Showcase "Poseur" at Expo 2019 (English Theatre Berlin)
Lena and I meet at Magdalena Munich 2018. During rehearsal for "Daughter" of Jill Greenhalgh we talked a lot about our experience with asian heritages (she with chinese, and I with taiwanese one). We understand each other and wish to cooperate somewhere.
And the chance came: English Theatre Berlin did a open call for their festival, which is a famous and important one in local theatre scene. We dedide to apply with Lena's autobiographic piece "Poseur". And we got the chance for present it in "ExPlore" during the oppening day on 4/28. There were sechs showcases, all of them were around 30 Minutes. Some of them was already showed in another festivals or at another theatre. But "Poseur" had the world premiere!
Because Lena and I were also busy of another projects, the cooperation was sometimes very difficult. During the preparation for Application I did the taiwanese first show of Bernstein's Candide in Kaoshiung/Taiwan, Lena did the most of paper work and we could just made short skype call for discussion. After we got the invitation we had to work on the text and we could just do it - once again - per skype and google drive, because Lena worked most of time in US and Spain. The rehearsal period was also a big challange: We had a lot of tech stuff (animation, video and live camera) and live music and we could also rehearse at theatre at the very last minutes!
The plot didn't make the whole thing easier. Lena and I did research about the trauma after revenge porn and cyberstalking. And we let the transformation between writer, Lena and Elle Peril (a fictive character which is made of Lena to escape the trauma) show on our stage. During the rehearsal we had to face that it was so closed to us and we had sometimes to break up because of the strong emotion.
The feedback of the audience was excellent and I whink we arrived our goal: The Line between "be watched" and "be watching" isn't so strong wie many people think. No body is really safe. Then, a better world with more safety for all is the MUSS for all of us.
"Poseur" got already some request for revival at other theaters and festivals. I hope we could show it once again soon!
"Poseur" Team:
Text and Performance: Lena Chen
Stage Direction: Frederika Tsai
Music: Alex Weber
Animation: Lucas Paixao
Visual Design and Live Camera: Effie Wu
Additional Visual: Stephanie Ballantine
Dramaturgy Consult: Olivia Hyunsin Kim
Photograph: Jerun Vahle
Premiere on 04/28/2019 at English Theatre Berlin (Expo 2019)
Interview from Missy Magazine (a german feminism magazine)
https://missy-magazine.de/blog/2019/04/25/der-ultimative-akt-der-selbstb...