19:00-20:30, September 12, Rote Fabrik,
Seestrasse 395, 8038 Zürich
Reconstructing the Social Space: Grass Stage and Its Theatre Practice
Talk + Film with Zhao Chuan (Shanghai)
Over a decade, theatre maker and writer Zhao Chuan, together with his theatre collective Grass Stage, have been focusing on developing artistic theatre work into a social practice in China. They encourage people from different backgrounds to consider social and historical issues, and stimulate participator and audience to response to those issues through creative process, rehearsals, performances and post-talks. Within a framework of the most basic “poor theatre”, Grass Stage use a diverse set of techniques including physical theatre, texts, documentary footage, oral storytelling, clown performance and performance art etc., engendering powerful spaces for intellectual exchange. Their events made use of a wide range of venues and situations for performances and discussions, are not only spaces for bringing together diverse elements of society, but also provide, in a country relatively lacking in opportunities for public participation, a fluid and varied range of public social spaces.
Zhao Chuan is a writer, curator and theatre director, who creates alternative, political theatre in Shanghai. He is the founding member and mastermind of the important Chinese theatre collective Grass Stage since 2005. His theatre works include: World Factory (2014-2016), Unsettling Stones (2012-2013), Little Society (2009-2011). Independent documentary film: Shanghai Youth (producer, 2015). He has been awarded several international literature awards, including the Unita Prize for New Novelists (Taiwan 2001). His recent publications include: On Radical Art: the 80s Scene in Shanghai (author, Shanghai Sanlian Bookshop Publishing 2014), The Body At Stake: Experiments in Chinese Contemporary Art and Theatre (co-editor, author, Transcript 2013).
This event is supported by Pro Helvetia and Rote Fabrik.
Rote Fabrik, Seestrasse 395, Postfach 1073, 8038 Zürich
