This year’s 26th Macao Arts Festival is featuring diverse and ambitious local theatre productions, showcasing a host of local talent including revivals, originals and coproductions with international peers.
Macau theatre veteran Lawrence Lei’s Phaedra 2.0 – Desires and Lies, and aspiring Jenny Mok’s Memory Blueprint II – Dance Theatre not only bring physical and dance theatre to Macau art lovers, but also demonstrate that the city’s performing arts are becoming more mature. What needs to be done now is to develop the audience.
“Actors and audience members are breathing at the same time during a performance. They influence one another,” says Lawrence Lei.
He believes that Macau audiences are open-minded, however, more marketing opportunities should be explored and developed so that more local people go to theatres. This is important for the local performing arts scene, he notes.
Jenny Mok agrees, recalling her experiences overseas.
“In Europe, there are always large audiences supporting various performances, from mainstream dramas to alternative theatre. But Macau audiences are still only small crowds. As a director, my job is to focus on my production and audience development.”
For Phaedra 2.0 Lawrence has been working with the award-winning classical revivalist Hong Kong director Tang Shu Wing and Macau Youth Repertory Theatre. Likely to appeal to a more highbrow audience, Lei admits this is one of the reasons why this show was chosen for the Festival. For newer audiences, he hopes this production will broaden their view of physical theatre, which is gaining popularity in the international theatre world.
Ever an ambitious artistic director, Lei explains that by applying physical theatre along with the script’s faithful translation and fast pace, they aspire to bring Macau audiences beyond their horizons of theatre, and provide their students with a unique opportunity to explore this particular method of expression.
“Physical theatre is a concept and method of training and expression. It conveys the story and characters deeply through the body. Actors’ bodies constantly align with the pace in the show,” Lei says.
Lei is impressed by the quality and diversity of local productions at the Macao Arts Festival.
“Local artists are becoming more and more professional. They are not willing to stick to a traditional way to work with theatre. They want to develop their creative ideas. However, the audiences still need to catch up.”
The price of success
Young, aspiring and committed best describe Jenny Mok, the co-director of Memory Blueprint II – Dance Theatre. Presented by the energetic Soda-City Experimental Workshops Arts Association, this nostalgic and thought-provoking piece scrutinises Macau’s past including the lost coastline areas and ecosystems (mangrove forests and egrets) and the unknown future.
Lyrical vocabulary and rich interactions of dancers set the tone, while scaffolding props determine the space of Macau. Recordings of interviews with the elder generation about their memories of Macau serve as the choreographic music.
Combined, these details paint a sharp picture of Macau, offering the audience a familiar and aesthetic experience to reflect on their environment.
“I want the audience to reflect on what we have lost, whether the loss is alright and whether we have ever defended these things.”
When asked to describe her show in three words, Mok concludes, “reflection, future and nature.”
Mok believes that dance theatre not only serves as an art form to express a show’s meaning, topics and mood, but can also transport audiences into another dimension where they can think and interpret more openly.
“Without the limitations of text, dance theatre is a universal language. To me, it is a great art form to put Macau theatre on the world stage.”
Mok recalls that when she started as a dancer over ten years ago, many theatre companies produced plays as a popular art form. Nowadays, more people have become involved in dance theatre. However, there is real demand for a local dance theatre school because many professionals have to further their training abroad. Despite the fact that the government has been investing in arts administration posts, many theatre companies as yet cannot afford their staff and productions on a full-time basis and artists can only take up projects one at a time.
