Friday, August 31, 2018 13 Creative heads Play is the thing KW: We put on Alice in Stuckyland in the Central Harbourfront Event Space immersive theater projects. Eventually we would like to produce Editor’s Note: Onnie Chan and King Wong run Banana E ect — a as well as in Nursery Park, West Kowloon Cultural District. The world the other three as well. Hong Kong-based theater company that believes in putting the audi- we created was fi ctional (a take on Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in We thought we’d do a sci-fi version of Journey to the West, set in the ence at the center of their activities. e duo spoke to China Daily Wonderland). It was manic, crazy and chaotic in some ways. future. I bet no one has tried something like this before! Hong Kong about their forthcoming production, a futuristic participa- The idea was to let the audience have a taste of di erent possible expres- tory theater piece based on the Chinese classic, Journey to the West. sions of immersive theater. They got some physical exercise by walking Q: Is it very hi-tech? through a maze we created. Instructions were radioed to them through OC: Not terribly hi-tech, but there will be some use of smartphone tech- earphones. It was as if the Cheshire Cat from Alice was playing a game of nology. We did a bit of investigation trying to gauge how people Onnie Chan (OC) King Wong (KW) hide-and-seek with them. Interestingly, when participants walked out of would like the future to look. Surprisingly, the feedback reveals that the gates of the compound, the radio caught signals from passing taxis. they may not be so excited about hi-tech and cyber-style shows. My Q: Onnie, you were an actress with Hong Kong Repertory The- The two audio tracks merged and created a di erent experience we had teammates said they might like to see a future where nature plays a atre for three years. When did you think of doing immersive not planned for. We thought it made the experience more real. bigger role. So we are kind of creating our own future world. theater? OC: Six years ago I came back to Hong Kong from the UK, where I Q: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a very familiar, classic children’s Q: Does the audience get to wear masks like in some of your earlier studied in Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Funnily book. What was your spin on it? productions? enough, I was introduced to King Wong, who was in Hong Kong, OC: We turned Alice into a male character, to provoke curiosity. And each time OC: We realized wearing a mask throughout the show may not be very through a British girl I knew in the UK. After we met, King and I we put on that show we built in a theme relevant to Hong Kong at the comfortable. Still, we need the audience to believe they are a char- went back to the UK, watched a lot of immersive theater there and time. For example, the fi rst time round, the three rabbits trying to fi nd acter in an immersive theater show. So we’ll give the audience some decided to bring the form to Hong Kong. During my Hong Kong their paths refl ected the anxiety of Hong Kong youth about their future. kind of a thing to wear — a device through which they can participate Repertory Theatre days, I felt the proscenium theater model creat- For another show where our audience comprised about 100 teenagers, we in the games. ed a disconnect with the audience. Immersive theater seemed like raised the issue of suicides by secondary school students who are unhappy KW: The reason we gave the audience masks to wear in The Game of Life a more e ective way of connecting with the audience. Since Hong with their lives. was because it was in the format of reality TV. Hong Kong audiences Kong people love pop culture, we thought of doing immersive the- We make these shows appear a bit edgy or weird because we want them to are very reserved. So we thought wearing a mask might help hide ater pop-culture style. We teamed up with TV anchor Brian Chen. convey the sense that there is a di erent layer of things underneath what the identity of the participants and push them toward playing the meets the eye. games and engaging with the show. Q: Banana E ect is an unusual name for a theater company. In the end, there were 10 winners from among 70 people and they How did that come about? Q: Your forthcoming show, The Last Journey to the West, is based on one were invited to take their masks o . In a way, this was a refl ection of OC: Andy Warhol’s words “In the future, everyone will be world-famous of the four great classical Chinese novels (Journey to the West, c.1592 Hong Kong society where we only acknowledge the winners while for 15 minutes” came to mind, since our idea was to put the audi- by Wu Cheng’en). What made you choose it? the rest don’t seem to matter. ence at the center of our shows, (even if only for a short time). OC: We like to use Chinese literary heritage as the material for our OC: I feel wearing a mask gets in the way of the audience fully engaging That’s how we thought of the banana, since we wanted to have the in the experience. My curatorial statement reads: “You might fi nd audience as the main focus, like the banana in Warhol’s artwork. yourself feeling uncomfortable or lost in an uncontrollable design (Warhol’s cover design for the debut album of US rock band The cluster. Try not to escape the true feelings that will act through your Velvet Underground was the image of an overripe banana, which body, because they will lead you to the right answers to my question.” subsequently became an icon of pop art). So I would like the audience to engage in the show without having KW: Also, banana is a healthy food. We want our shows to be energetic to mask their identities. and we would like some of that energy to be transferred to the young people who are our target audience. Q: I suppose feeling uncomfortable is part of the point of immer- sive theater. Both actors and audience place themselves within Q: And where does game-playing fi t into your scheme of things? touching distance of each other and neither knows what the oth- OC: King, Brian and I, all three of us like playing games. In 2013 I was er will do next. one of the early developers of FreeingHK!, a company where I cre- KW: Well, if you gave total freedom to the audience to do as they please, ated online game rooms which could be adapted to be played as things might get totally out of control and that could be the end of reality games in the physical space. At Banana E ect we have an your show. There has to be an element of control on their move- immersive theater game lab where we do workshops, play board ments, although it might not be so apparent. We do have back-up games, discuss video games… plans to deal with a possible crisis. At the same time the impression KW: Games are a way of engaging the audience in the shows we cre- we like to give the audience is that they are free to explore and they ate. The format of the show is that the audience is required to are in safe hands. participate in a game. The game is neither purely physical nor super-intellectual like playing chess. Interviewed by Chitralekha Basu OC: For instance, our fi rst production, The Game of Life, is designed like a TV game show. The audience is sorted into groups competing IF YOU GO against one another, as they deal with a di erent challenge at each stage of the competition. King Wong, Onnie Chan The Last Journey to the West PRODUCTION DIRECTOR, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, Produced by Banana E ect Dates: Sept 14 to 16 Q: Let’s hear about one of your more recent performances — Alice BANANA EFFECT BANANA EFFECT Venue: This Town Needs in Stuckyland. PARKER ZHENG / CHINA DAILY 1/F, Ocean One, 6 Shung Shun Street, Yau Tong Dance meets Canto opera Hong Kong Dance Company presents Waiting Our pick of city events from Aug 31 to Sept 9 Heart, an adaptation of the Cantonese opera masterpiece, The Legend of the Purple Hairpin, as homage to the late eminent playwright Tong HK Phil’s 45th birthday concerts Tik-sang on his 101st birth anniversary. Re- imagined in the contemporary setting, Waiting Hong Kong Philharmonic who earned himself the name Heart is a story of star-crossed lovers who brave the odds to be reunited with each other. Incor- Orchestra will present two “Poet of the Violin”, will play porating elements of minimal Canto opera, the celebratory concerts to mark Sibelius’s dark, intricate Violin show promises to be an immersive experience its 45th anniversary. HK Concerto. Bell will also play for the audience. Phil music director Jaap van compositions by Brahms. A It’s party time, ladies! Waiting Heart Zweden teams up with two rendition of Mozart’s Jupiter Women of Hong Kong can look forward to their very own festival in the fi rst two weeks of September.