As the curtains rise on the 25th Macau Arts Festival, aficionados of arts and culture will enjoy a host of exciting artistic programmes by enthusiastic multicultural performers for the entire month. Celebrating its Silver Jubilee, the Festival is bringing a substantial number of locally produced shows that comprise more than half of the Festival’s programme. Two plays performed by local drama groups challenge audiences to reflect on the environment and future societies
Restoring the Ocean’s Health

“We can’t have a healthy planet without a healthy ocean” – that’s the message that local performance group Step Out aims to promote through their imaginative puppet theatre Rain of Stone, Song of the Sea.
The show hopes to compel audiences to think about what we’ve taken from the sea in order to transform Macau from a small fishing village into the cosmopolitan city it is today.
“We wish to explore our relationship with the sea, fostering dialogues on urban problems and environmental issues,” says co-director Mok Sio Chong.
According to Mok, the theatre was inspired by the large-scale land reclamation project announced in 2009. The group began to look at marine ecology and coastal engineering issues.
“We did a lot of talks and workshops in schools about the oceanic culture, and it appears that most of us in fact don’t have a clear perception about the sea, even though we live in a city built on a peninsula.”
Prior to the show, the stage will become an exhibition venue, where children will take part in an interactive journey, where they can learn important knowledge about Macau’s oceanic environment.
“Our theatre is a place where imaginations can be expressed creatively, while telling stories about reality. It will help children to explore environmental problems themselves, evoking the power to create change,” Mok says.
How to present the problems in a way that children could easily digest and think about further, was the biggest challenge the group faced. The theatre strives to arouse children’s imagination and curiosity through puppetry, pop-up books and music.
In support of the International Coastal Cleanup project, the group also started the Coastal Clean-up campaign at the beach on a monthly basis last December. They record the amount of trash for analysis, and as a reminder of how human activities pollute the sea.
Various types of trash picked up from the project will be on display to encourage the audience to rethink how to lead a ‘green’ life. Also, in line with eco-friendly principles, most props and scenery in the play are made of used materials or waste.
The theatre has taken their performance to over 40 kindergartens, primary schools and social service centres in both Macau and Taiwan.
In Search of a Utopia

“Can you imagine if, in the future, human beings were no longer delivered by their mothers but cloned in test tubes instead? What if people were no longer masters of their own destiny, and their lives and social class were predetermined? Would this be the ideal society?”
These questions will be explored and discussed in the experimental drama Cloning Ecstasy, adapted from British novelist Aldous Huxley’s prophetic literary classic Brave New World, a work penned when the technological revolution of the 20th century had barely begun.
Directed by local director Ip Ka Man, and penned by award-winning playwright Ip Iok Kuan, the drama aims to investigate the relationship between humans and freedom in an imagined utopia, governed by a totalitarian regime.
According to the director, the two protagonists live in a totalitarian society, in which birth and class is allocated by choice rather than free will, and the authorities, in pursuit of a collective sense of “happiness” and “stability”, control people’s emotions.
“Should we sacrifice individual happiness when it comes into conflict with common interest and social stability? Should we erase our own emotions?” asks the director.
Despite the fact that the novel was written in the early 1930s, the content itself is still relevant today.
“The story shares a lot of striking similarities with today’s society. People are indulging themselves in the pursuit of their own pleasure and stability. Things are becoming unitary,” says Ip.
“The inner self descriptions of the characters are universal and provoke in-depth discussion. Most of the characters are often in solitude. This loneliness is the result of their struggle to get fully integrated into a totalitarian society.”
The show is a reflection of what matters in our lives. Living in a digital era in which we are in a state of information overload, we can easily become more disconnected with our loved ones and those around us.
“People have become more alienated from each another than ever. We don’t care about our neighbours. To a certain extent, we are the ones who create ‘loneliness’. That’s why we believe that the story travels through time, and is still relevant in today’s society,” Ip says.