The Chinese New Year kicks off today, with the Year of the Pig giving way to the Year of the Rat. We celebrated yesterday with Sean from Neocha, the Shanghai based company which has designed our logo. Sean’s in the UK for a few days and we couldn’t resist a dumpling lunch in London’s Chinatown. The streets looked stunning with all the red lanterns strung across them. We stopped outside one of the restaurants to buy some dragon beard sweets – Natasha will be showing them to young people at Caister High School today, where we’re continuing our 100 Words workshop programme (it’s week five out of six). This year, there are more events than ever celebrating the start of the Chinese New Year, and we’re hoping to catch films, performances and lion dances over the next few days.

Just ahead of the Spring Festival, we’ve been able to get the online competition up and running in China. The competition is open to young people in China aged 13 to 25 and we’re asking for 100 word plays that express what it means to be a young person in China today.

SOHU.com is our online media partner for this project. As one of China’s top tier internet media organisations and the official online partner for Beijing 2008, we’re sure that the competition will get a lot of exposure. Further details are available at:

http://news.sohu.com/s2008/100words/

We’re also delighted that British Council China is promoting the competition on its website – check out the following link (this takes you through to the Chinese language version; click on the flag at the top of the page to access the competition announcement in English):

http://www.britishcouncil.org/zh/china-arts-drama-100words

Judging panels have been put together in both China and the UK, and we’re looking forward to reading the entries next month!

Since our return from Beijing last month, we’ve been busy advancing plans with the National Youth Theatre for 100 Words activity on screen, on stage and online.

Last week we were delighted to launch an online creative writing competition in partnership with BBC Blast and the National Youth Theatre. 13 to 19 year olds are being set the challenge of writing a 100 word play based on ‘My World – being a young person in the UK today’. The winning play will be made into a short film and broadcast simultaneously on big screens in London and Beijing later this year. We’re looking for strong and imaginative plays with just 100 words of dialogue that demonstrate creativity and originality, tackle the theme of ‘My World’ sensitively, reflect contemporary life, appeal to an international audience, and both translate well on stage and can be adapted into a short film. The closing date for entries is 14 March 2008 – check out the following link for further details:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blast/writing/showcase/competition/

This week, the competition launches in China in partnership with SOHU.com and British Council China. We’ll be posting details of the relevant website links here soon.

Happy 2008 from Beijing, where we’ve been for the past week with the National Youth Theatre setting up a programme that will run for the next six months. We’re planning to run an online competition in both China and the UK, film the two winning 100 word plays which will be screened in both countries during a live interactive event on 30 April, and showcase work created by young British and Chinese artists in July, when the National Youth Theatre perform at the new National Centre for the Performing Arts as part of China International Youth Week. The past few days have been crucial in terms of confirming partnerships and drawing up a detailed plan of action. We’re working with a small team of Chinese fixers, who will continue to liaise with partners once we’ve returned to the UK. The latter include Beijing Dramatists Association, SOHU.com and the Central Academy of Fine Arts. Three National Youth Theatre volunteer members have been with us, working with students at CAFA to develop interactive ideas and collecting visual material that will be screened in April. As ever, it’s been a stimulating week, full of surprises and happy coincidences. We spent a fun night in Song, a new bar which is co-run by music promoter and DJ Neebing in partnership with the editor of Time Out Beijing. We saw some wonderful early 1960s animations of Monkey: Journey to the West. The bar has only been open a few weeks but is worth checking out – b108, The Place, Chaoyang District. Tonight will be spent having a working dinner with our fixers, Yang Lei and Zhang Bo before packing and flying back tomorrow.

