Phantom in Roma...(21/5)

A rejoice of the same story, but in Roma, where the theatre set a very classic Baroque style of opera house for the reprise of the story, and this took place in Warsaw, in Polish. It was the 3rd cast of the production I saw, and yet it was a spectacular session played by the Polish group. The intonation of Polish lyrics harmonized the melody of Andrew Lloyd Weber, at least I did not find much awkward sensation during the play (more)...
Seats were limited in the optimal size of theatre house, and the Polish audience seemed enjoying much their own version of the opera. Costume design was nice, and the stage management was good. The use of visual projection completed the utilization of space on the stage based on its non-far-fetch operational budget, I guess. A very value-for-money performance at last minute purchase point com.

Rose...(12/1)

Le Petit Prince tells us that everyone has one's roses: the unique bunch of possession and translation of the meaning of life...
If the story of Antoine de Saint-Exupery expresses the sensation of hopeless and frustration of life during the second world war period, it should be regarded as only a fairy tale of the era. The stage version of le petit prince currently performed at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre is not a good provision of Saint-Exupery's philosophical definition to explore the forgotten world of life. The musical simplified the complexity and depth of the story by assuming the monolithic reasoning of the grown-ups. Apart from repeating the 'theories' and 'belief' which the script writer considers Saint-Exupery would like to address to his audience, there was no metamorphic approach to translate the story of le petit prince. A simply dialogue, performed with a repetitive lyrics of the presumed meaning of the story. Sadnessly be such arrangement a failure of the overall musical performance, no matter how the just-in-time sound effect or visually-impacting stage design attempted to rescue the play. The word 'ephemeral', on the other hand, is a pleasing jeu-de-mot. I like the possible possibilities such word embraces. When le petit prince talked about his rose, he was only caught by the empathetic appearance of the contradicting nature of rose, or the interpretation of his world during his journey of life. Should I have the privilege to choose the substance of the Rose, I would rather prefer the inspiring vision Anthony Reynolds wrote, 'the dying rose sees the death of love'...an identical ephemeral value to Fassbinder's love is cooler than death.

Diva...(10/12)

Under the stroke of Sir William Beechey, the visage of Sarah Siddons in McBeth is eternally nurtured with the dramatic presence of the past...she was acclaimed to be one of the most important actresses in London during the early 19th century. As a soul of the theatre stage at Drury Lane, she performed as a symbol of 'tragedy personified'. Compared with other nice portraits of her by artists like Sir Joshua Reynolds, Gilbert Stuart, John Downman or Thomas Campbell, I would still prefer the vivid Siddons by Sir Beechey - the picturesque world of performing tragedy...she is one of the two Sarah of diva. The other one is always Sarah Bernhardt.

Nuit Blanche...(7/10)

It was a nuit blanche in colours and imagination. Not having planned for the routing of the night, it was just like a collage of people and space in confined hours...much of it reminds me the sensation of walking in a flower fair or a post-celebration carnival in density.

Visited Hôtel de Ville with the darkened gospel of new age by Sébastien Tellier and Xavier Veilhan. The blackened balloon-like spheres over the edge reflected a dimmed image of the age after dusk. They were masking shields to the scoped world next door.
Passed by a church in Marais, and there was a cool installation made with resins calling an awareness of AIDS. It was exactly like the pieces by H.R. Giger, a shell for a shelter perhaps. Nonetheless, the stunned atmosphere would be the installations inside Eglise Saint-Merry. At the other end of the city, the karaoke choral lasted over midnight at jardin de Bercy...happy songs for happy people. It was a night with self-search and contemplation in minimal frames of to-be. It was also a movement for me to enter Centre Pompidou for its Movement of Images - marching legs and flipping eyes. Lighting design and effect dominated the night.
More info at http://www.nb2006.paris.fr.

Five billion years...(5/10)

At the moment, Palais de Tokyo presents its five billion years project with interesting picks of contemporary artworks. It would be a one-year project and along the year to come, there would be moments when the 'isolated' time and space bring up reaction to possibilities...the use of the term 'parasites' for installation pieces is superbly true. The works give a life to the museum, and the museum hosts a continuation of recognition among arts, human and distance. There are parasitic entities existed in every domain of time flow and development, and I am definitely one of those in my life. Some installations are actually quite inspiring and interesting. One section of this five billion years displays imitated constellation photos of the eve of bombardment. Named the day before, it drew my opportunistic attention on my focused shadowplay on the dark side of the photos/drawings. It appeared to be a chasing night of hunters and preys before the attack of the next day.
Playing with running time, some works like twistle (2003) and glassworks (2006) were examining the collusion of seconds and senses. If you face it, you feel it. Flying tape (2006) by Zilvinas Kempinas is a floating tape of memory and record, and under the current, visitors experience a deviated pattern of the recording medium.

Message d'Andrée (2005) is my favorite of the collection. Joachim Koester captured the romantic-pathetic aspects of 'voyage polaire' - the exposure of lights and chance adventure initiated by the Swedish adventurer Salomon August Andrée. The story has been a glorified history of 'people vs nature' in the late 19th century, and during the race of adventurism in the era, Andrée got his support and funding from the movement of nationalism in Sweden, and he successfully launched out the plan to pass through the ice-land to the other side of the continent, but not the plan itself. This was a plot of human ambition perhaps. Something we may see unrealistic can be a golden rule in the past. In all cases, history repeats. Remastering the defect photos left by Salomon August Andrée, Nils Strindberg and Knut Frænkel who lost their lives in 1897 during the attempt to fly over North Pole with their Örnen - a hydrogen balloon manufactured in the workshop of Henri Lachambre in Paris, Koester developed a moving image of black dots and bright lights with noise. This is the beauty of abstraction.

