Program Information

<Winner of Award for Outstanding Show at the Tokyo Festival World Competition 2019>

“东来紫气满函关（Big Nothing）”

Dai Chenlian (China / Beijing)

Ghost stories and childhood memories, a shadow-puppet theatre piece where dreams and reality intersect… What lies beyond the humor, the madness, and the nonsense ?
 

Combining childhood memories with “The Miscellaneous Morsels of Youyang”, a collection of stories from the Chinese Tang Dynasty era (9th century), “Big Nothing” is a shadow-puppet theater piece where personal memories and ghost stories, dream and reality cross over.
The 30 volume collection of stories, “The Miscellaneous Morsels of Youyang”, differ from many of the texts written in the period. These stories do not have morals, many seeming nonsensical. Some stories feature a mouth growing out of people’s arm and demanding food, while others are about a man turning into a pagoda. The stories were an important influence to Lu Xun, the father of Chinese modern literature, who cherished the collection and wrote similar strange stories himself, such as one about the spirit of a snake turning into a beautiful woman. Dai Chenlian grew up in Shaoxing city with his grandmother. In the play, the image of his grandmother begins to melt together with that of Lu Xun, who is also from the city of Shaoxing.
Dai Chenlian creates his own shadow puppets, sometimes becoming the resident of his own fictional world ? A world where lighthearted humor can suddenly transform into something uncanny, and where the nonsensical creates new meaning.

Dai Chenlian

Dai Chenlian, born in 1982 in Shaoxing City, China, graduated from the China Academy of Fine Arts in 2004 and began to make art since 2006. He works with the essential elements of theatre art ?story, action, sound, lighting, construction, and gesture? and breaks them into the smallest possible units, in order to reveal the condition, process, and movement of thought in the most direct way. Multiple elements such as space, construction, light, oral record, image, puppetry, poetry reading, musical construction are incorporated in his works. Dai Chenlian brings in stories from the news and of ordinary people that he meets to create his own narration and imagination of the world. He attempts to document unnoticed emotions and events in a time of social transformation, the price that people have to pay to live, and the twists and turns of their destinies. His major works include Qin in Restrospect (2019), Big Nothing (2018), Spring is Splendid Color (2017), Spring River Flowing East IV (2015).
http://www.daichenlian.net/

Andreina Olivari and Pablo Manzi

 Andreina Olivari and Pablo Manzi are the co-directors Bonobo, Chilean theatre company founded in 2013.
Pablo Manzi studied Acting at Academia Club de Teatro, directed by Fernando González. As an actor he was member of the company La Mala Clase. In 2017 he was invited to a residency at the Royal Court Theatre in London, where he wrote the play A Fight Against, which will be premiered by the same institution in 2020.
Andreina Olivari is an actress and teacher; she also studied at Academia Club de Teatro and she also has a Bachelor of Arts in Hispanic Literarture. As an actress she has worked with different groups. She is currently developing Proyecto Aguirre, a theatre reserach project around Chilean playwright Isidora Aguirra, which she directs.