"It's been 57 days since the last bell of 'Notre Dame de Paris' rang in the Cultural Square, and I'm curious to see what you're all doing during this time when you can't meet, and if you miss the days and nights in the theater." However, the moment you turn on this live broadcast, it already means that the endless wait is coming to an end. Zhang Jie, general manager of SAIC Shanghai Culture Square, said.
On the evening of March 20, SAIC Shanghai Culture Square finally ushered in the long-lost lights.
After two months of "dormancy", the most active professional theater in Shanghai released its annual performance plan with a "cloud conference" and sounded the clarion call for the recovery of theater operations.
The promotion ambassadors of the 2020 Shanghai International Musical Theatre Festival, Ayunga and Zheng Yunlong, also sent their blessings and greetings for the performance season, and agreed with the audience: "When the epidemic passes, we will meet in the theater and go to the Cultural Square to watch the play!" ”
From 2016 "Reasons to Fall in Love with Theater", 2017 "We", 2018 "Like The Truth", to 2019 "Beautiful and Edible"; each year, the Cultural Square has cut from a different perspective to explore "reasons to love theater", and this year the theme will be "Twenty-twenty Walk together"——
In such a spring without performances, walking with artists, walking with audiences, walking with partners, and all people who love stage art rely on each other, like fireworks, sending a little light in the darkness, illuminating warmth.
In 2020, the good drama is behind us.
In terms of musicals, the Broadway classic musical "The Color Purple," as a Pulitzer-winning novel of the same name and a film adaptation of the same name directed by renowned director Spielberg, will meet audiences this summer.
In terms of multiple languages, 2020 will be the "Year of French Drama", in addition to "Notre Dame de Paris" in January this year, the French musical "Don Juan" will also debut on the Shanghai stage, continuing the French-style freehand aesthetic, while the poetic and romantic "Rock red and black" and the blockbuster musical version of the concert "Les Misérables" will also return, setting off a new round of romantic French drama frenzy.
The new Chinese original musical "The Orphan of Zhao" is another masterpiece of Xu Jun's directorial team after the original musical "Jews in Shanghai", and the story presents a new modern interpretation of Chinese tragedy classics from the cross-cultural perspective of the East and the West.
In addition to introducing foreign classics, Cultural Square has always been committed to the production and incubation of Chinese version of musicals in recent years.
Last year, "My Bucket List" and "Rachmaninoff" completed 97 performances in 24 cities across the country; at the beginning of this year, "Spring Awakening", co-produced with Hongyang International, gained a good reputation in the upper theater, and the upcoming musical "Maybe a Happy Ending" will be fully invested by the original Korean creative team, while continuing the "small and beautiful" production style, and strive to convey its delicate emotions to the audience.
In addition, the "Chinese Original Musical Theater Incubation Plan", which aims to gather industry resources and create an ecological closed loop, has also set sail again. This year, the incubation plan also announced a "special call" campaign with the epidemic as a clue, hoping to hear more Chinese stories worth recording in the future.
Other art forms are equally exciting.
In 2020, Sir Matthew Bourne, an old friend of Culture Square and a British ghost choreographer, will also return for the fifth time, bringing his special favorite work "Red Dancing Shoes" to open the Chinese debut. The work is based on the classic British film "Red Lingyan" in the 1940s, and the version that came to Shanghai won the Oliver Drama Award, which was called a love letter to dance, drama and film by the British media.
The famous performance artist Chen Peisi's masterpiece "Drama Stage" and the classic work of Sichuan Renyi "Tea House". The two word-of-mouth works will surely present the audience with the needle in the laughter and anger and the Shudi edition of the literary classics of Bashi Authenticity.
At the end of the year, the play "Mary Says So" directed by Robert Wilson and starring the famous actress Isabel Huppel will premiere in the Cultural Square. The blockbuster attack of this pair will also become another masterpiece that has ignited word-of-mouth after the Russian shocking aesthetic "Evgeny Onegin".
Regret is not nothing. 2020 is undoubtedly a special year for everyone, with the escalation of the epidemic overseas, many wonderful performances that were originally on the release schedule, such as the "Book of the Jungle" directed by the world-renowned theater master Robert Wilson, and last year's hard-to-find version of "Evgeny Onegin" had to face the fate of postponement or cancellation.
Two other heavy guests of the German-language Musicals Concert, Maya Hakvoort and Mark Seibert, solo concerts; world-class musical theater stars, ramin Karimloo, who has played several major roles in "Phantom of the Opera" and "Les Misérables", came to China for the first time; and "Leia Salonca Star Concert" and "French Musicals Star Concert", etc. It also has to regret the postponement, but the cultural square is actively coordinating all parties to strive for "late but late arrival". I believe that in the near future, I will meet with enthusiastic audiences.
"All this makes our theater workers mixed, and I think our theater counterparts in Shanghai and their theater counterparts across the country are waiting, and they are also overcoming the difficulties together." However, we are still actively looking forward to the future, coordinating various performances and programs, and working hard to present a rich performance after the epidemic. Fei Yuanhong, deputy general manager of SAIC Shanghai Culture Square, said.
The audience must have wondered what kind of performance would be staged first once the theater opened? Fei Yuanhong admitted that according to the current situation, domestic original dramas will be a more suitable choice, "At present, our preliminary consideration is to arrange the original Chinese musical theater festival in March as much as possible. ”
As for international projects, everything is working hard to communicate and strive, and Fei Yuanhong also believes that when the epidemic is completely controlled, the theater will still usher in its own spring, "Sooner or later it will come, but the speed and rhythm of serving will be a little affected." ”
Although the stage pressed the pause button, the theater people were still busy. As early as the beginning of February, the cultural square launched the annual stage maintenance. It is understood that compared with previous years, this year's maintenance is more comprehensive, not only the overall replacement of the dimming system of the light, but also invited a professional third-party agency to do the audio transformation program.
In addition, on March 7, a special online "Theater Open Day" was pushed to every audience who paid attention to the theater through the WeChat service account of The Cultural Square. The three major art education brands of Drama Art Hall, Square Xiaobai and Bystage have also used the new media matrix to continue to exert efforts to create a number of distinctive online series of activities.
"This rare intermission has given us the precious opportunity to learn from the past, thick and thin." As Zhang Jie said: The sudden arrival of accidents disrupts the pace of daily life, but it does not interrupt the rolling wheels of the theater.