33ʳᵈ Macao Arts Festival

m@rc0 p0!0 endg@me 2.0

Dirks Theatre Arts Association x Paprika Studio

5/5
20:00

6, 7/5
15:00, 20:00

Black Box Theatre, Old Court Building


Duration: Approximately 1 hour and 20 minutes, no interval
Performed in Cantonese, no surtitles

 

Please switch off all sound-making and light-emitting devices. Unauthorised photography or recording of any kind is strictly prohibited. Thank you for your co-operation.

 

Artistic Directors: Ip Ka Man and Wu May Bo
Direction and Text: Adrian Yeung
Cast: Ip Ka Man, Wu May Bo and Anson Chan
VR Design and Production: Adrian Yeung and Arnold Chan@Gamestry Lab
Stage Design: Lam Ka Pik@KAPIK Design
Costume Design: Lam Ka Pik@KAPIK Design
Lighting Design: Kenneth Cheong
Music and Sound Design: Chan Ming Kin
Make-up Design: Nicco Sun
Producer: Fong Sin
Assistant Producer: Celina Mok
Assistant to Director and VR Video Operator: Wong Hong Kiu
Production Manager: Sam Man Kei
Stage Manager: Jonathan Lam@MIIS Production
Deputy Stage Manager: Lao Chi Wai@MIIS Production
Assistant Stage Manager: Tim Wong@MIIS Production
Costume Assistant: Patsy Tam@MIIS Production
Host of Post-show talk: Flora Ho
VR Video Operation Assistants: Ku Hoi Man and Patsy Tam@MIIS Production
Front of House Manager: Gabriel Liu
Stage Assistant and Technical Support: MIIS Produção Sociedade Unipessoal Limitada
Logistics Partner: Sendwant Logistic Limited
Front of House Assistance: Students of the Bachelor of Science in Cultural and Heritage Management programme at Macao Institute for Tourism Studies

Acknowledgement: Leong Ka Hou, lecturer at the School of Continuing Education at Macao Institute for Tourism Studies and M Dimensions

Programme Notes

Marco Polo, a Venetian merchant, arrives at the capital of the Yuan Dynasty through the Silk Road to visit the palace of the emperor Kublai Khan and relates his stories from the cities that he has visited along the way. Through the stories, the traveller and the emperor enter a maze of dialogue, discussing the meanings of memory, symbol, desire and death. Eventually, the dialogue is transformed into game after game of chess.

Throughout the dialogue, we will wear special goggles to enter virtual reality (VR), guided by a virtual assistant. We will traverse those invisible virtual cities once visited by Marco Polo and enjoy an intriguing experience.

 

Remarks:
1. This programme is restricted to audiences aged between 13 and 65, not suitable for any of the following:
　– Pregnant women, or individuals with cardiovascular disease or other serious health conditions;
　– Individuals with epilepsy;
　– Individuals with pinkeye or any other contagious eye diseases;
　– Other individuals who are unsuitable to experience VR.
2. Some people may feel dizzy and nauseous when using VR goggles. Audience members are therefore requested to evaluate their own health and physical condition. Spectators are responsible for any conditions arising from their own dangerous behaviour.

Director’s Notes

What is reality?

Theatre and virtual reality have a lot in common. We all know that everything on the stage is “unreal”. Actors are playing their roles under fictitious circumstances, and simply make their emotions and movements look real. The set facilitates imagination of the space, while the theatre itself is a product of reality and illusion. Compared with other media, VR is at a very preliminary stage of development, just like an infant. Used as a starting point for creation or brainstorming, VR was developed initially with a declaration that reality and illusion are not contradictions but an interrelated series of argumentation. You may dig into the nature of reality in a very philosophical way, however, seeing it as a creative medium, I was most intrigued about what kind of stories it can tell. How does it relate to the “real” world? What imagination or sentiments can it trigger?

It is not just a panoramic video that you will experience in the virtual world, but also an interactive setting generated by computer in real time. Visually, these scenes are still far from the “true” reality, but they allow you to be part of them, like the immersive theatre that has become popular in recent years. Technically, the current VR technology is still not capable of creating a world that resembles those appearing in films such as The Matrix or Ready Player One. However, conceptually, an immersive virtual reality already exists and is waiting for us to enter it.

