Goodbye to our Shanghai artists
He Ju and Liu Lei left London yesterday to return to Shanghai. We’ve had a fantastic week with them. Monday’s meetings were followed by a writers’ workshop with Chinese, British Chinese and other British writers on Tuesday. It was good to have such a mix of voices and some wonderful 10, 50 and 100 word plays were written by Ben Ellis, Liu Lei, Tom Morton-Smith, Phil Porter, Amy Rosenthal, Jeremy Tiang, Rosaline Ting and Simon Wu. The following day, Theatre503 actors joined and with the directing team of Natasha Betteridge, Anthony Biggs, Antonio Ferrara, He Ju, Gene David Kirk and Paul Robinson, set to work. The weather was glorious and maximum use was made of The Latchmere garden as a rehearsal space. Towards the end of the day, we took He Ju and Liu Lei to the Lyric Hammersmith where they caught the last half of a discussion about Harold Pinter and The Birthday Play before seeing the 50th anniversary production in the evening.
Following a technical rehearsal on Thursday morning, everyone prepared for the afternoon’s performance. The quality of the writing, acting and direction was extremely high, with plays performed in English, Mandarin and Cantonese. 100 Words Associate Artists Jennifer Lim and Oliver Williams appeared in several plays as well as giving short ‘cultural snapshots’ between pieces of thoughts that had arisen over the three days. Our thanks to the other actors – Vicki Boreham, Fiona Button, Alan Cox, Lisa Diveney, Ellis Kerkhoven, He Ju, Liu Lei (who gave a memorial impersonation of an elevator), Wendy Nottingham, Jeremy Tiang, Jonathan Warde and Sargon Yelda.
The performance was followed by an informal, high quality and thoughtful discussion. Liu Lei and He Ju talked about their theatre, Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre, and answered questions about programme development, new writing, censorship, international collaboration, diversity and China’s ability to embrace creativity, placing the latter in the wider context of social and economic development of the last 30 years.
The last day was spent introducing He Ju and Liu Lei to more theatre organisations including ATC, Soho Theatre and Paines Plough. We all got together for a final dinner in Covent Garden – not before He Ju had found himself taking part in a piece of street theatre. Our thoughts are now turning to how we might develop this three way partnership and take creative collaboration between 100 Words, Theatre503 and Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre onto the next stage.