On November 13th, the young theater season of "Theater Everywhere, Art for Everyone" will kick off in Yangpu Binjiang, which will be the first public appearance of the new theater brand and the way of theater parade to the general public. Formerly known as Yangpu Grand Theatre, young Theater is operated and managed by Shanghai Grand Theatre after the new renovation and is scheduled to be officially put into operation in the spring of 2022.
Guided by the Shanghai Yangpu District Culture and Tourism Bureau, hosted by young theater, and co-sponsored by Shanghai International Fashion Center and Changyang Chuanggu, the young theater play season will be launched from November 13 to 27 in important cultural landmarks and creative parks in Yangpu area as the first round of warm-up activities before the opening of the theater next spring.
Benefiting from the cooperation of the government, the new performing arts forces, the fashion industry in the region, and the science and technology innovation industry, we will make full use of the rich public space resources in the region to continue to hold diversified and interactive theatrical popularization activities, covering a variety of artistic expressions such as drama walking, improvisational music, installation, body drama, vr image and so on. In addition to the game season, the pre-opening warm-up also includes the "Small Stage, Big World" children's painting collection and exhibition plan and the "one person, one place, one thing" Yangpu story collection plan, which will also be launched separately.
Located at No. 1155, Kongjiang Road, Yangpu District, young Theater is an important project to build a major functional cultural facility layout in the "13th Five-Year Plan" of Yangpu District, and in the process of regional upgrading and development, it will improve the regional layout and create a cultural and artistic center that meets the spiritual and cultural needs of the people. In February 2018, the Shanghai Yangpu District Culture and Tourism Bureau signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement with the Shanghai Grand Theatre, confirming that the transformed Yangpu Grand Theatre will be renamed Young Theatre, which will rely on the rich theater management experience, mature theater operation system and highly influential theater brand of shanghai grand theatre to operate and manage the newly transformed theater. After more than three years of preparation and renovation and expansion works, the new theater will be completed by the end of this year.
"Young Theater", pronounced "Yang", takes the meaning of "young" in English, aiming to convey the meaning of "vitality and dare to innovate". The reconstructed theater has a total construction area of about 8,793 square meters, including a 1,020-seat main theater and a 168-seat small theater, with drama as the core, cross-border fusion art as an extension, integrating stage performance, original incubation, exhibition screening, public welfare education, and community empowerment, presenting dynamic, cutting-edge and diversified works of art, building a gravitational field and experimental field for new young artists, creating a theater without boundaries, and realizing the integration of field and community.
In order to achieve the new positioning and goals of the theater, in addition to the new hardware, it is more necessary to create excellent content, benign market and sustainable business methods. The cultivation of theater brands is not overnight, and the popularization and expansion of the audience need continuous investment. To this end, while planning the opening performance season, the young theater preparatory operation team began to plan to launch a series of warm-up activities before the completion of the theater, breaking the concept of the physical space of the theater, the brand took the lead, and integrated the four major sections of the future theater "contemporary", "cross-border", "technology" and "local" as clues into the series of activities, popularizing art, expanding the audience, and paving the way for next year's opening.
When positioning the Young Theater, the Shanghai Grand Theatre is not satisfied with being a chain store and replica of a grand theater, but hopes that the theater can fully combine with the characteristics of the region and match the stage of industry development to create a professional theater with regional characteristics. Therefore, through planning warm-up activities, the team went deep into the area, walked into the park, campus, community and business circle, further excavated the historical and humanistic values of the region, and used the scientific and technological innovation, design and educational resources in the region to form a synergy to prepare for the future professional operation and long-term planning of the theater.
The theme of this series of activities is "Theater everywhere, everyone can be artistic", aiming to expand the boundaries of theater for the audience, explore the infinite possibilities of "drama" and "theater", break the audience's high-cold impression of traditional stage art that "can only be viewed from a distance", and convey the accessibility of theater and art. This series of activities of the play season is an invitation letter from the Young Theater to the audience before the official opening.
Young Theater debuted, but also strives to show its own uniqueness through planning, based on the three dimensions of "different performing arts space", "different presentation methods" and "different audience experience", inviting new generation art groups such as Dalu Theatre Company, Ebony Orchestra, Moon Theatre Troupe, felttime and other new generation art groups to participate in it. In the next month, we will successively launch activities such as "Binjiang Drama Walking Theater: On the Shore", "New Circus & Installation Theater: Imaginary Wave", "One Person, One Story Theater: Encounter", "VR Image Theater: Eye Sockets" and other novel forms and high-quality activities, covering landmark public spaces in Shanghai International Fashion Center, Changyang Chuanggu, Yangpu Binjiang and other jurisdictions, creating an open stage for people to immerse themselves in and enjoy. Not only that, the activity also encourages the audience to deeply participate, interact and share, become part of the performance, and realize the transformation from the recipient and experiencer of art to the practitioner and co-creator of art.
