APRIL

The extension of reality through multimedia performance, blending audiovisual theatre, live acting, installation, and projection. Its central aim is to investigate both the potential and the limitations of theatre as a medium and as a tool of communication. By deconstructing narratives, questioning audience habits, and using new media meaningfully, the project probes how theatre can expand or expose its communicative boundaries.

Speech, body, and fragmented dramaturgy are interwoven, sometimes reinforcing, sometimes contradicting each other. Language demonstrates theatre’s communicative power but also its contextual dependency. Multilingual or fragmented texts allow the body to supplement or resist what language alone cannot convey. Bodily energy, rhythm, and voice operate as universal communication modes, while narrative deconstruction destabilizes fixed interpretations, creating immediate and sensory experiences for the audience.

Archival materials are reframed as fictional stories. For example, the scenario “If You Woke Up and April Was Stolen” draws from the collective memory of Shanghai residents confined during the 2021 lockdown. Documents, images, and voice testimonies are transformed into fictionalized experiences, highlighting silences and gaps while reimagining how history can be embodied and performed.

Multimedia layers sound, image, and presence, expanding theatre’s sensory environment while revealing its limitations. Visual projections, installations, and live actions are not mere decoration—they actively engage audiences, highlighting interactions between body, space, and technology. Movements and gestures are fluid and unpredictable, avoiding fixed postures. Trajectories begin at audience peripheries and activate the entire space, making identity, action, and space interwoven and perceptible as layered, immersive phenomena.

CONCEPT/DIRECTER/DRAMATURGY/ SCENOGRAPHY DESIGN

JIaming Wang

PERFORMERS

Jacob Zang, Hongyi He, Yi Tang, Sheron Luo, Lishuang Yang

DRAMTURGR & ACTING CONSULTANT

Oleg Mirochnikov

SET DESIGN AND MAKING

Xiaoran Luo

ASSISTANT TO THE SET DESIGN

Lynia Cao, Mia Huo, Teresa Si, TT Tang

LIGHTING DESIGN

Check Him Lam, Yichen Wang

COSTUME DESIGN

Hongyi He

AI & INTERACTION DIGITAL DESIGN PRODUCTION

Fu Jie, Yinwen Xu

STAGE MANAGER

Lishuang Yang

SOUND TECHNICIAN ENGINEER

Kristina Kapilin

MOVEMENT CONSULTANT

Athina Vahla

LIGHTING HEAD

Luke Cunningham

SOUND DESIGN

Linyue Lin, Check Him Lam

COORDINATION HEAD

Faust Peneyra, Shao Kai Wang

ART HAPPENS

Athina Vahla, Michael Breakey, Yui Yamamoto,

Peter Brooks, Mina Alacalioglu

STUDIO THEATRE, UALCCI