To me, reality is layers of facts. Through actors, the theatre or through VR technology, we will unveil the facts layer by layer…and this is what we call the creative process. Jaron Lanier, the father of virtual reality, said the most fantastic moment he had experienced with VR was not when he put on the VR goggles but the time when he took them off, came back to “reality” and experienced everything in it once again. How similar this kind of experience is to the theatre.

By Adrian Yeung

Artistic Directors’ Notes

The Dirks Theatre always upholds the principle of “creation, practice and exchange”, creating original productions in different forms with rich cultural values based on the study of the relationship among personal identity, community and culture. Through collaboration with artists from different fields, we intended to develop and interrogate aesthetic and new performance style according to specific theme and contents, in each creation process, without being bounded to any representation preferences or limitations.

Art and theatre are always rooted in the evolution of human mental states and reflect the relationship between the world and the people. Technology has intertwined with life to an unprecedented level, and even “intrudes” people’s minds and “enters” the metaverse, where all the feelings can be even “truer” than those from “reality”. We can either accept the changes or make a retreat to avoid being “intruded” as much as possible. How do we define “reality”? How do we make the most of it? When the “realities” of a hundred people lead to more than a hundred interpretations, can we still find the language of sharing, empathy and experience?

Perhaps it doesn’t really matter, as most experiences nowadays only exist in fragments or in transient nature. It is by no means that one can fully understand another, and even we ourselves may not truly understand what we are. Experiences are indescribable, like cities floating on a cloud. It is only by physically immersing ourselves in similar experiences again and again, learning to make choices and gaining such a lingering yet stirring empathy in our minds, that we can finally do more than just “know” – all these connections allow us to stand between illusion and reality and find out what the world we seek is like.

Our thanks go to Adrian Yeung, our dear friend and partner over the years, for joining us in this theatre space.

By Ip Ka Man and Wu May Bo

Biographical Notes

Adrian Yeung, Direction, Text, VR Design and Production

Yeung graduated in computer engineering from the University of Hong Kong and is currently a multimedia designer and theatre director. His works include: All Memories are Watery, which depicts Hong Kong back in the 1960s with motion capture technology; m@rc0 p0!0 endg@me, which combines virtual reality and immersive theatre; The Nether, which explores the moral limits in both the virtual and the real worlds; Landscape of Ozu, which recreates the tranquil and graceful aesthetics of Yasujirō Ozu’s films with live filming; and many others. He studied new media and theatre art in New York under funding of the Asian Cultural Council’s fellowship programme in 2014 and worked as a senior lecturer of the Media Design and Technology Department at The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (HKAPA) from 2018 to 2020.

Ip Ka Man, Artistic Director and Actor

Ip is a co-artistic director of the Dirks Theatre Arts Association and a certified instructor for the “Awareness Through Movement” of the Feldenkrais Method. He has participated in many of the association’s works, including Echoes in Dreams; Merry to the Seventh Heaven; forum theatre Sign here, please; Song From Far Away; forum theatre A Place We Call HOME; A Number; The Lesson, Macau; Oleanna; Night Just Before the Forests; The Nether and I Take Your Hand in Mine. His other theatrical productions include Hong Kong Poetica, Waking Dreams in 1984, Copenhagen, A Gambling World, Farewell: The Body in 16 Chapters, and Der gute Mensch von Sezuan.

Wu May Bo, Artistic Director and Actor

Wu is a co-artistic director of the Dirks Theatre Arts Association and a theatre director, actor, and movement dramaturge. She has received a BA (Hon.) in Performing Arts from the School of Drama of HKAPA, and has graduated with an MA in Movement Studies from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London and an MA in Performance and Cultural Studies from the University of Leeds. Her works have been staged in regions across Asia, the Americas and Europe. She taught at the School of Theatre of the Macao Conservatory from 2008 to 2011 and served as a lecturer at the Faculty of Education of the University of Macau from 2013 to 2014. Her works in recent years include Normal, Oleanna, Night Just Before the Forests, The Nether and The Protean Cities.

Anson Chan, Actor

Chan graduated from the School of Drama of HKAPA and his graduation production The Black and Blue of a Man was awarded the Best Performance of the Year and the Top Ten Most Popular Performances at the 22nd Hong Kong Drama Awards. He is also a member of the art troupe “Common Ground” and the band “The Interzone collective”. Chan created The Interzone Collective in 2016, a dance and reading theatre production that combines poetry, handpan music and body movement, and his recent performances include Love in the Time of, Another 18 Ways to Create or Mute Sound, and Body Codes II: Performscape. He has also performed in productions by the On & On Theatre Workshop and the Theatre Horizon.

