WORKSHOP

《I HEART BEIJING》 a play by Elyyse Ribbons

17th,18th,19th Nov. 2006 time: 7:30pm

Cheeky Monkey Productions proudly announces the forthcoming performances of "I Heart Beijing". The play, a comedy, follows the lives of two young ladies (one Chinese, one American) sharing an apartment in the smoggily charming city of Beijing. With a light and amusing Chinglish dialogue, the playwrite, Elyse
Ribbons has taken the accepted stereotypes, turned them on their heads and produced a fun filled situational comedy with the two girls, and their friends, learning a lot more about each other than perhaps they had wanted.

《Savage / Love》By Sam Shepard

Directed by Aubri O'conner
Produced by Eriko Miyagawa

Aubri O'conner Caroline Watson Matthew Holmes Sean Hill

5/20 Saturday 8 PM & 1/21 Sunday 6 PM

《 Theatre :“Cinderalla”》
5th, 6th, 7th Aug 2005

Theater Cinderella is directed by Chen Yi, who uses a traditional Chinese art form -- Cross Talk (Xiangsheng )-- to express this famous story. Cross talk (xiangsheng) is very humorous, as it consists of a dialogue of witty "back and forths" between the actors.

Director: Chen Yi / Script writer: Gao Xiaopan, Chen Yi / Producer: Sun Chao / Costume: Long Liu / Cast:Gao Xiaopan/ Zhang Lu/ Yao Jinfei/ Hua Jianxiong/ Li Cai/ Luo Jia/ Zhang Yunhui

Theatre : Chinese premiere of 东宫西宫 “East Palace – West Palace” theatre play, by famous writer WANG Xiaobo (1952-1995). Presented by Three Oranges Production, with French Xavier FROMENT directing three young and talented Chinese actors. This controversial play about homosexuality will leave no one indifferent. In Chinese.

《 Water / Human 》18th June 2005

The progressive study, reflection, and conscious thought so prominent in human life can affect and inhibit natural behavior to a large degree. As we move forward materially and intellectually, we must also remember to pay attention to the greater natural peace… The post-postmodern dance “Water/Human” shows both water and man as the same kind of physical body within different dimensions. As such, the two possess the same emotion and soul: gravity and pressure cause man and water to have the same properties, the same spirit. Human wisdom and intelligence must still be receptive to the wisdom of water. To this end, “Water/Human” uses various types of fluid movement and physical expression, causing the dancers and audience to realize the power of the movement of water.

《 Hallucinations: A Dance of Color and Music 》 3:00pm 3 Apr. 2005

Music will be expressed on paper and sound will be painted into the mind; through simultaneous musical performance and realization of visual artworks, senses will be transcended and art will become a concept embedded in the mind as a concrete visualization of an intangible feeling.

Free Entrance: Jazz Drum : Darrell A.Jenks (US) / Bass: Huhao(China) / Pinter: LiuXiaozhou(Propylene) / LaoDan(Color and Ink) / Curator:Cindy Zeng

《 The Language of Drums and Dance 》

An Improvisation 15 May 2005

Three disparate styles of drumming allow us to return to the more primal rhythm of life itself.This is a conversation of three distinct voices: Jazz, Indian, and Chinese;All three will unite in the creation of a new sound.

Jazz Drum －Darrell A.Jenks (US) / Tabla--- Tato (Mexico) / Chinese Drum－ZhangXiaoling（China）/ Contemporary Dance: Liu Chun Zhao Liang Che Che Fei Bo
Curator:Cindy Zeng

《 7 STORIES 》Director by Skott Taylor 19 - 21 May 2005

The international cast and crew of NewSeed Theatre will be presenting Canadian playwright， Morris Panych's award-winning 7 Stories in May.7 Stories is a highly unpredictable, witty, fast-paced comedy that follows the adventures of a lawyer about to jump off a 7th-story apartment ledge, but whose efforts are continually frustrated by the strange array of neighbours who live on his floor. Director of this production, Skott Taylor says: “I don't want to give it away but I'm sure it will grab you by the seat of your pants and not let go until the stage goes dark”. The cast play with honesty, dead-on humour and succeed in bringing to life absurd, colourful characters from paranoiacs to impostors and manipulators.

《 798 4`33" 》 14 May 2005

a musician/composer of interactive computer music from Canada I have performed with poets,actors,sound singers/poets, more adventurous classical/jazz musicians, instrument makers, artists and dancers in Toronto. I used to host and also perform in about 20 concerts a year at Artword Theatre in Toronto. These were mostly improvisational in nature and were generally quite good with occasional bad performances/egos.
4 concerts based roughly on "silence" and the Yijing using writings
and ideas of John Cage. The concerts should be held in galleries or quiet spaces.
4 concerts = 8 half concerts = 8 trigrams of the Yijing and their significance.(earth,water,etc.). The concerts should be two 40 minute maximum halves with an intermission. John Cage's 4'33" will be performed once in each concert, starting the first and ending the last. I would like to
conduct 4'33" where the 3 sections are divided into 3 different "silences" and I would take the audience through them with standard conducting approaches. It worked in Toronto at any rate. That leaves 3 other 4'33"'s for other people to perform in anyway they want. I have been experimenting with using Cage's text and pictures to generate music and would probably be helpful in the concerts at times.
These would be on either side of a stage with dancers or a dancer performing to an improvisation of these mouth sound/images. This improvisational sound/images can be realised by prerecording on video, close ups of someone saying/performing these basic vocalisations, editing each different sound and then using Midi to play these sound/images using a program like Arkaos. Just like people use audio samplers but this would include the video image as well. One large screen could also be used instead maybe. I also wanted to use static video images of environmental sounds ( there are many wonderful sounds at 798 when the factories are working. ) as sound sources/images in an improvised setting but more related to Cage..

