Sitting in a "hot air balloon", eating food and watching the performance "around the world"; following the art talk show guide in the "world famous painting", a luncheon on the Seine River in Monet's famous painting is reproduced next to you; traveling back to the old Shanghai Lane to "solve the case" and participate in nostalgic games... In recent times, there have been more performance spaces in Shanghai outside various theaters, and the forms of performances have become increasingly diverse.
After the first round of performances of the immersive food interactive drama "Fun Explorer", the second round will continue to be performed in Shanghai HEN Taikoo Hui for three months.
At the Kohler Shanghai Experience Center on West Nanjing Road in Shanghai, the Wonderland Museum, an immersive art exhibition that brings together reproductions of famous Paintings of the Louvre and restoration of performance scenes, is also open to visitors by appointment in December and will continue until mid-January next year.
At Raffles City and Moon Bay Mall on the North Bund in Shanghai's Hongkou District, the immersive performances "Lane 1992" and "Crazy Barbershop" were performed day and day, and the venue was full, and the addition of various elements such as comedy performances, interactive crime solving, nostalgic games, script killing, etc., gave the drama a variety of new experiences.
In the Asia Tower, a new landmark for performing arts in People's Square, more than a dozen small immersive performances of various types are staged every night, and the audience and actors interact closely, and the performance venues of the entire building are even in short supply.
As immersive performing arts become more and more popular, performances are increasingly entering various new spaces, exploring and combining with other forms, and the boundaries of performances are infinitely opened. In Shanghai, performances are becoming more and more "boundless", and immersive performances are becoming more and more popular.
Crazy Barbershop
"Lane 1992"
Wonderland Gallery
Immersive gastronomic interaction, "artistic" while eating and watching is popular
The immersive food interactive drama "Play Explorer" first came to Shanghai during the summer vacation this year, which triggered a wave of drama chasing, and in November, "Play Explorer" soon opened a second round of performances at IB Taikoo Hui, which is scheduled to last until the end of February 2022. The single performance has a single audience of 130 people and lasts for 4 months.
For such a continuous performance, Xie Has, who introduced the play to China and served as the chief producer of the Chinese version, expressed confidence in the market, "The reason why "Play Explorer" was brought to China is to bring a new experience of immersive gastronomic interaction to domestic audiences. The success of the first round of performances gave us more confidence, Shanghai as a super large city with a population of 20 million people, high-quality performance content can still gain audiences in the city. ”
Play Explorer is an immersive show that combines multiple elements of food, performance and travel. The original, created by Gingerline, the leader of British immersive food interactive dramas, became a hard-to-find blockbuster show when it was staged in London. In addition to the hand-drawn animation, the Chinese edition is jointly created by Chinese and foreign teams from costumes, performances, dance, and meals. From the beginning of admission, the audience will become "explorers", 90 minutes, take a "hot air balloon" to Greenwich, England, the ice and snow north of Russia and Carnival brazil, in the ring of giant screen multimedia effects, song and dance performances, body dramas, mimes, while experiencing the world's immersion and interaction.
"Fun Explorer"
As the founder of Theatrical Madangxian Cultural Communication Co., Ltd., Xie and his team have been committed to the introduction and production of foreign immersive dramas for many years, including "Alice's Adventures" and "The Great Gatsby". In the UK, they watch a lot of immersive performances, many of which are such "dining shows", in a variety of forms, and there are many works that are online in content and quality.
Xie has introduced that the reason for choosing "Play Explorer" as the first immersive food interactive drama to land, from the perspective of content theme, "traveling around the world in a hot air balloon" is a popular theme in the post-epidemic era; from the perspective of production difficulty, the performance art and catering depth crossover in China is still early, and the strong interaction of single space is a more operational way.
The first round of performances worked very well, the second round of performances chose a larger commercial space, made more artistic adjustments to the lighting and dance, and added a "Shanghai curtain" with Shanghai characteristic dances and meal creations, and the performances were optimized in menus, services and other details.
The producers even cooperated with the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra to launch a limited "immersive taste concert", where 12 performers play classical music live, with multimedia interaction and exotic afternoon tea, in addition to drama + food immersion, trying new possibilities of music + food immersion.
During the performance, many audiences recorded the scene and food with photos and images while watching, and also carried out secondary dissemination for the performance.
Xie has said that from the current market feedback, the artistic "eat while watching" is very popular, it will be visual, auditory, taste and interaction through, to maximize the stimulation of the audience's sensory experience, there is a lot of market space. In the future, they will continue to introduce relevant performances, and have already reserved the content of several immersive food interactive dramas, and will focus on the development of interactive dramas with meals in the next 1-2 years to provide Chinese audiences with more diversified immersive entertainment content.
Immersive performing arts cross-border art exhibitions empower brands and public spaces
While integrating with food, immersive performances are also trying to cooperate with art exhibitions and brand images.
Since November, in a special "art museum" on Nanjing West Road in Shanghai, the "Wonderland Art Museum" of Kohler x Lou Fu Yue color has been officially launched. The exhibition selects original painting reproductions of the highest level of art masterpieces of each era in the Collection of the Louvre from the 15th to the 20th century, covering classic paintings such as Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Impressionism, etc., and through scene restoration and immersive interpretation, a different traditional immersive exhibition experience is realized.
