Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 2018 - Public - 25

Man-tung Tsang |

Storm Clouds

Photo by Man-tung Tsang.

Dance drama Storm Clouds, adapted
from a hugely popular Hong Kong comic
published over 25 years ago, is a phenomenal show combining dance, drama and
martial arts; the show includes a fierce
battle between hero Cloud and Storm,
the ethereal dance movements of heroine
Hung-chi, a complex love triangle and

Billy Chan |

enthralling dance. Storm Clouds sets the
story on an innovative stage that utilizes
digital imagery, a gleaming pool of water,
sophisticated lighting, and a stunning music score to reconstruct the comic realm
and offer audiences great visual pleasure
(Hong Kong Dance Company).

Man-tung Tsang is a renowned Hong
Kong scenographer with more than 20
years of experience. He graduated from
the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts with a BFA. He has received
numerous local and international awards,
including Best Set Design from Hong Kong
Drama Award and Hong Kong Dance
Award; the Award for Best Artist (Theatre)
from the Hong Kong Arts Development
Awards in 2008; Silver Prize and Honorable Mention for Set Design at World
Stage Design 2017 & 2009; and Huang
He Fellowship from the Asian Cultural
Council in 2009, which allowed him to
visit Yale University as a special research
fellow in 2010. Tsang was invited to hold
his workshops White Paper Workshop
and ScenoZen at the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space in
2011 and 2015, respectively. He presented
Disjunctive-coding Exhibition in 2002 and
published his first book on Hong Kong
contemporary stage design, Scenography:
Transcend to the Beyond, in 2007.

I Hate Therefore I Marry

To marry or not? I Hate Therefore I Marry
is a story about four sisters, their mother,
their men, and their lacks. In mourning
and homage to the late set designer Ewing Chan*, only a pale grey platform set
was used, which created a minimalistic
space of cruelty. The emptiness was
augmented by the lighting and mise-enscene to reveal the hollowness of the
characters.
Teal reflected the ex-boyfriend's jealousy. Lavender embodied the innocent
romance between the violist and the third
sister. The obsessions, struggles, love and
hate of the two elder sisters with their ex
and seducer filled the space in blood red.
The red snuck into the audience's minds.
The light on the eldest sister tightened
like a curse as she was enraged by the
ex's revenge. In a flash, she was running
wild in the big pool of light to vent her
anger, but gradually she was lost into
the void. The lighting space isn't a mere

Photo by Billy Chan.

physical space. It purifies and sublimates
the emotions. The house was recreated
by the geometric forms of shadows and
lights, which was also a metaphor of the
characters' mental imprisonment. Lighting
opens up the aesthetic, dramatic, psychological, and conceptual spaces, wanders
around characters and times, and becomes another performing entity.
Billy Chan graduated from the Hong
Kong Academy for Performing Arts in

1996, majoring in theatre lighting design.
He started collaborating with Edward
Lam Dance Theatre in 1997 and has been
awarded Best Stage Art (Lighting Design)
by Shanghai Modern Drama Valley 2017
One Drama Awards, for his lighting design
of What Is Sex? (by ELDT).
* The creative team decided to have
an empty stage to honor to Ewing Chan,
who passed away during the production
period.
SPRING 2018

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THEATRE DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY

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