Amelia Johnson Contemporary is delighted to announce a very special performance by New Common Theatre on Friday, 22 November at 7:30pm as part of the gallery’s program to celebrate Hong Kong Gallery Association’s “Art After Hours”.

Developed by worker-led art troupes and civil organisations, New Common Theatre is based on an interaction between actors (drawn from among rural-urban migrant communities), immersive sound (driven by a live orchestra), and an emerging technology: three dimensional projection mapping on moving objects. This is new theatre of scale and ambition in some of the biggest industrial locations in China.

New Common Theatre is a physical theatre company directed by Wong Chun-Tat and Benjamin Teare. Collaborators Xiao Xiao Cao, Nan Fei Yan and Hand in Hand are worker-led civil organisations providing training sessions on collective action, gender awareness, rights and theatre. They use theatre as a tool for finding solutions to workers’ problems. It is a means to express the reality of everyday life, and a space for self-reflection and identification among workers.

The event on Friday is a springboard into a series of performances New Common Theatre will take to factories, universities and plazas across China next year.

Benjamin Teare is an actor and director based in China. After a stint at Glyndebourne Opera House in his teens, he moved to Paris and trained at L’Ecole Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq. In 2010 he co-founded Total Theatre Award Nominated Clout Theatre.

Wong Chun-Tat is a teacher, actor, director, and choreographer from Hong Kong. He trained at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, the Hong Kong School of Dance, and at L’Ecole Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq. He is a director at Tang Shu-Wing Theatre Studio and currently teaches at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, and at L’Ecole Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq. He is a director at Tang Shu-Wing Theatre Studio and currently teaches at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts hailed as “the most exciting development in classical music in decades, if not centuries” (The Times) Kate Whitley is a composer and pianist based in the UK. She has won The BBC Young Composer Prize, Arthur Bliss Prize for Composition, The Environ Music Prize and The Kings College Composition Prize. In 2011 she co-founded MULTI-STORI, which brings a symphony orchestra to a disused multi-storey car park in London each summer.

-Amelia Johnson Contemporary

Image: © Amelia Johnson Contemporary