2023 RE-CONNECT 《The Second Game》screening and post-screening

“The Second Game” is an invited work for the “Drama Online” unit of the 2021 Beijing International Youth Theatre Festival and the offline performance of the Hangzhou Theatre Festival, based on a juvenile delinquency case that occurred in the Liulichang area of Beijing in 2006. The work attempts to retrace the brutal abuse and killing of the past through the perspective of the abuser’s peers.
“Fifteen years ago, the case sparked a lively discussion about urban change, youth education, and people began to think about the impact of urbanization on the next generation. Fifteen years later, inspired by Milo Rau and other documentary theatres, I decided to invite six teenagers aged 13-17 to join the work and re-enter the case from their perspective. During the rehearsal process, their authenticity and honesty made me feel at times happy, sometimes sentimental, sometimes frightened, and even self-doubting. I find that they differ from adults only in that they have not yet learned to pretend to be self-controlled. In the end, she decided to give up all the creative ‘meanings’ such as the structure, mechanism, and additional meaning that she had thought about in advance, and only reached the connection between the case and reality through these actors.
The arrogance of adults can cause harm, consciously or unconsciously, and adults often forget that they have also been hurt by this self-righteousness. It’s not a ‘pleasant’ piece, but it might remind you of memories you thought didn’t exist. ”