About The Threepenny Opera

The premiere of Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera,directed by the German dramatist himself, took place on August 31, 1928, which is considered as one of the most influential cultural events of the 20th century. The Threepenny Opera is an allegorical play that depicts the landscape of existence in the age of industrial capitalism with the melodramatic plotlines in which gangsters, adulterers, prostitutes, and policemen exploit, fight, and betray each other. This might be 19th-century London, or Berlin in 1928, a system filled with eternal exploitation and universal sin, where life is a war of all against all. In this dog-eat-dog world, people may be a winner, or a loser, even though most people are losers. The endless betrayal among characters in this play is a kind of revelation and satire of the theme  of “alienation”. The reason we keep retelling this tale of “alienation” is that we cannot believe in either the golden world or the end of world it describes, nor can we even believe that it is our future. Therefore, it could be a kind of myth of anti-myth that we re-interpret this story, in line with what Brecht said in 1954: “Stepping into tomorrow today, feeding on yesterday, history may be able to be taken in stride, but there is a fear of emptiness.”

Credits

Adapted from the play by Bertolt Brecht

Director: Li Jianjun

Cast: New Youth Group

About Li Jianjun

Li Jianjun is an independent theatre director living and working in Beijing. In 2011, he founded the New Youth Group. An important practitioner of contemporary theatre art in China, his series of theatrical works reflect his concern for the living situation of ordinary people. He combines his experience of the historical visual arts with the study of theatre media, which gives his work a distinct spirit of innovation. In recent years, his works' critical cultural stance and exploration of theatre aesthetics have brought them widespread attention and sparked controversy. This is his seventh production at Wuzhen.

About New Youth Group

The New Youth Group was founded in 2011. They have created Madman's Diary, Say Goodbye to Your Shadow, One Fine Day, 25.3km, A Man Who Flies Up to the Sky, Popular Mechanics, A Brief History of Human Evolution, A Welder's Flash, The Metamorphosis, World on a Wire, The Master and Margarita and The True Story of Ah Q. The group is devoted to exploring new theatre aesthetics and using the stage as a tool for intervening in the daily life of contemporary China. New Youth Group has been invited to the Beijing Fringe Festival, Wuzhen Theatre Festival, Festival/Tokyo, Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen Germany, Italy VIE Art Festival, and Festival International New Drama (FIND).