DAS Theatre - Winter Presentations Burst the BubbleChun Shing Au

DAS Graduate - DAS Theatre Master Presentations 2024Chun Shing Au – GPO Box No.211"They can lock up my body, but they can't lock up my mind."My friend Siu Ming* and I have been sending letters to each other since he has been imprisoned two years ago for participating in the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2019. In our letters, we share our everyday lives and our dreams and limitations with each other. We also tried to write about the political situation in Hong Kong, but the officers censored the letters thoroughly. We have learned to read between the lines, and our writing has become poetic. Even though I am writing these letters in a country that enjoys freedom of expression, staring at the blank paper, I feel the limitations of my own mind. What does mental freedom actually mean?So far, we have exchanged 12 letters. GPO Box No.211* is a dream-like silent journey, inviting us to a visual reflection on topics such as liberty of mind, isolation and communication through the lens of object theatre. It is an attempt to keep a friendship alive straight through prison walls and across two continents – even if sometimes, the distance seems unbridgeable.* Name is anonymized.* GPO Box No. 211 is the address I send my letters to, in order to keep my own address unknown.Morbid Symptoms by Miguel MelgaresIn his Prison Notebooks, written during imprisonment by the fascist regime in Italy from 1926 until his death in 1937, Antonio Gramsci articulates one of the most eloquent insights to portray a period of historical transition: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” The sentence encapsulates Gramsci’s analysis of historical periods of crisis, when established power is in decline, but a new order has not yet emerged, leading to social, cultural, and political uncertainties. Central to his narrative is the Roman term interregnum, de

DAS Theatre - Winter Presentations Burst the BubbleChun Shing Au