A local play, Zheng Family, will be staged from tomorrow to Sunday this week, and members of the cast said in an interview with The Macau Post Daily in their studio on Avenida Almirante Lacerda last week that they hope the public will appreciate the art of theatre through their performances.
The play’s writer, Mok Keng Fong, said he wrote the play to portray a family of YouTubers to reflect the current phenomenon of people being deeply affected by the social media and mobile phones.
Mok said that in stark contrast with the ever-changing world of the internet, where YouTube and other streaming platforms allow people to browse through countless videos and can decide in seconds whether to watch or slide away, the theatre allows the audience to slow down, let go of external distractions and enjoy the moment.
Relating his play to the real world, Mok said he believes that people posting on social media are quite likely to create and showcase an image of themselves, even if they don’t realise this at the moment.
“You might think the virtual insanity in this play is crazy enough, but I believe reality is even more dramatic than a drama,” Mok said.
An organic creation
The play’s director, Harry Ng, said that it is rare to see an original play staged in Macau, and unlike classic plays which have matured, original plays like Zheng Family need to be developed through ongoing performances, where the play’s structure, language and its direction continues to mature.
Dicky Tsang, who plays the father in the play, said that creativity doesn’t “pop out of a stone”. Tsang said he likes to observe passers-by in the street, and even in restaurants he “eavesdrops” on the conversations of those around him, distilling different ideas from his observation in order to play his characters well, which Tsang describes as a kind of “organic creation”.
Breathing with the theatre
The director said that compared to film, it is less expensive to create art in the theatre, and the whole process of creation is very ‘artisanal’ – because it is something that comes out of a small team.
Jasmine Chang, who plays the mother in the play, said she considers theatre to be “quite niche”, both from the point of view of practitioners and audiences. Compared to big-budget films and TV dramas, which can be seen by millions of people, theatre can only gather an audience of a few thousand, and a smaller theatre can only be seen by a few hundred, “and if you miss it, you miss it – that’s what makes theatre so interesting,” Chang said.
Tsang agreed, adding that watching a film is a passive way of receiving information, “you take in what it gives you”. Given that films can have a lot of special effects, but what really qualifies as a “good film”, in Tsang’s opinion, is “human caring”. “That’s what theatre has always be doing, we care about people, we care about their condition,” Tsang said.
Mok said he hopes their play can give people a sense of “breathing in the same breath as the theatre”, a feeling that cannot be felt through a screen, adding that “we want the audience to feel that theatre is such a warm vehicle, such an irreplaceable form of art.”
The play will be staged from tomorrow to Sunday at Hiu Kok Experimental Theatre in Nam Fong Industrial Building (Block 1) on Rua dos Pescadores. Anyone interested in the theatre can register at the ticketing website at https://forms.gle/mgwi846YXdQS7e4u5.
Tickets cost 220 patacas each and the play is on for 80 minutes.
These undated photos provided by the Zheng Family yesterday show the cast rehearsing for their upcoming performance.