"Binjiang Drama Walking Theater: On the Shore" integrates drama walking, improvisational music, and urban story sharing, with the Yangpu Riverside Show Belt as the physical space for performance, passing through the former site of Huangpu Wharf, Maoma Warehouse, Welding Plaza, Yangshupu Water Plant and other century-old industrial sites. Artists and scholars from the Dalu Theatre Company, the Otoko Orchestra and the Simplicity Heart City will lead the audience to freely shuttle between reality and history, read the urban architecture in a hands-on way, feel the urban fabric, and feel the unique historical style and humanistic memory of the city.
"New Circus & Installation Theatre: The Wave of Imagination" invites well-known young artists Lu Ge and Wang Yan to choreograph and perform, using "Water" as inspiration to try to explore unique artistic expressions in unconventional performance spaces. In the natural environment of the Shanghai International Fashion Center, the dancers on the balance board invite the live audience to become the instant creators of the stage text. Through the technology of loop, the ambient sound and vocals of the scene converge into a surging wave, and the audience and dancers observe, act and stimulate each other, forming new variables together, so that the whole performance is sublimated into a mobile feast full of unknowns and adventures.
"One Person, One Story Theater: Encounter" invites the Dalu Theater Troupe and the Yicheng Orchestra to bring a performance that combines improvisational drama and improvisational music, and will invite the science and technology innovation workers of Changyang Chuanggu and The Interconnected Treasure Land to become the protagonists of the story, feel, listen, express and empathize in the drama game, break the barrier between people, and see the city as an ordinary person's spiritual character.
Directed by Zhang Daming, artistic director and young director of felttime, "VR Image Theater: Orbit" is an experiment of viewing from space and dance, "Orbit" transforms theatrical technique into VR content creation, constructs a new viewing perspective with a new stage vocabulary and narrative method, and creates a rhythm that can mobilize the audience. While watching, the audience needs to be proactive in finding dancers, and this process seems to be "dancing" with the dancers in the video.
In addition, the series of activities of the opera season also produced and launched a creative peripheral - young theater limited edition stage commemorative card, inspired by the traditional frame stage, injecting fun and contemporary aesthetics, giving it a social function of ornamentation and taking photos and punching cards, and conveying to the audience the beautiful meaning of "everywhere there is drama, you are the director of life".
i. Riverside Drama Walking Theatre: On the shore
-When: Saturday, November 13, 2021, 10:00 a.m. and 10:30 a.m
-Duration: 2 hours/session
- Location: Yangpu Binjiang Section, Huangpu Wharf Site to Oriental Fisherman's Wharf
- Format: Drama Walk + Improv Music + City Story Sharing
- Organizer: Young Theatre
- Performing groups: Dalu Theatre Company, Otoko Orchestra
- Knowledge content partner: simplicity heart city
ii． New Circus & Installation Theatre: The Wave of Imagination
- When: Sunday, November 14, 2021, 15:00 and 16:00
- Duration: 30 minutes per session
-Venue: Shanghai International Fashion Center Water Platform
- Format: Installation + new circus body performance
- Organizer: Young Theatre
-Co-organizer: Shanghai International Fashion Center
- Performance team: Moon Troupe
iii. One Man, One Story Theater: Meet
- When: Friday, November 19, 2021, 19:30
- Duration: 2 hours
- Venue: New Helium Brain Intelligent Technology Theater
- Form: One person, one story improvisational drama
-Organizer: Young Theatre
- Co-organizer: Changyang Chuanggu
- Performance team: Dalu Theatre Company, Otoko orchestra
- Site support: Neoheum Brain Intelligence
iv. VR Video Theater "Orbit"
-When: November 25-27, 2021 (Thursday, Friday, Saturday), open regularly throughout the day
- Duration: 30 minutes
-Location: Sid Technology Light and Shadow Center
-Format: VR Video + Exhibition
-Co-organizer: Changyang Chuanggu
- Creative group: felttime
-Venue support: Sid Technology
Guiding unit: Yangpu District Culture and Tourism Bureau
Organizer: Young Theatre
Co-organizers: Shanghai International Fashion Center, Changyang Chuanggu
Source: Thoughtful