Aranya fires up theater festival

The seaside Aranya community in Qinhuangdao, Hebei province, has been a popular retreat since its founding. A library, a community hall and an art museum, all featuring minimalistic architectural styles and restrained aesthetics, align a strip of beach.

The inaugural Aranya Theater Festival in 2021 kicked off an annual 10-day some summer celebration, which sees the tranquil seaside town take on a striking new look. From June 19 to 29 this year, the streets were dotted by dramatic installations and floats, avant-garde theater productions from around the world, and diverse activities.

This year's festival parade featured 14 futuristic floats presenting artists' works, performers of different genres, and countless visitors. As the procession reached its destination, a massive bonfire installation inspired by Indian literary giant Rabindranath Tagore's Stray Birds was lit, with the crowd singing along to music.

Audience members gathered at 3 am with the beach still enveloped by darkness to watch director Chen Minghao's Eurydice and Sea. After the play, they ate dough sticks for breakfast, deep-fried by the director, and stepped out of the theater just in time to catch the first rays of sunrise.

Those who walked the streets of the Aranya community were in for a surprise when they arrived at the crossroads behind the Theater Dionysus — several rows of spectators were seated wearing headphones and facing the junction.

[The Frame], the only outdoor invited production at this year's festival, is also its first street theater production in its five-year history.

Created and performed by Electrico 28, comprising artists from Austria and Spain, the production is an elaborate observation, or even dissection, of human activities on an ordinary street or square.

Josep Cosials Montolio, one of the creators and performers, says that before work started on this production, the troupe already had a tradition of performing in public spaces, with a shared love for the observations of everyday life.

They found inspiration in the book An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris by French author Georges Perec, who sat on a square in Paris for three days and made notes of everything he observed.

"In this entertainment society, people expect many things to be happening. We explored the other way. Yes, mobile phones are interesting, but sometimes it's good to just sit on the street and watch what's going on," Cosials Montolio says.

Performers hold up cardboard signs to pedestrians passing by or people nearby for relaxation and who mill about out of curiosity, with words like "running", "waiting", and "smiling". Sometimes, they point a microphone at passersby to capture the sound of footsteps or the whirring of bicycles, which are transmitted live to the audience's headphones.

There is also the element of connecting with people in the production, he adds. The performers interact with those nearby, asking them what they are doing or how they're feeling. The random responses given by the responders, caught off guard or came prepared, can often incite smiles or laughter among the audience members and onlookers.

"The Chinese audience is super open and curious. They are interested in what's going on," he says.

The troupe has performed this creative project in more than 10 countries since its premiere in 2020, and has adapted the show to the local languages.

Each performance is similar yet unique. The team usually selects a pedestrian zone with audience members seated on a side street that creates visual limits. The audience can view the movements from a certain section of the street as if looking into a frame.

Staged in different countries with different mentalities and knowledge of street theater, the performances elicit various responses.

"Each time we perform, we learn more about the culture, the values, how people work, what they need, and what they like or don't like. We learn how to contribute to creating these little moments in the streets, making them shine a bit — to see each other more clearly," says Ana Redi-Milatovic, another performer.