Category: Site-Specific Participatory Theater

Director/Dramaturg: Tan Tan

Producer: Long Miaoyuan

Sound Design: Dickson Dee

Duration: 90 minutes

Year: 2022

Co-initiators:

Vanke Development Co., Ltd., Shenzhen

Shenzhen Fringe Festival Art Center

Produced by: Tan Tan Studio + Story Farm

Co-produced by: Wuhan International Culture and Sports Co., Ltd.

• Sponsored by YAV Art Platform

• Premiered on September 17, 2022, at Idea Factory, Nantou Ancient Town, Shenzhen.

  
  

Performance Documentary Trailer

On January 23, 2020, a spaceship codenamed "Space Ark 2020" landed on Earth, in Wuhan, China, and quickly cloned itself to every corner of the world, where it remains. The extraterrestrial bacteria it brought dramatically transformed the lives of every person and animal on Earth instantly. Some people boarded the spaceship, becoming the first, and perhaps also the last group to choose whether to leave Earth. However, those on board no longer enjoyed the linear time of three-dimensional space beings and fell into endless disorder and drift; each entered an independent universe, unable to touch their own kind. In the randomness and digital progression of day after day, they were all unaware that they were gradually changing...

In the Nantou Ancient Town of Shenzhen, its "presence" takes the form of a six-story office building—the Idea Factory. The show takes place on its corridors of three floors, and the “stage” is divided by the existing architectural structure into 18 windows/space cabins. The audience can only gaze up from below to witness the performance within the building. As the busy work lights temporarily dim, stage lights illuminate ordinary people in the windows. These amateur performers were all recruited from the public through open casting. They "perform" themselves—office workers of the building, security guards in the neighborhood, fruit vendors, foreign teachers striving in Shenzhen, and more. The age range spans from 3 to 70 years old, and the script is entirely adapted from their real-life experiences of quarantine - some are humorous, while others evoke sensitive emotions…

In addition to the visual presentation in a specific space, the work also breaks away from the conventional theater concepts of "linear time" and "author-centered control." Performance segments are categorized by three colors: red, yellow, and green. Lucky audience members can choose the performing sequence through an original digital program—when a grid on the program interface lights up with a certain color, the actor in that window starts the corresponding performance.

Audience members are also randomly assigned red, yellow, or green codes, dividing them into three groups. "Green code audience" automatically becomes eligible "captains" steering the "spaceship." This setup aims to absurdly express the involuntary and unplanned nature of people's lives during the three years of the pandemic, visualizing and gamifying the disorder of life.