“Symbols” is presented by choreographer/artist Liu Chun with Dancers Xiao Xiang rong, Che che, Chang Xiao ni, sound and live computer music/video by Eugene Martynec. Spoke word/theater by director Xavier FROMENT. Poetry by Christine Bellerose

《 Kazakh Diaspora Tales featuring 》
Saadet Tuerkoez (Istanbul, Turkey/Zurich, Switzerland)And IZ (Xinjiang/Beiijng, China) 1&2 May 2005

(April-May, 2005 – Beijing China) Steeped in the rich oral and musical traditions of the Central Asian highlands, Kazakhstani Singer/Improviser, Saadet Tuerkoez, will be on tour in various cities in the People’s Republic of China between April and May of 2005. She will appear in a series of concerts, lecture/demonstrations and workshops entitled, “Kazakh Diaspora Tales,” which explore the traditions, songs, legends and tales of her Kazakh ancestors. Appearing alongside her will be Kazakh folk musician Mamer and his band IZ. The program for each concert will consist of three sets of music: the 1st with Saadet Tuerkoez, solo voice, and the 2nd Mamer with IZ, and the 3rd and final set brings together Tuerkoez and Mamer for a debut collaboration. For the first time, these two Kazakhs of the diaspora will join together on-stage for a set of improvised-traditional music, creating a new chapter in the history and music of the Kazakh diaspora.

Saadet Tuerkoez is unique among Kazakh vocalists because she was born in Istanbul, Turkey. The songs she learned were taught to her by the elders of the Kazakh community, who sang songs about their traditional ways, told the story of their people’s culture and history, and spun colorful tales of a beautiful but far away country. This far away country nourished by the imagination of a young Saadet is the source of Tuerkoez’s vocal repertoire.

Rooted in the tradition of her people, the impressions left upon Tuerkoez are sights and soungs that she had created in her mind’s eye, thus, her songs are traditional in the sense that they are the songs she learned to sing as a young girl, but over time and migration from Turkey to Switzerland and the influence of the European improvised music scene, her traditional songs began to take different shapes, shades and tonalities, varying with each rendition and vocalization. Sometimes her traditional stories go off in a path of its own, somewhere where her imagination took her in the spirit of improvisation, and the song she leaves with the world is a living legacy and the spirit of her people.

Georges Feydau (1862-1921) was the most successful French dramatist of the Belle Epoque and is now widely regarded as one of the greatest of farce-writers. His series of dazzling hits match high-speed action and dialogue with ingenious plotting. Reaching the heights of farcical lunacy, his plays nevertheless contain touches of barbed social comment and allowed him to mention subjects which would have provoked outrage in the hands of more serious dramatists.
My Late Mother-in-Law (Feu la Mère de Madame) is a bedroom farce, noted for great wit and complex plots, featuring misunderstandings and coincidences, and what one critic called “jack-in-the-box construction”. This play were highly popular at the time, and is now seen as foreshadowing such modern developments as the theater of absurd.
Feydeau’s My Late Mother-in-Law is sure to showcase all of the theatre’s bells and whistles and take audience on a comedic thrill ride."

Scriptwriter:Georges FEYDEAU / Directer:Xavier FROMENT / Actor:Liu Yi/ CaiDachong/ Zhao Ruining/ Gao Xiaopan

《 Urban Hieroglyphics 》

Organic-Industrial-Improvisation 4/5 Dec 2004

Music: Scott Ezell Painting: Lao Dan Dance: Liu Chun & Che Che

Urban Hieroglyphics is a collaboration between Scott Ezell, Lao Dan, and Liu Chun, a simultaneous performance of music, painting, and dance. The performance is an improvisational exploration of industrial-organic consciousness, and these three mediums will interact and evolve on stage, making the creative process, rather than a finished product, the primary focus. Particularly by presenting painting as performance art, Urban Hieroglyphics challenges traditional concepts of the relationship between artist and viewer; rather than being fixed in time and space, Lao Dan`s sumi ink paintings will emerge before the audience from empty white paper to completed works, his brush strokes influencing and influenced by guitar music and body movement. The human mind and the world are fluid entities, ever changing; so too our perception of the world is a flux and flow, a perpetual evolution.

《 Shadow on The Wall 》Directer: Liu Chun 21 Mar 2004

Dance: Dai Jing / Duan Ni / Ma Kang / Pang Kun / Wu Yandan / Sun Zhuzhen / Li Pianpian