Playing with technology

He says that the diverse range of drama plays during the festival all shone a spotlight on technology-related phenomena, which showed the ability to view a topic from multiple angles. At the same time, hosting the festival improved the program planning and management skills of the theater staff.

Man has set a long-term goal for the annual event to grow into a theater carnival where original plays will be staged by domestic artists and audiences will always enjoy a refreshing experience. This year, a step forward has been taken toward that, as two original plays-created by the theater staff and a collection of young artists-made their debut at the festival.

"We always encourage domestic theater practitioners to make some noise here as after witnessing the rapid development of science and technology in China over the past two decades, they do have perceptions which differ from those of foreign artists," says Man.

He points out that due to the mainstream market's low level of tolerance for mistakes, it's hard for novice or untried playwrights to find a production group to cooperate with, or a platform from which to present their works. In this sense, the theater is willing to provide these for them.

"Fledgling artists are not going to mature overnight. They need the support from not only an experienced production unit, but also from a willing audience," says Man."We'd like to offer them a relatively tolerant atmosphere here at the Tech-Art Festival, allowing them to make their novel ideas a reality."

Hu Xuanyi, a 25-year-old playwright, is among the beneficiaries of the event, with the theater acting as an incubator for her first commercial show, Still Barking.

An experienced director, actors and actresses were invited by the theater to support Hu's show, which raised the curtain on this year's festival.

"It's a rare opportunity for me to turn my script into a commercial play," says Hu, a graduate of journalism from Sichuan Normal University who later got her master's degree in drama from a university in Taiwan. "During the whole process, I realized how important it is to efficiently communicate with my partners. I also learned how to appropriately manage trivial matters that, back in my college years, I wouldn't have cared much about, such as placing seats and adjusting the temperature level of the air conditioners."

Inspired by the fact that her father installed a monitoring camera at home to ensure her grandmother's safety, Hu wrote the script of Still Barking. In the play, an anthropomorphic camera observes, and tells the story of, an aged widow's subtle changes in her mind and behaviors in response to the surveillance.