REFRAME THEATRE

Technological advancements ruin humanity Karmas, thus, always come before Judgment Day

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The second instalment of the tripartite A Concise History of Future, Posthuman Condition investigates our new era of technological warfare, when AI dominates everything. What will happen to human beings and their survival? This work was invited to the “Teaser Pitching Stückemarkt” at Germany’s Theater Dortmund and the German-language# Posthuman Condition received its world premiere at the Schauspiel Frankfurt in 2021. Frank is an ordinary man living in a developed country. By pure coincidence, he became a remote pilot, sitting in the comfort of his home and using his gaming skills to launch airstrikes in other countries. When his son Another is born, the baby doesn’t have a buttock! His wife Jane recounts a legend from the East about redemption… Frank resolves to visit the places he has destroyed and the people he’s wounded. A cyber-buttock has been appended to Another to save his life, yet there are side effects: the baby grows ten times faster than any normal boy, he is also bestowed with paranormal powers. Is Another a harbinger for future generations or an exemplar of the epic failure of technology? House Author at the Nationaltheater Mannheim, Yan Pat-to returns to his hometown with this production.

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A Myriad of farewells, which are in the three occasions of the pandemic in two defined time frames in space. 

Carson encountered a dilemma in relationship and incapacity with the diagnosis of his sister’s cancer when the lethal virus hit the city in 2003; Ah Shue was forcibly dissociated from her partner in 2021, encroached into the matter of the unfamiliar. Pandemic endured its never-ending mark in human history, would that ever be the ordinary form of life?  The journey begins in 2022 January with the stories of departure and aggregation. Time wheels, Solitude reigns.

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Programmes

1. Audio-guided tour

7-9 JAN 2022, 12pm, 2:30pm, 5pm

In Cantonese

2. Installation about 'Something Else' 

7-9 JAN 2022, 12 - 7pm

Place: Common Core Lounge (RM 150, 1/F Main Building, HKU)

Free visit even you have not joined the audio-guided tour

* Please pay attention when the room would be so dark by lighting effect

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"A Minute Something Else Enters" is supported by Hong Kong Arts Development Council “Arts in the City” Scheme, with kind support from MEHU, HKU Libraries, and Common Core

Hong Kong Arts Development Council fully supports freedom of artistic expression. The views and opinions expressed in this project do not represent the stand of the Council.

Beneficiary Organization: Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences

I’m not waiting for you.

In prison, time is at once transitory and eternal….resurfacing as memories for the future. In the 1980s, two women were imprisoned in Victoria Prison, where they experienced an unexpected romance in confinement. Their growing affections for each other were interrupted as one was released while the other wrote a love poem of longing on her bed board. When released from prison, she discovered that her lover had already married. She suppressed her mishmash of feelings and started a family as well. Approaching 1997, she did not want to live in a bigger prison. The decision to immigrate prompted a final rendezvous and conversation in which deep feelings were cast aside but never forgotten. Inspired by a bed board with a love poem found in a women’s prison, this groundbreaking immersive production features artists across disciplines, including Pat To Yan (theatre), Kingsley Ng (media installation), Adrian Yeung (video artist), Jass Leung (dramaturg) and Chow Yiu Fai (lyric artist). The immersive theatre will be remade in Tai Kwun, as lyrics, sounds, images and theatrical performances are interwoven, leading the audience to tread a path that explores Central then and now.

*Concept of the show title by〈黑房〉, Chow Yiu Fai

Two people from the nuclear explosion affected area. She speaks, he can’t.  He once witnessed a person being choked to death by the broken pieces of his organs; then he often has the feeling to be choked. They come here to introduce another face of post nuclear explosion. In there, the nature grows freely, flowers blossom. Green is the warmest colour. Animals lead their lives happily. But they can’t use conditioners and lotions in order not to be contaminated by radioactivity elements. Apart from these, nothing is not fine for living there.

In an age of liquidity, how can a person manage his love/life?

Sze Yin, a middle aged Hong Konger, specialises in creative technology. Once he met Lin lin in Berlin. Lin lin, aged 20 something, was born in Xi’an. They quickly fell in love with each other, but Sze Yin could only keep a long distance relationship with her as he had to be back to Hong Kong……

After three months, Yat Sum, at the same age with Sze Yin, suddenly kept seeing him. They studied in the same secondary school; and when Sze Yin was 25, Yat Sum saved his life, to a certain extent. But Yat Sum was married, had a son aged 5 …….

It’s a love story and not yet only a love story, as always. It’s still a story about city, life and time.

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photo by  YC Kwan

Two people from the nuclear explosion affected area. She speaks, he can’t.  He once witnessed a person being choked to death by the broken pieces of his organs; then he often has the feeling to be choked. They come here to introduce another face of post nuclear explosion. In there, the nature grows freely, flowers blossom. Green is the warmest colour. Animals lead their lives happily. But they can’t use conditioners and lotions in order not to be contaminated by radioactivity elements. Apart from these, nothing is not fine for living there.

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photo by Konrad Fersterer

Pat To Yan's Immersive Theatre series in Hong Kong. ​ ​

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photo by YC Kwan

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''Those people, that crowd of people, moving to different directions, like cells. They, like us, if only living in a giant body, then the pain I am used to is only temporary, not worth mentioning. I feel this after having been to a bookstore in Tsim Sha Tsui. At that moment, I just stared at the crowd who was looking at the Christmas decorations." One day, she suddenly said to me. Before that, she stared at me for ten seconds. I am just wondering what kind of spirit is living in this girl's body?

After his completion of three epic works: 'A concise history of future', Yan Pat-to returns to explore the most intimate and yet painful part of himself. One's memory is inseparable to the city. We can't tell our story without city.

The first ethnic Chinese play selected by

Berliner Festspiele Theatertreffen Stückemarkt 2016

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'Resist any linear narrative dramaturgy, using highly concentrated poetical interweaving to elaborate the cruel phantasms of a contemporary society of asynchronies.'

 -- Kathrin Roggla (Jury member of Berliner Festspiele Theatertreffen Stuckemarkt)

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photo by Philip Kuen