Arnold Chan, VR Design and Production

Chan graduated from the Department of Cinema and Television of the Hong Kong Baptist University and is currently engaged in the production of games and interactive experiences. Compared to one-way storytelling, he prefers creating unique experiences for participants with interactive games. He has been a virtual reality producer for Dragon’s Delusion, in which he combined projection with live dance performances. Chan is currently a co-founder of the Hong Kong-based game developer Gamestry Lab, and their indie games Balance Breakers and CyberMeow 2048 have been showcased in Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan, among other regions.

Lam Ka Pik, Stage and Costume Design

Lam is a freelance stage and costume designer for theatre pruductions and holds a Master’s degree in stage design from the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama and a diploma in stage design at the Wimbledon College of Arts in the United Kingdom. She has been working in regions across Asia and Europe, and her recent design projects include Normal, Vaster Far than the Ocean, Radiant Vermin, Before the Coffee Gets Cold, See You through Memories, and the Macao entry Who We Are? for the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space 2019.

Kenneth Cheong, Lighting Design

Cheong studied lighting design with a grant from the Cultural Affairs Bureau and graduated from the School of Theatre and Entertainment Arts of HKAPA. His recent lighting design projects include The Agony, Grandma’s Treasure Box, musical Café 22°N, audītŭs, and multimedia interactive installations In Between and What Are We Waiting For?

Chan Ming Kin, Music and Sound Design

Chan graduated in sound design and music recording from HKAPA. He has served as a live sound mixer and sound coordinator for the performances of a number of Hong Kong art groups, including Actors’ Family, The Spring-Time Group and W Theatre, and won the Best Sound Design at the 16th Hong Kong Drama Awards for his work Empty. His recent sound design productions include Nine Soundscapes, Dust to Dust, Love Fool, and The Story of Kong Yiji.

Nicco Sun, Make-up Design

Sun is a full-time make-up and styling artist and instructor with a British ITEC Diploma in Fashion, Theatre and Media Makeup. Her projects in recent years include Same Time Next Year, Café 22°N, Pool (No Water), A Place We Call HOME, Mr. Donkey, The Dress Looks Nice on You, A Short Time Escape, Nine Soundscapes, The White Little Fluffy, The Frogs Who Desired a King, The Rose Boy, The Goat or Who Is Sylvia?, The Nearness of Distance, A Number, and The Magic Flute, etc.

Fong Sin, Producer

Fong is a theatre producer, coordinator and administrator. Among her works in recent years are Pillowman, Same Time Next Year, Normal, Song From Far Away, ZILO: Heritage Stroll Festival, Pool (No Water), and Detective Agency EP1.

Celina Mok, Assistant Producer

Mok is a freelancer mainly engaged in administration, coordination and production. Her works in recent years include Normal, The Blue Hour, Fanyi 4.48, Jam with the City, and the online playback theatre series Frames.

Sam Man Kei, Production Manager

With years of stage production, technical and management experience, Sam is currently the technical and production director at MIIS Production and has been an instructor of stage management and production courses.

Jonathan Lam, Stage Manager

Born in Macao, Lam went on to further his study overseas. He was engaged in the planning, reception, stage management and technical work of various events after his return and is currently a production manager at MIIS Production. His recent productions include Normal, Grandma’s Treasure Box, Pool (No Water), Macau Contemporary Dance & Exchange Springboard 2021, A Place We Call HOME, The Story Vendor at the “Performances in the sphere of the Insightful Cultural Excursion in the Inner Harbour Area and Taipa”, and Backlight.

Lao Chi Wai, Deputy Stage Manager

Lao is a full-time performing arts practitioner mainly engaged as a stage manager, space and prop designer, and producer. Her productions in recent years include The Blue Hour, Fanyi 4.48, A Day in the Life, Carlos I, Double Bill by Hiroaki Umeda, Same Time Next Year, Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Dust to Dust, A Number, and Oleanna.

 

Disclaimer
The Cultural Affairs Bureau of the Macao Special Administrative Region Government provides liaison and technical support to the project only. Any views/opinions expressed by the project team are those of the project only and do not reflect the views of the Cultural Affairs Bureau.