streaming services has made it more convenient to just be able to stay at home and still stay in tune with popular culture. It does take considerably more effort to leave one's home in order to get entertainment - so this entertainment should be offering something so unique. When I used to work at a bookstore one of the things my manager used to always tell us when we were working was that we needed to remember that the customer had put on pants and we needed to make it worth it. Immersive theater offers the ability to actually take part in the entertainment.
It was interesting to read about another country’s approach to theatre and the immersive theatre realm since it’s easy to just get stuck in the Western mindset. I remember when I was doing research for my foundations paper learning about ‘Sleep No More,’ along with its popularity in China, and I can understand why. Culturally it makes sense as well considering the lasting effects of the One Child Policy that lead to a generation of lonelier people who are probably yearning for more feelings of connection. There’s also a different kind of escapism that takes place when you’re fully physically immersed within a different world that you can’t get through digital media. I’d love to see a performance if ‘Fanling’ and see how immersive theatre in China is tackled in relation to the way western immersive theatres are done.
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