Show watching 1: One Hundred Years of Solitude 10.0 ― Cultural Revolution

Name of the show: 'One Hundred Years of Solitude 10.0 ― Cultural Revolution'.

Date of show: 16th September, 2011.

Aim/reason of watching the show: We got free tickets, and our teacher, Steve, think the director, Danny Yung, is very good.

Description of show:

• 'One Hundred Years of Solitude 10.0 ― Cultural Revolution' is using the idea of the book, 'One Hundred Years of Solitude', by Gabriel García Márquez, expressing the incidents happened in the Chinese Cultural Revolution, by using the horizontal movement of actors on stage throughout the whole play, they represent different types of activities, such as weddings, funerals, revolutions etc. They express them mainly with action and the show only contains a little bit of sounds, including the count down of numbers and some songs that is popular during the beginning years of the PRC.

Reflection:

• This show is very abstract, the whole idea of the show is just expressed by the movements and actions of the horizontal-moving actors, I think it is a brilliant idea, but the show is a bit too long, there are a lot of repeating elements throughout the show, and it became quite boring in the middle part, but the last part is excellent, my favorite part is that they dim all the light and when the lights turned on again, there is a crawling girl in the middle of the stage and all the lighting device above the stage is lowered to almost ground level, the visual effect is excellent!

• I think the show is split into three parts, which are before, during, and after the Cultural Revolution. As there is a big difference in the actions, first they dress in white, and everyone is just walking around, then some people turned black, and there are people holding bamboo sticks, hitting them on the floor, and at last the people are mostly dressed in black, and they are holding modern suitcases.

• I originally think that the play is about the book by Gabriel, but it turned out to be they are just using the idea of the book, as I learned another book, 'Chronicle of a Death Foretold' by him, I am excited of watching the play, but this Chinese version of 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' is also good, I am not feeling regret of watching this!

Conclusion:

• The show is a very good example of a creative abstract play, and it also reveals the changes in China in the past one hundred years.