KUO JIAN HONG

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF THE THEATRE PRACTICE

“At the end of March, we had to close our big production of the year, Four Horse Road 2020. In the style of promenade theatre, audiences roamed with the shows, interacted with the characters, and we drew great pleasure and strength in connecting with them.

We only managed to run two out of the intended 26 shows due to the pandemic. The impact was huge, not just financially but emotionally. We felt like we were forced to say a long goodbye to our audiences, to the ‘liveness’ of theatre. But that also prompted us to rethink and redefine the relationship with our audiences.

Live online performances, instead of pre-recorded, have been our focus in the past few months. How do we interact with our audience? How would the ‘presence’ of the audience make a difference to the work? In this very disempowering situation, how do we re-empower both the artists as well as the audience?

The digital space was all that we had for a while, so that was where our exploration started. It was a very steep learning curve, as well as an exciting and unexplored territory. We dream, we create, then we are ready to adapt. That’s the natural state of art-making, pandemic or not.”