Vent de Travers...(20/4)

I went with my friend to watch a theatre comedy tonight in the Quartier Saint Blaise at 20eme...The drama took place in a small stage in the Theatre des Quarts d'Heure. The venue accommodates approximately 40-50 audience and the cozy feeling suits more the kind of comedy play like this. The story was not very special and the use of stage and props are standard. As an amateur French drama show, I did not view much difference when compared to similar one produced in Hong Kong which I encountered before. The actors in the play performed quite upright, and heard from my friend, the group had spent quite some time working on the production. This was already the second replay of the show. What interest me more was the response of the audience and the dialogue and cliche written in the script. To me, it is still a nice experience to practise my listening skill and brace a touch to the French style of humour that I would like to learn for a smile.

My Dramatica...(7/4)

I did not have thought of too much how it would be years later when I worked on some script writing for drama at the very beginning...It was always a step of my personal growth. We call this 'experience'. Actually I know that I did not really have managed to produce a controllable flow of story with dramatic elements on the stage. I thought of a lot how I was creating the script and the many nice moments in my mind failed to appear on the stage during the performance. This is basically the technique of stage work. A tight schedule was usually a major factor of failure too. In those days, funding was a big problem for organising a drama show for our group, but my will had never been inviting just some friends to come and support what I wanted to do. This was a bit meaningless to me. I did not see drama as a sake of profit or socialising with my communities. I had a silly but simple aim like many other young artists to express my thought through the performing arts. I still recall the moment when I was writing hard my script in Beijing or beside the window in the room of Grenoble. It was a passionate moment in my good times. Time may have killed some of the intention...
After years...
Recently I met 2 friends separately in Paris, and coincidently they were surprisingly an audience of our drama before. They were sitting just a few metres away from my stage, and I could not have imagined that after years, we would meet each other in Paris and talk about the drama again...
I really do not know how the great directors or artists would think when they work on a project and if their works would have perhaps influenced others' way of thinking. Of course, I admire a lot of them, and this is just an interesting feeling to me to talk to some audience again in such an unexpected occasion. I wish there would not be too much a critics. ;p

Orchestre National de France...(23/2)

Orchestre National de France played Symphony Major No. 7 of Beethoven tonight at Thêatre des Champs-Elysées...Directed by Kurt Masur, the performance was very good. The melody of No. 7 is harmonised and nicely constructed, and with the decent acoustic setting of the venue, the music simply purifies a heart of mine. Listening to the tunes of violin, viola and piano, I imagine how these types of instrument can be invented and finetuned. Music has long been one of the most precious asset of human history, and with a beautiful sound and rhythm, everything becomes wonderful. It's a pity in fact that I missed a chance to visit the violin craftmen and the Stradivari Museum during my last visit to Cremona, the capital of violin in Italy. Perhaps it worths a revisit to this nice and transquil town some time in future.

Il Carnevale di Venezia...(18/2)

The Venise Carnival is now at its festive momentum in the touristic waterland of Venise...Walking in the city with joy and curiosity, the decorative costume and mask design would bring the crowd of visitors a smiling face. In fact, after the long history of the festival, the event becomes an annual parade of the professional performers and mask-takers. The goal of visiting the carnival becomes an appreciation of the motivation of visitors as well as the humourous play of the men in the mask.

Photo taking is a free-of-charge privilege for visitors, and that's why all the characters in the festival can take the great pride. At Piazza San Marco, only could the pigeons rest at the roof of the buildings instead of the spacious square as it was conquered by the non-stop flow of audience wave. This is a way of how human amuses themselves in the society.
more photos at http://www.kodakgallery.fr/I.jsp?c=jiw1j59.yed9snh&x=0&y=49fvj3.

Saint Valentin...(14/2)

C'est le jour de Saint Valentin...and so what do the Parisiens do? To my understanding, they go for free concert at Radio France...I was supposed to attend a concert of Orchestre de Paris tonight, and arriving on time, I queued outside Radio France for entering the salle some time before the concert began. The show played two works of Krzystof Penderecki together with the work of Matthias Pintscher. I have expected for long time to watch the live performance of the Orchestre de Paris, and so it appeared to be a perfect evening. After waiting outside Radio France for a while, it was announced by the controller that the 1,000 seats available in the concert were all full, meaning that no more entry would be allowed. Oops. What a miss. Instead of listening to the orchestra music, I had a dinner at le Restaurant Les Ondes with a few musician friends. Good to share a bit in a disappointing evening though.
p.s. the director of tonight's show, Christoph Eschenbach, owns a nicely presented website. Check out more at www.christoph-eschenbach.com.

告 別 新 光 戲 院...(4/6)

extracted from Apply Daily

經 濟 復 甦 ， 業 主 加 租 ， 北 角 新 光 戲 院 雖 然 願 意 畀 多 一 倍 租 ， 但 新 業 主 仍 咄 咄 逼 人 ， 只 肯 同 新 光 續 一 年 約 ， 重 要 只 得 三 個 月 通 知 期 ， 對 於 劇 團 講 ， 根 本 預 唔 到 期 演 出 。 雖 然 粵 劇 界 、 康 文 署 同 中 聯 辦 出 手 斡 旋 ， 但 新 光 最 終 都 敵 唔 過 業 主 辣 手 ， 八 月 二 十 一 號 就 正 式 關 門 大 吉 ， 最 後 一 場 檔 期 已 經 預 畀 鳳 和 鳴 劇 團 ， 由 梅 雪 詩 同 李 龍 擔 綱 ， 劇 目 就 未 定 。

This is another incidence of a farewell to the last century...