“Slava’s Snowshow” is set to take audiences back to their childhood through four sold-out shows at the Macau Cultural Centre’s (CCM) Grand Auditorium from Friday to Sunday.
The stage spectacle was created by Russian performance artist and clown Slava Polunin, who has been “praised as the most celebrated living clown”, according to a statement on the CCM website. The show made its world premiere in 1993 and has been performed in different parts of the world, winning over 20 prizes including an “Olivier for Best Entertainment”.
The around one hour and 40-minute show, which uses clowning and body language, features a group of green clowns and a yellow clown, which is the main role.
Francesco Bifano, who plays the yellow clown, and Artem Zhimo, who plays the main green clown, spoke with the media about the show during yesterday’s meet-the-press event at CCM.
Answering a question by the Post, Zhimo said that the show tells “a story about life in general” and features a hero who is at the end of his life. It shows moments like the beginning of his life as he finds himself and things such as love, friendship, happiness and childhood that he experiences throughout his life.
Francesco added that the show’s story can be read as if looking at different pictures, noting the following example: “You go into a gallery, you see a tableau. You can read the story, but also the story you read is different from the story I read”.
How each show might be performed may vary depending on how it is set to be presented. “This we normally decide five seconds before going on stage”, being spontaneous and having improvisation, Bifano told the Post. The worst thing that one can do is to perform the show like it’s not improvised, he added. “If you play it like yesterday, it’s like [a] catastrophe”, noting that a show can be performed as well as it were the day before yesterday, but just in a different style.
Featuring a raft of special effects and visual moments, Zhimo told reporters that the main part of the show is its “soul”. “This is a relationship between actors who are on stage” and it is a show that can open the different feelings of audiences who can laugh or even cry a bit. It will allow them to feel different things like happiness, sadness, loneliness and friendship. “It’s like a big spectrum of emotions”.
It can also be like “poetry of different moments of life”, according to Bifano, who also likened it to being a metaphor of “what we are living in our life” and its important moments. It’s funny and has unexpected, surprising and romantic moments.
He noted that perhaps the most important thing of the show is that for many people, it’s kind of a moment where one can touch a childhood feeling that may have been forgotten with time.
When audiences watch it, each person can see their own show, Bifano added, noting: “It’s all about you, it’s about each person. So everybody is looking at their own show”.
Meanwhile, asked about their expectations for their Macau show, the performers also told the Post that they liked the city. “It’s a good place to come back [to one day], I think”, noted Zhimo. He also said he hoped that audiences will also want them to return to watch “Slava’s Snowshow” here in the future again.
Bifano added that he expects to see something in the eyes of the public by the end of the show and leave an impression on them. “I’m very happy for those who will come and see the show for the first time”, Zhimo said, noting that the show was a “must see”.
Artem Zhimo (left) and Francesco Bifano (centre) pose with a fellow performer playing a green clown in the upcoming Slava’s Snowshow play during a meet-the-press event yesterday at the Macau Cultural Centre’s Grand Auditorium. – Photos: Rui Pastorin
These undated handout photos provided by the Macau Cultural Centre (CCM) yesterday shows various performances of Slava’s Snowshow.