It’s the early hours in the UK and the rush hour in China, an appropriate time to write a last blog before checking out for a while. Looking back at 2007, it’s been quite a year. We’ve worked in Beijing, Birmingham, Caister, Guangzhou, London and Shanghai, forging ahead with both the artist development and creative language learning strands of 100 Words. In total, over 1,000 people have been involved either as participants or as audience members. We’ve generated over 130 plays by British and Chinese writers and made over 25 short films. There have been lots of highlights - discovering the power of 100 word plays performed first in Mandarin and then in English; witnessing the interest of the local Chinese community in Birmingham in 100 Words; introducing Paul Roseby from the National Youth Theatre to Beijing for the first time with a whirlwind of 17 meetings over three days; seeing members of the National Youth Theatre perform plays in Mandarin having learnt the language over just a few days; experiencing the enthusiasm of teachers and British Council staff in Guangzhou, where the creative language learning strand of 100 Words was launched in September; discovering that a dynamic cluster of schools in Caister-on-Sea, Norfolk have active links with the futuristic city of Shanghai; and giving young Chinese artists the opportunity to express their creativity in new ways.

Looking forward, 2008 is a significant year – one which sees Beijing host the Olympic and Paralympic Games, and an unprecedented number of Chinese-themed programmes and events in the UK.  We’re looking forward to being part of CHINA NOW’s education programme and to continuing our work with Caister and Shanghai schools. We’ll also be focusing on the special relationship between Beijing and London – two Olympic cities which will be linked in a live event scheduled on 30 April, just 100 days before the start of the Beijing Olympics. This is part of a larger programme of work that we’ll be delivering in partnership with the National Youth Theatre, BBC Blast, Beijing Dramatists Association and the Central Academy of Fine Arts amongst others. In order to firm up the planning for this, we’ll be going to Beijing in early January with National Youth Theatre staff members and volunteers – a great way to kick off the new year.

We finished off our week with two workshops at Shanghai World Foreign Language Middle School in Xuhui District. One workshop involved 12 teachers, the other involved 18 students and was a much shorter introduction to 100 Words. Teachers again provided thoughtful feedback regarding how they might implement 100 Words in the classroom, and we were again struck by the excellence of the students’ English. We’re looking forward to continuing our work in Shanghai schools.

An English lesson in progress at the WFL Middle School

Shanghai Theatre Academy’s new theatre spaces

The workshop in progress

Shanghai Theatre Academy is one of the two ‘national status’ drama training institutions in China. Surrounded by high rise buildings, the campus is well equipped with two stunning new theatre spaces and good sized rooms in the teaching block, which we used for the workshop. Over two days, we worked with 17 undergraduate and postgraduate writers and 15 ‘actors’ who actually had very little acting experience as they were from the Department of Dramatic Literature.  In the informal performance, we showcased 14 plays written on the theme of ‘everyday life in China’, either as fully rehearsed pieces or as rehearsed readings. Relationships underpinned many of the plays – between a girl trying to secure a residence permit and an official; between a husband in prison and his ill wife; between a mother and her daughter; between a man, his ex-wife (now a successful entrepreneur) and his current wife. Some of the plays dealt with difficult subjects – a man had to choose between saving the life of his wife or son, who were both in the operating theatre, and ended up losing both. Working with students with little acting knowledge threw up a few challenges, especially given the tight rehearsal schedule, but proved to be a rich and rewarding experience for all.

Our workshop at Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre went extremely well. 14 people in total attended including students and three members of staff from SDAC.  We ended up with 12 very different 100 word plays whose subject matter ranged from visions of the future to relationships between families, friends and lovers. One play was set in a lift, another inside a public WC. We were joined by 11 fabulous actors who took to the process and gave them all during a fast paced day of back to back rehearsals. The plays were showcased in the evening as part of an informal performance. We collected lots of feedback from writers and actors -’every word can become the beginning of a story’ commented one of the writers.

Yesterday was a day of meetings. We went to Shanghai World Foreign Language Middle School to observe an English lesson and prepare for the weekend workshops.  It was then off to another school in the same area (Xuhui District) - No 3 Middle School, which is affiliated to Shanghai Teachers University. There, we joined a delegation of four teachers from Caister High, Middle and First schools and also met headteachers and teachers from both No 3 Middle School and Dong’er Primary School. We’re planning a collaborative project as part of a broader programme between the linked schools.

In less than an hour, we start a two day workshop at Shanghai Theatre Academy, one of China’s leading training insitutions. We’ll be working with a group of 20 writers and 15 actors.  More to follow on this soon, along with some pics.