Setting the stage for creativity

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For him, all people were born to be "authentic", but while growing up, they gradually are alienated from it. To be authentic is to travel in a reverse way, to fight against alienation.

"Everybody should've had it, but only a few people try constantly to approach it," he says.

This principle entitles him to observe people and ruminate on their life so that he can accurately capture the current psychological status and needs in the society, which lays the foundation for his work.

For example, he introduced Ghetto to China, a musical about Jewish people during World War II, a story seemingly far from Chinese people in time and space. But Wang sensed that it was about death and how to live in a limited time, which are also the philosophical questions that Chinese people tend to think about today.

The recent work Ponzi, adapted from French musical Le Systeme de Ponzi, was a bold try because it might be too avant-garde for domestic audiences to understand. However, although audiences might be confused by the musical without music, the work's fast rhythm resonates with the rhythm of people in a money-oriented commercial society.

Sitting on the stage of the Poly Theater at 9 on a Monday morning for the book launch ceremony, Wang looked lost after program hostess Zhang Yue's first question-"what should a producer bring to people and people's mind?"-because he did not sleep the previous night, he said. Five hours later, a performance of the eight-hour play A Dream Like a Dream would draw its curtain at the same venue.

But it has been his belief that "theater is to interact with people's minds directly, giving people comfort".

In one of his "monologues" in the book, Wang writes, "holding a global vision, Magnificent Culture looks for good scripts, scriptwriters, and directors from all over the world. But we have never chosen works full of killing, never peeled the miserable reality into an even more miserable look for the audience, and never let people feel in the theaters that there are only despair and abysses in life.

"All the works we have chosen include not only sharp bloody critique, but also profound care for humanity, which is the basic principle for us to choose and present a theater work."

At the ceremony, Wang revised his words: "In the recent two years, I have felt while keeping warmth and hope, theater should mirror the reality in a sharper and absolute way."

In December, Wang was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government for his achievement in theater, and his contribution to the cultural communication and exchange between China and France, and to the friendship between the two countries.

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