Plot points to ponder
Andrew Chan helms Hong Kong’s leading experimental theater group, Alice Theatre Laboratory. In an interview to China Daily Hong Kong, Chan spoke of his newest production, The Banality of Evil and his mission to create greater awareness about alternative forms of theater in the city.
The hegemony of the text is challenged in post-dramatic theater, bringing it on a par with the other elements in a play. It’s a form that’s most suited to the present time. I also like the fact that post-dramatic theater is not so much about the plot as about images. So in a sense post-dramatic theater is a throwback to the earliest forms of performance art, which was mainly about rituals.
On first reading it had seemed like just another history book to me. But now I feel there are parallels between the situation in Hong Kong today and the way Arendt interpreted Adolf Eichmann’s role in the war crimes during the Holocaust.
I find Hong Kong people these days are not very vocal about their personal opinions. They prefer to keep quiet and carry on, without caring much to get involved in the lives of others and that at a time when so many means of communication, including social media, are available.
This is exactly what seems to be happening in Hong Kong at the moment. All people care about are their jobs, and doing them well. They are not inclined to thinking and deciding for themselves.
The part of Arendt’s text that most resonated with me was that she called out the Jewish people for killing their own folks in order to secure personal gains. I would like the audience to ponder this question very seriously.
No. I think Arendt’s book reflects a universal situation. It is up to the audience to make a connection between the play and their immediate realities, if they find such resonances.
I don’t agree with Arendt’s theory entirely. But I can appreciate the fact that she was trying to present the truth and had the courage to go forward with a view that she knew most people would not agree with. I have a feeling she was a lot stronger than many men around her at the time.
The fact that Arendt remained life-long friends with Heidegger, who had not treated her very well, makes her an even stronger woman in my eyes. In the play their relationship is not articulated but suggested through movement.
Yang and I approached the text separately. Yang was more focused on Arendt’s life and inspirations, whereas I concentrated on interpreting the text. Part 1 of the play is directed by Yang, part 2 is by me, and Part 3 is a joint effort.
I treated Arendt’s text as a guidebook, taking cues from it. For me the text was an effective tool to display the many facets of postdramatic theater as well as the situations in Hong Kong, and Taiwan. The play is a combination of the ideas of two directors, presented through Hannah’s political philosophy. Between Andrew and me, we used different viewpoints to approach a single theme.
Since Hong Kong audiences are more used to watching theater in traditional form, we thought we would promote some of the alternative forms of theater. Apart from the public events, we did a whole range of workshops on post-dramatic theater with secondary school students.
For the events we did in and around The Fringe Club in Central, we tried to attract people from across the board.
We worked with five young directors — Wang Junhao, Deng Haowei, Luo Songjian, Zhou Weiquan, Zhong Zhaoxi — for the “Post-dramatic Theatre Laboratory Reading” series at The Fringe Club. We wanted to give them and a group of relatively young actors a platform to show their talent to the audience.
I want to do more such programs for the city’s young theater practitioners in the future. Most of them are waiting to find jobs. It’s quite hard for a professional trained in the creative arts to find a job in Hong Kong.
Prizes are associated with good memories. It also helps to mention them while applying for funding. Awards serve as selling points and establish our credentials as a representative theater group from Hong Kong while trying to secure invitations to perform abroad.
I think Hong Kong’s theater people could do with support toward getting some more exposure, both in terms of showing our works abroad as well as getting opportunities to watch plays and meet fellow theater people.
I don’t think there are that many audiences for non-mainstream theater in Hong Kong who would fill the theaters even after four shows. That’s why we try many different ways of promoting contemporary theater — readings, installations with live actors, reaching out to secondary schools. All this is toward developing audience receptivity.
Interviewed by Chitralekha Basu