Curator: Tan Zeen
Name: Yue Opera “Shānhǎi Qíng Shēn”
Stage Design: Hu Zuo
Screenwriters: Li Li, Zhang Chuyin
Director: Yang Xiaoqing
performed at Shanghai Yue Opera Theater, October 2020.
The play recounts the touching story of a father and daughter from Shanghai who wholeheartedly helped the Miao compatriots in Guizhou to build their hometown. The stage design is based on the creative concept of “mountain for bone, water for vein, fields for warp, bamboo for weft”. The craft of bamboo weaving that runs through the whole play is used as the core visual element, using a minimalist form, contemporary aesthetics, and rhythmic spacial composition to intertwine the various elements of terraced fields, Miao dwellings, rolling mountains and seas of clouds, weaving a tie between compatriots in Shanghai and Guizhou. The design not only contains the original essence of Miao Village, but also incorporates the modern colour of Shanghai. The imagery of mountains is portrayed through only line work; its outlined rivers, outlined mountain roads strive to build a condensed stage space that conforms to the aesthetics of Yue Opera, and releases the “poetic” beauty of Jiangnan in order to paint a vibrant picture of that era within the scroll of history.
Hu Zuo
Professor and Director of the Faculty of Stage Design at Shanghai Theatre Academy, a judge on the National Arts Foundation, Vice-Chairman of the China Stage Arts Education Association, and Vice-President of the Shanghai Stage Arts Society.
Has been in the creation, education and research of stage design for a long time, and led the design of approximately 300 works in China and abroad. He has won the 14th Chinese Culture and Art Government Award Cultural Stage Design Award (the highest award for stage design in Chinese theatre), the 14th and 16th Culture Awards (the highest award for Chinese stage arts in China), the 8th Chinese Drama Golden Lion Award for Stage Design, as well as a number of other national awards such as National Stage Design Exceptional Engineering and the ‘Outstanding Play Award’ of the Chinese Drama Festival.
Noteworthy works include the play “BIG LOVE” (USA); opera “Xiǎo èr Hēi Jiéhūn”; Peking opera “Ruì Fú Xiáng”, “Hóngsè Tègōng”, “Jiāngjūn Dào”; Kunqu opera “Wǎn Zài Shuǐ Zhōngyāng”; Gui opera “Qī Bù Yín”; Yue opera “Shānhǎi Qíng Shēn”, “Dàdào Héng Yín”, “Bān Zhāo”, “Wáng Yáng Míng”; Qin opera “Yì Sú Shè”, “Hǎn Běi Wǎngshì”; Su opera “Guó Dǐng Hún”; Huagu opera “Héxī Cūn de Gùshì”, “Dài Dēng”; Huangmei opera “Lǐ Shí Zhēn”, “Yù Shǐ Fūrén”; Shaoxing opera “Shàoxīng Shīyé”; and so on. He is also the author of multiple written works, namely “Stage Design” and “Introduction to Stage Design”.