The Contemporary Theater Lecture Series brings together artists, scholars, and practitioners to explore key developments, ideas, and practices in contemporary theatre. It provides a platform for critical dialogue and engagement with diverse theatrical perspectives.
19.
Topic: Curatorial Consciousness in Ergao Dance Production Group
Speaker: Annie FENG
Time: Jan. 11, 2024, 13: 00 – 14: 30 CET
18.
Topic: Creative Practice of Butterfly Island and the Use of Synthetic Scenes as a Methodology
Speaker: HE Qi-wo (何其沃)
Time: Dec. 14, 13:00 – 14:30 CET
17.
Topic: The Force of Mortality and Urban Villages Futurism of Butterfly Island
Speaker: SUN Xiaoxing (孙晓星)
Time: Nov. 16, 2023, Thursday, 13:00 – 14:30 CET
16.
Topic: Reflections of Emotion and History – From Observations on Theatre Action (TBA)
Speaker: WANG Molin (王墨林)
Time: June 28, 2023, Wednesday, 14:00 – 15:30 CET
15.
Topic: Theatre as Wild Grass
Speaker: Kai Tuchmann
Time: May 17, 2023, Wednesday, 14:00 – 15:30 CET
14.
Topic: Theater Identity
Speaker: ZHANG Xian (张献)
Time: March 15, 2023, Wednesday, 13:00 – 15:30 CET
13.
Topic: Kunqu Opera “The Peony Pavilion”
Speaker: XIAO Xiangping (肖向平)
Time: Thu. Mar. 23, 2023, 20:00 – 21:00 CET
12.
Topic: The Seeds of Drama—Taking The Clothes of Rongyi as an Example
Speaker: LI Jing (李静), Playwright, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Chinese Literature
Time: Wed. Feb. 22, 2023, 13:00 – 14:30 CET
11.
Topic: The Art of Audience Participation in Applied Theatre
Speaker: Assoc. Prof. Estella WONG, Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts
Time: Thu. Jan 19, 2023, 13:00 – 14:30 CET
10.
Topic: Draft Theater: Beyond the Assembly-Line Model of Theatre Production
Speaker: ZHAO Chuan (赵川)
Time: Fri. Nov. 29, 2022, 13:00 – 14:30 CET
Abstract:
The theatre generated through Draft Theatre remains deliberately unfinished—each performance can be understood as a draft in an ongoing collective effort to perceive, interpret, and reimagine the world. For this reason, it resists being regarded as either a commercial product or an individual artistic work.
The concept of Draft Theatre emerges from my recent work with the grassroots theatre collective Caotaiban (Grass Stage). Rather than a formalist experiment, it is primarily concerned with the social relations of artistic production, asking a fundamental question: Why do we need theatre? This inquiry unfolds through explorations of theatrical form, including space, performance, the relationship between the individual and the collective, and the interplay between reality and poetic imagination.
The grassroots, self-organized nature of Caotaiban provides the foundation for Draft Theatre, offering a dynamic and flexible understanding of theatrical space. Its principal method is the theatre workshop, in which ordinary participants—rather than trained theatre professionals—collectively experiment, create, and expand theatrical possibilities. Draft Theatre emphasizes an embodied process of continual revising, sketching, and presenting.
If theatre forms part of social history, then Draft Theatre seeks to cultivate the creative energy needed to imagine and shape the future under contemporary conditions. This lecture will introduce the concept through selected creative projects and collaborative practices developed in recent years with participants from Caotaiban, followed by discussion and reflection.
9.
Topic: Cantonese Opera in a Shakespearean Garb: An East-West Adaptation Framework
Speaker: Asso. Prof. Kelly Kar Yue CHAN, Hong Kong Metropolitan University
Time: Fri. Oct. 28, 2022, 14:00 – 15:30 CET
Abstract:
Drama and performances are meticulously knitted with poetic and lyrical representations; poetry in turn conforms well to the dialogue-lyric-laden framework of plays and operas. Specifically in the case of Cantonese opera, it is inspiring to scrutinize the intimate relationship amongst the specific poetic structure, rhetorical features, and their cultural implications manifested in performable genres during the process of translation and adaptation.
Over the last few decades, some attempts at adapting Shakespearean plays into Cantonese opera performances were witnessed. Well-known Shakespearean plays like Macbeth, Hamlet, and Midsummer Night’s Dream have been reformatted and restored into localized Cantonese opera titles (starting from 1996, and in 2012 and 2015/2018 respectively), resulting from a breakaway of territorial and literary restrictions, and a merging of Eastern and Western essentials to supplement the original taste of these performances.
For Chinese performance goers who are also familiar with English literary masterpieces, this creation subsequently serves as a brand-new knowledge transfer. Despite some criticisms received for such adaptations for being “something in-between”, it is still worthy of sensible discussions about the value of their existence.
8.
Topic: Writing a Play Script and Teaching How to Write One
Speaker: Asso. Prof. GUO Chenzi (郭晨子), Shanghai Academy of Theater
Time: Wed. May 25, 2022, 14:00 – 15: 30 CET
7.