The exhibition is divided into three sections: "Louvre Painting Realm", "Virtual Reality Realm" and "Illusion Resurrection", in addition to watching various famous paintings, the audience can also walk into the live art installation of the restored paintings and conduct interactive punching. In the free reserved "Art Appreciation Edition" experience, Art Talk Show founder Royle acts as a guide, vividly explaining the historical context behind the famous paintings.
The most special feature of the exhibition is the "immersive performance reproduction of famous paintings". The audience suddenly sits on the banks of the Seine, having a luncheon with the celebrities of Paris, and suddenly breaks into the Last Supper of Jesus and the Twelve Apostles... The two exhibits, "Lunch on the Yacht" and "The Last Supper", are reproduced in live-action performances, bringing the audience the feeling of traveling through time and space.
In "Lunch on a Yacht", more than a dozen actors leisurely enjoy lunch and raise a glass on the banks of the Seine River, reproducing the humanistic vitality of the bright afternoon in Paris at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, and vividly showing renoir's scenes.
"The Last Supper" interprets the world famous painting into a theatrical scene, several groups of characters in different scenes or whisper, or speculate with each other, each with their own thoughts, and finally walked to the long table, and the emotions and hearts of thirteen people formed the classic composition of Leonardo da Vinci's pen...
The immersive performances in this exhibition are produced by Kohler in collaboration with Shanghai Wenguang Performing Arts Group, hoping to change the "see-be-watch" relationship between the audience and the artwork, so that the viewer has the opportunity to step into the artwork.
Mao Jiamin, director of the Industrial Center of Shanghai Wenguang Performing Arts Group, introduced that the immersive performance of the "Wonderland Art Museum" has been the second cooperation with the brand. With the continuous expansion of the extension of immersive performances, more and more brands hope to seek artistic cooperation and open up the infinite possibilities of brands through the integration of performing arts and consumption scenes. Previously, Shanghai Wenguang Performing Arts had used the creative team of "Sleepless Nights" to create an immersive drama of "No. 10 Lipu" for Taikoo Hui in Guangzhou, exploring the integration of immersive performance and public space.
Immersive performing arts enter the commercial complex and explore new models of cultural and entertainment consumption
The two newly opened commercial complexes in Shanghai's Hongkou, Raffles City North Bund and Moon Bay, Happy Twist's two new dramas "Lane 1992" and "Crazy Barbershop" have been stationed for more than a few months, almost every day, and the popularity has even exceeded the producers' own expectations. The two performances are not conventional theater performances, but are redesigned in the commercial space to create a new space for performing arts, bringing a new form of performance with immersive experience and unique concept.
The prototype work of "Crazy Barbershop" is a benchmark drama for small space residents around the world, but after coming to China, a "barbershop" was created in the commercial space, and the performance combined interactive comedy, suspense detective, immersive and even script killing elements, and the audience participated in the performance reasoning as a witness to the murder and the actor, and the comedy elements made this work full of joy.
"Lane 1992" is the concept of "immersive sleepwalking experience", the first time to start at 10:30 p.m., and the performance venue is Shanghai's latest Internet celebrity punch card "City Bazaar", in this restored old Shanghai Lane scene of the commercial space, the end of the catering business, but also the beginning of the performance. Here, the audience collectively travels back to the 1990s Shanghai Lane Fu'anLi, in addition to "solving the case" with more than a dozen actors, they can also relive the scenes, games and small objects of the old Shanghai Lane life. The process of the performance, in addition to watching, there are all kinds of participation, interaction and nostalgia and discovery.
The "City Bazaar" realistically restores the scene of the old Shanghai alley, providing a space for the performance to be extremely imaginative and possible. Fei Yiqun, the chief producer of the play and deputy general manager of Shanghai Happy Twist, said that the cooperation between the performance and Raffles City on the North Bund belonged to "one shot and one shot", when Happy Twist was looking for suitable themes and venues for immersive projects, and the "City Bazaar", which had become an Internet celebrity, also hoped to let the story happen here through the performing arts project, continue the heat and vitality. For shopping malls, the wrong-time operation of various formats of catering and performing arts in one venue is also a new attempt.
Different from ordinary performances, this kind of immersive interactive performance in a new space is very different from ordinary theater performances in terms of creative ideas and team composition. Fei Yiqun revealed that the script writing of "Lane 1992" starts from the user structure, and considers the number of audiences, user mechanisms, viewing lines and other factors at the beginning, and the audience can choose their own perspective in the performance.
The performances are dispersed at one o'clock in the evening every night, but even if the weekday performances are still full every night, Fei Yiqun believes that young audiences are looking for new ways of entertainment consumption, and the epidemic has made this offline interaction more valuable. Gen Z audiences grew up in a gaming environment, and this interactive and engaging way of watching the performance is also in line with their habits. The number of spectators controlled at about 80 people makes the audience's late-night experience in this space very unique. At present, Happy Twist is also preparing a new immersive performance project in cooperation with commercial spaces.
In the view of people in the entertainment industry, with the upgrading of entertainment consumption and the increasing diversification of offline entertainment, young audiences are no longer satisfied with simply watching performances in the theater, and more diversified experiences, stronger interactions, and performances with live social experiences are increasingly loved by young consumer groups.
In June this year, in the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of cultural industries" issued by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, it was proposed that "immersive experiences should be combined with urban complexes, public spaces, tourist attractions, etc."
In fact, in Shanghai, more and more public spaces are looking for suitable performing arts projects to cooperate. With the emergence of more and more diversified new performing arts spaces, the form of performances is also constantly breaking through, providing new ideas for the innovation of the performing arts industry.