In spring and summer, Shanghai, with tens of millions of cafes, will usher in the annual coffee culture festival, and the Shangsheng Xinsuo Coffee Drama Festival, which has been held for three consecutive years, has become a brand of Shanghai coffee culture. From April 28th to May 4th, the 3rd Coffee Theatre Festival and French Coffee Theatre Festival will be held in Shangsheng Xinsho, where coffee will be fragrant throughout Shangsheng Xinsho, and audiences can experience the coffee market and culture while watching the play.
This year's Coffee Theatre Festival will feature French coffee theatre, with three different styles of French drama being staged at the Naval Club and Coffee Space in Shangsheng Shinsho, including "Memorandum", "Psychedelic Variations" and "The Secret of a Raise". The French Coffee Drama Festival is also the 2023 Sino-French Cultural Spring Project, which is an exchange of Chinese and French theater culture. The festival is directed by the Changning District Cultural and Tourism Bureau, supported by the Consulate General of France in Shanghai, and organized by Shangsheng Xinsho and Changning District Cultural and Tourism Management Center.
French coffee drama originated in Paris, and the three French plays this time are all "small but beautiful" works, but they are all works of contemporary French theater and film masters, created and performed by Shanghai Modern Drama Society.
"Memorandum" was written by Jean-Claude Carrière, winner of the 87th Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement and France's most famous screenwriter, and is one of only two stage plays he has created. This drama is deeply absurd with Ionescu, telling the story of a single man who has 134 "hunts" but suffers from love phobia, breaks into the home of a strange woman, she seems to have lost herself and abandons everything to find her ideal lover, and two lonely souls begin a strange "emotional search". There are many puzzles set up in the script, and the audience may only realize it when they see the ending. The play is directed by young director Gu Xin, starring Sai Kaiyuan and Ning Chuan'er. This performance in the coffee space, the unique performance space makes the play have a special atmosphere.
The screenwriter of "Psychedelic Variations", Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, is a famous playwright and novelist active in the French literary scene today. His plays have been staged in more than 35 countries and have been widely influenced. The play depicts Nobel Prize winner Abel Znolko as withdrawn and living alone on an island. He collected the love letters he had exchanged with his lover over the years into a single book. The book attracts a journalist, Eric Lalsan, and the secrets behind this collection of love letters turn into a brutal game of twists and turns. The play is directed by young director Shen Xufei and starring Su Junjie and Song Guanting.
French screenwriter Georges Perec's "The Secret of a Salary Increase" is full of plots and forms characteristic of French avant-garde drama, and the names of the 6 characters are also replaced by propositions, possibilities, affirmative (positive) hypotheses, negative (negative) assumptions, choices, and conclusions, and the audience looks like they have participated in a salary increase script killing game. In Georges Perec's theatrical works, games are everywhere, and the search for identity and anxiety about disappearance are constant propositions. In 2010, Modern Drama Club invited French director Denis Gainon to direct this play, and this re-performance was directed by Young Drama Master Manor, which has been greatly changed from the original version.