Topic: Performing the Socialist State
Speaker: Professor Xiaomei CHEN (陈小眉), the University of California, Davis
Time: Wed. May 4, 2022, California 7:00 AM, Wednesday, Göttingen 4:00 PM CET
Abstract:
The lecture offers a quick overview of Xiaomei Chen’s forthcoming book, Performing the Socialist State: Moments, Crisis and Success of Modern Chinese Theater (Columbia University Press, 2022). It begins with the theatrical achievements of Tian Han, Hong Shen, and Ouyang Yuqian, three founders of spoken drama, and asks how their legacies in the Republican period played important roles in constructing socialist theater. She will demonstrate how these multi-faceted leaders provided the blueprints for the Maoist theater in the PRC, contrary to the conventional claim that the PRC theater is a total break-away from the Republican period.
To this end and in this context, she will reflect on the continuities with the performing culture in the Republican period through examinations of “Rightist satirical comedies” in the 1950s, women’s theater and film “red classic” in the 1960s, scientists on stage in the Maoist and post-Maoist periods, and soldiers in transformation from the Republican, to the socialist, and finally, to the post-socialist stage. She will also explore the relationship between science and theater, music and theater, and artists and their collective identities as “new cultural workers.”
6.
Topic: Writing new plays in China and the US
Speaker: ZHU Yi (朱宜), New York
Time: Wed. April 20, 2022, New York 8:00 AM, Göttingen 2:00 PM, Beijing 8:00 PM
5.
Topic: Comedies in contemporary Chinese theatre – a sudden boom
Speaker: Sabine Heymann, the University of Giessen; Dr. Anna Stecher, the University of Munich
Time: Wed. March 16, 2022, 1:00 PM-2:30 PM CET
Abstract:
Sabine Heymann in conversation with Anna Stecher about her new book „Die Konjunktur her Komödie im China der Gegenwart“ (The boom of comedies in contemporary China) – which presents six current successful comedies from China in German translation.
Chinese theatre is not famous for comedies. As far as we know, up to now no Western book has been explicitly dedicated to this topic. However, comedies are among the most watched and discussed plays in contemporary Chinese theatre of recent years – and someone might even argue that in the present time comedy has become the most serious theatrical expression on the Chinese stage. Entangled with the commercialization of theatre, new cultural structures and the changing of urban audiences, the question is: How is this phenomenon to be understood? As a sudden boom influenced by narrative conventions of Western cinema? As a special expression of a millennial tradition of entertainment – and critique? It has to be said: comedies as an own genre didn’t really exist within the Chinese theatre tradition. On the other hand: elements of comedy have always been an important piece of the big xiqu tragedies.
While Chinese audiences are familiar with actors and plays, academic research does not appear to be interested in contemporary comedies, not to mention possible readers and audiences outside China, who have hardly heard of them. This was the reason for Anna Stecher and her colleague Xu Jian in Beijing to plan a book project focusing on contemporary Chinese comedies. It presents some of the most popular recent plays, written by Nick Yu, Wen Fangyi, Huang Weiruo, Lin Weiran, Guo Shixing and Li Jing. It also aims to propose different approaches towards Chinese theatre – every play in translation is introduced by an expert from the fields of Chinese studies or Theatre studies.
In addition, it intends to contextualize the recent phenomenon of comedies within different fields, such as the social reality in contemporary China and the history of comedy in China, and to discuss questions like: Which topics are contemporary Chinese comedians interested in? How can this phenomenon be understood in the context of the 20th and 21st centuries in China? How can these comedies be understood in Europe? Last but not least, it aims at exploring comedy as a text for intercultural communication. When watching theatrical comedy performances on stage or on tape, you think: what the heck is so funny about them? Questions like these are discussion topics of the book – and some more will be addressed in the “Contemporary Theater Art” Seminar Series.
4.
Topic: Play and Performance of Hometown: A Talk on College Theater Production
Speakers: Assoc. Prof. Dr. GAO Ziwen (高子文), the Department of Theatre, Film, and TV Arts, Nanjing University
Time: Wed. Jan. 10, 2022, 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM CET
3.
Topic: The Poetic Quest and Its Expression in Dramatic Writing
Speakers: Dr. ZHONG Haiqing (钟海清)
Time: Wed., Nov. 17, 2021. 14:00 – 15:30 CET
2.
Topic: Cross-arts Collaboration and Crossing Borders in Art
Speakers: Chong WANG (王翀), Théâtre du Rêve Expérimental; Shasha LI (李莎莎)
Time: 2021. 01.17, Germany 13:00 – 14:30 CET
1.
Topic: Juchang: Contemporary Theatre Performance in Germany and in China
Speakers: Prof. Dr. Li Yinan (李亦男), the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing; Huang Yiping
Time: 2020. 12. 09, Germany 14:00 – 15:30 CET
yingmingtheater.com 