A special and experimental rehearsal started in Feb 2021 amid Covid-19, with creative teams located in two countries, across 3 cities, and speak 2 different languages, to meet in a brand new rehearsal room, named ZOOM. It is a privilege to me, as it is the second time I have chance to work with Vamos Theatre; the first time, when Vamos Theatre toured their performance Finding Joy, we were all in Guangzhou, without any social distance.
Because of the uniqueness of this rehearsal, we faced many new challenges, such as bad wifi connection (sometimes it seems like we were watching stop motion animation), 7 hours’ time differences, and working on a physical show while we can’t physically touch each other. Because we have the most creative director and actors, various tricks have been invented to deal with the problems during the process, such as drawing, demo video shooting and counting down in order to play the music together. In our “rehearsal room”, we share the same laughter, enthusiasm, and love.
Except for the challenges of rehearsing in this unusual period, there are two obvious problems that cannot be overlooked either when working on international collaboration performances: language barrier and cultural difference. I can still remember many funny discussions we have had with our director Rachael and actors, such as what things and gestures we can or cannot show as they might be understood differently to local audiences, what music or body languages we can put in our performances in order for the local audiences to pick up the joke immediately.
Regarding the language barrier, luckily, for full mask theatre, we don’t have pages of texts to work on; instead, there are many technical words that need to be properly translated to enable the actors to have a better understanding of mask work. For example, “clocking” in mask work - a relatively close type of performance I can think about in order to explain to the actors is Peking Opera, they both have their own stylization and rules to a certain extent, to the clown characters in Peking Opera, there is no ”Fourth Wall” between them and audiences, they can constantly speak to audiences directly, and give looks to and eye contact with the audiences in order to share the joke and thoughts with the audiences together. Similar to the “clocking” in mask work.
To us, it is such an unforgettable experience, left with us many interesting memories, and both me and the actors have learned a lot about mask theatre during the process.
Ding Ding
Ding has worked as an international touring manager, as well as assistant director for various international artists' cooperation performances. As assistant director, Ding has worked on projects including Merchant of Venice (2019 Director: David Thacker ) and Twelfth Night (2018 Director: Cressida Brown) in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s ‘The Shakespeare Folio Translation Project’and Rabbit Hole (2018 Director: Brian Kite) at the Guangzhou Arts Centre.