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All Shanghai's a Stage
When Karl lgnaczak first came to
Shanghai a year and a half ago, he
found that there was little information (especially in English) for aspiring actors. Where to find news of acting
opportunities and auditions? What’s the going rate for extras in commercials? Are people making low-budget Independent films? Do they need talent? Are there agents representing foreign
actors in the city?
Answerless, Karl took matters into his own
hands and founded the Shanghai Actors Association (SAA. www.saa.org.cn). SAA meetings help actors get together and network, while on the website. actors can upload their headshots and resumes, talk shop in the forums, and
keep up to dale on trends with Karl’s
blog (www.planetkarl.com)
The scene has received a boost due to the collaboration between Karl and TangHui co-owner Morry Morgan Morry produced a variation
on the Rocky Horror Picture Show in Shanghai in 2003 and subsequently pined the team at the now incarnation of TangHui. His vision was for more
than just a spacious update of the old place;
with four floors and plenty of theatrical
facilities (DVD projectors, stages.
sound systems) Morry pictured TangHui becoming a home for various artistic communities in Shanghai.
Together, Karl and Morry came up
with the “Acting Up” concept, to be held once or twice a month on Monday nights. 7:30pm, at TangHul.
Acting Up Is like an open mic night for people interested in acting, musical theater and poetry/spoken
word. It’s a forum for people to polish their monologues,
hold script readings. and of
course, meet other actors.
A recent Monday night gathering began with Karl hosting an improvisational acting “game show”
not unlike the television show
“Whose Line Is It Anyway?” where four contestants engage in a competition
based on simple rules. For example, give two actors the basic outline
of a scene, and then ask them to somehow to work in idioms such as “The eagle has landed at twelve o’clock” or “If you were a shoe, would
you have heels?” Actors have to think
on their feet and play off
each other; the results can be a bit
random, and participants often go off on tangents that perhaps only they
understand, but that’s part of the
fun.
Still, It’s been a slow start
for Acting Up, both because of the
World Cup and the fact that it just takes time for the word to spread. Nonetheless, there is a steadily growing corps of
thespian regulars at TangHui on Monday
nights, arid this has helped the East-West Theater Company (EWTC),
a spin-off of the SAA, attract people
for their upcoming projects.
As their name suggests,
the EWTC is a place where the
twain shall meet. Their bridge to the Chinese community is Tim Zhu, a local actor who first found out about Karl and the SAA from the Internet. Tim now serves as a liaison to the local community on the board of the EWTC. Of
course, he’s an actor first and foremost, but as the company Is still predominantly
made up of foreigners, most of Tim’s
acting experience has been in his second language, including “Night
of Mirth” the EWTC’s first production.
Asked about the challenge of acting in
a second language, he describes it
as “Quite exciting, especially on
stage, where you can clearly see and feel the audience’s reaction; you breathe together.”
The EWTC has used several of the Monday night gatherings at TangHui to plan,
rehearse and spread the world about their upcoming bilingual English
Chinese murder mystery (set
for late September) as well as other theater projects for the fall. The
murder mystery is the brainchild of Rob Tromp, an American firmware engineer
who got his start as a “Nazi extra” in a
production of “The Sound of Music.” and soon lea in love with acting. One
of the genres he likes is the
interactive murder mystery,
which, unlike traditional theater pieces,
involves improvisation on the part of the
actors because there is direct interaction with the participants, whose aim is
to guess the identity of the killer.
Part of the reason why Rob, who is heading the EWTC this season, opted for this
type of production is because he believes the genre Is uniquely suited to EWTC’s mission of bringing theater to larger audiences, both local and
expat. Rob believes that Shanghai could very well become another cultural stronghold in China but only by embracing a fusion culture” that
combines elements of foreign and
Chinese culture. This belief is reflected in the plot of the murder mystery, where participants have to find out who was responsible
for a double murder at a wedding between
a Chinese and an American movie
star. There will be both Chinese
and English speaking characters, which
will make the event accessible to participants that only speak one or the other. Don’t expect exorbitantly priced tickets either: especially in these early stages, the folks of the EWTC are more focused on reaching as wide an audience as possible, rather than operating a for- profit theater
company.
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