Reviews

Feels like tripping! An extra-dimensional space you fall into and don't want to come out of.

― Audience Member

As if we had a sobering dream together. Feeling a bit lost now as you come back to your ordinary frequency, but you've taken things with you as you live on. Like my favorite circus shows; mixed feelings and sensibilities. Can't explain.

 ― Audience Member

Perhaps due to my personal interest in feminism, I was totally absorbed the whole time! In that monotone, a note pops up suddenly—and wow, that was fantastic.

― Audience Member

To me, this piece is like watching Jia Zhangke's early films (e.g. Xiao Wu). Two young lovers from a small city immersed in this spicy-yet-dirty whirpool of "modern lust". They are clumsy yet bold, bored but wanting. That look of fiery desire and naked truth in their eyes.

― Audience Member

Perhaps, the live experiment behind the scenes is richer than the show under the spotlight. I can't bear to watch young lovers having to expose their relationship in public in such a violently passionate way. Yet it is also why it moves me.

― Audience Member

About Digging A Hole

Dig a hole, and the spring flows.

It cleanses our body and soul.

A holistic being rises from the depths.

_Ao_Ao_Ing presents a double bill, “Digging a Hole”. Soup, directed by LIN Cuixi, cuts open the uncontrollable control a woman has over her body with the language of the physical senses; You Are My Water, directed by Selena LU, discusses the boundaries of contemporary intimate relationships at the site of a live nightclub. Both of the works pay tribute to real-life events. Together, they invite the audience into a sober dream, and in the mist of absurdity and sensuality, look for the truth of self.

Soup

It's quiet in the kitchen. The only sound comes from a pot of boiling chicken soup. Next to it, three young women are waiting for the chicken soup—a soup full of flavors and nutrients. In the shadows of their mothers and grandmothers, they play with naïvety and dream of the future. They are not aware that the reproductive mechanism that Nature programmed has begun its operation. Chicken fat is oozing into the soup. Hormones are being secreted. Desire and nutritients are growing at the same time. In the kitchen's delicious air, the soup has yet to reach the girls' tongues, and the girls have yet to do enough preparation. Chaos is already at the door. Soup is a theatrical poem written by the senses and can be consumed with the senses. It is about the body of a woman and/or a female animal.

Soup is a private fantasy, or an honest dream.

You Are My Water.

Sand, stone and fire. Crystal and glass. A fish tank and people dancing. Men, women, obsession and control, all hunters and prey, suck at each other’s breath. Suffocate.

A theme party and a live experiment, when you are my water, how can I breathe. What is intimacy? Why do we need intimate relationships? Is co-dependence necessary, is suffocation inevitable? Is exclusiveness the problem? How is our perception of love and intimacy shaped by our culture and family? Stretched between the craving for intimacy and the drive for autonomy, how shall we exist?

Too much talking; dance yourself clean. #The fish must die.

About Lin Cuixi and Selena Lu

Lin Cuixi, theatre director and creator. Believer in, and practitioner of, ensemble creation. She constantly seeks a land of fantasy to host her real-life plights. She is a recent graduate of MFA training in Theatre Directing at East 15 Acting School in London and holds a degree in Computational Mathematics with a Theatre minor from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has trained with Odin Theatre, GITIS Moscow and Gecko Physical Theatre Company. In 2018, as Assistant Director, she assisted contemporary physical theatre master David Glass with his devised theatre piece, Tarkovsky's Last Days of Europe. Her past works include Doll Factory, a piece about beauty and consumerism (Hangzhou, 2017), Display Window, a short voyeuristic piece about gender identity (Hangzhou, 2017) and verbatim theatre Nowhere (Los Angeles, 2016).

Selena Lu, theatre maker and researcher. Trained with "psychological imagination", Selena aspires to use the theatre-making process as a means of self-discovery, community building, social documentation, and to use all its possibilities for real-time change.

Previous projects include: Period Pain Monologues (solo and forum theatre, 2015, Cambridge, Beijing, Helsinki Festival); The Way to Walden (documentary theatre with students from a bankrupt art college, 2015, '16, 17-, Beijing); Quiet (documentary theatre with the significant others of the MH370 incident, 2016-, Beijing); Witness (physical theatre based on an oral history of Chernobyl, 2017, London); No Time Gu (Chinese New Writing, 2017, London); His Child (Fashion immersive experience, 2017, Shanghai K11 Chi Gallery).

Credits

Producer: Zhang Yuan

Director: Lin Cuixi (Soup), Selena Lu (You Are My Water.)

Cast: Chen Keng, Zhang Xinyuan, Selena Lu, LIN Cuixi (Soup), ZiB, Zou Yichen (You are my water.)

Set Design Supervisor: Sang Qi

Light Design: I-Shun Lee

Sound/Live DJ: Yin Jing (Soup), Angelus Novus (You Are My Water.)

Co-Creator: Brent Shen (You Are My Water.)

Puppet Supervisor: Li Yuntian (Soup)

Stage Manager: Zhang He，Xiao Chuyue

Academic Support: Shi Ke (Experimental Art Department, China Academy of Art)

Special Thanks to: the whole production team of Digging A Hole 2018 Performance Season, including but not limited to Zhang Liyun (first-round performer in Soup), cast and crew of Title IX: Book of Survivor, designers and technicians, house staff and volunteers.

Co-producers: Shanghai Ming Contemporary Art Museum McaM

Inside-Out Theatre Beijing

About _Ao_Ao_Ing Ensemble

_Ao_Ao_Ing Ensemble is an ensemble that is finding its shape. Starting from its three theatre creators, Selena, Lydia and Cuixi, it continues to engage artists and individuals from different fields. Every player of _Ao_Ao_Ing Ensemble is an independent creator, yet all of them believe in the special value of ensemble creation. It is sacred.

They say: "If the theatre is our home, then home is everywhere. Our theatre is bigger than the box."

They say: “The future has an ancient heart.” Play on.