Results tagged “theater”

Screw Shakespeare and forget that Chinese opera business - right now, preparations are underway to bring a sing-song version of Karl Marx's Das Kapital to the Shanghai theater.

When we first arrived in Shanghai a long, long time ago, all there was to do on weekends was vogue at Bar Rouge---balancing champagne glasses and tottering around on stilettos while trying to not catch our hair on fire. Well, things have changed. Champagne is no longer as popular and now there is a Barbie shop to vogue around at, plus this weekend our Pearl of the East has oystered out an arts scene involving more than the usual bomb shelters, beer and beavers.

                            

Beautiful Thing, Shanghai's first gay play directed by Michael Darragh, received two standing ovations at the Zhijiang Dream Factory last weekend. The play was followed by a pink tie party organised by Shanghai LGBT in which they crowned their Drag King and Queen of the year.

And now a diversion away from the earthquake news. After playing around with the actual performance date, the Asphodèles Theatre Company from Lyon, France, will perform a unique show this Thursday at Fuzhou Rd's Tianchan Yifu Theatre. Under the tag "Harlequin's trip to China," the show is part of the French and Chinese Cultural Festival called "Croisements."

Chinese reports have been saying that around May 1, Google China unveiled its Onebox search function, which allows you to find movies and movie times. If you've used Google in the US, you are probably familiar with this function, it's the thing that sits atop the regular search results, as you can see in the pictures. The main key words are the movie, the name of the theater, and the city that you live in. For the most part, this means that you have to be able to type or do some cutting and pasting in Chinese, though it seems that pinyin city names work. Another report we saw says that the Google results are somewhat limited in that the results you get are for about 25 theaters, even though there are over 160 theaters in Shanghai. Our searches for Ironman and The Forbidden Kingdom show about 25 theater results.

One of William Shakespeare's most famous plays comes to Shanghai tonight as TNT's production of Hamlet begins its run over at the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre on Anfu Lu. Arguably among the most intriguing and complex of the tragedies penned by the Bard, Hamlet explores the themes of revenge, madness (both apparent and real), and, ultimately, death — all in the "rotten" state of Denmark. Featuring some of Shakespeare's most famous and revered moments (the 'to be or not to be' speech and the 'play within a play' scene, for example), the tale of Prince Hamlet's attempts to avenge his father's murder contains great drama throughout.

The handsome former slaughterhouse building "1933" is an Art Deco landmark in Hong Kou. which we've written about twice before. Apart from the occasional exhibition, its doors remain closed to the public, so we spent Saturday taking a peek around to see how this new "creative space" is taking shape.

William Feng is the host of ICS Shanghai's travel show Getaway. New shows go out on Thursdays and are repeated across the week.

It was inevitable. A week into the New Year and we are already saying goodbye to one of the city's few venues for underground bands. 4Live limped to a close last night after a year of struggling to make it promoting live music in the city of turntables (and laptops). Opening as a beacon of hope for those interested in the underground music scene the venue was plagued by internal management problems and an identity crisis that lead to its demise. Lucky for us that both Live Bar and Yuyintang are going strong with regular gigs, while Logo (despite a crap sound system) and the Dream Factory still hold random shows. Also rumored to be testing the live music waters is the Shelter. It seems that no matter how far under the ground you push it, the scene manages to survive.

See the Chicago Improv All-Stars!

On a windy and freakin' cold night (yesterday), Linkin Park finally played their long awaited China show... and Shanghaiist has to admit that the turnout was really impressive. Not a complete sellout, but close... and HongKou stadium can hold more than 28,000 people, which is triple the capacity of the Shanghai Grand Theater. Out of all the big named foreign bands we have seen play in China, this by far had the best attendance. A...

We weren't really keen on seeing any version of Lust, Caution, but after finally giving in and ponying up the cash at the local theater (stupid, we know), we watched the sanitized version. Our impression of the movie, sans steamy sex, was that this movie wasn't really all that it was hyped up to be. However, given that about half an hour was taken out, we suspected that we didn't just get a child-friendly film—we...

Live Bar has always been open to different genres of music, and of late, seems to be the venue of choice for Chinese folk, metal and student bands. Friday night they will host one of China's most popular nu-metal bands, Twisted Machine. Any fan of metal should not miss this show, a great chance to see what Chinese metal has to offer. On the other side of town, up'n'coming indie rockers, Yuguo will play an...

In its second year, the first independent dance festival in China brings lust, desire, sensuality and sexuality to the stage. The Shanghai Dance Festival initiated by Jin Xing exhibits works of dance companies from China, Denmark, Israel, Sweden and Switzerland.

Has Cosette finally found a reason to smile in China?

Unlike some of the previous musicals that have taken the stage in Shanghai, 42nd Street is a musical more in line with Broadway's roots and traditions, a true reflection of the Broadway of old...you know, before shows adapted from Hollywood movies took it over. Originally, the show debuted in 1980, based upon the 1933 movie of the same name. After it's Broadway debut and subsequent Tony award for Best Musical, 42nd Street went on to become one of the longest running musicals in Broadway history.

Tonight, for those of you who can speak Chinese or French, there is a play at the Shanghai Arts Center that we strongly recommend you to watch. It takes place at the Shanghai Drama Arts Center until July 22.

From varietyasiaonline.com:

The face of the Chinese National Grand Theater was unveiled in Beijing on Monday when protection shields of the last thirty of nearly 20,000 titanium boards were peeled off. With the construction of the controversial building designed by the French architect Paul Andreu now nearly completed, the interior will be finished by the end of this year. The theater's bold design is as much a spectacle as the productions that will be staged inside in the 2,416-seat opera house, the 2,017-seat concert hall, and the 1,040-seat theater. At night, the semi-transparent skin will give passersby a glimpse of the performance inside one of three auditoriums, a feature that highlights the building's public nature.

This is a little old, but we have a feeling many of you haven't seen it yet. From what we have read and seen (front row last month at Yunfeng Theater) of ?uestlove, drummer for The Roots, we always thought the man also known as Ahmir-Khalib Thompson would be a pretty cool guy to hang out with. And then someone told us to check out his blog on MySpace and now our new goal in life is get invited to one of ?uestlove's cookouts should we ever leave Shanghai and move back to rockin' Conshohocken. His blog is an entertaining and honest glimpse into the life of a celebrity, although it seems as though he's not really sure if he feels like a celebrity yet.

The western media just can't get enough of Thames Town. A few months ago, we headed out there hoping that we would get some fish and chips, but after walking about all we saw were couples getting married amid the backdrop of merry old England. There was a mention of a "grocery store" in Thames Town in the report—last time we went there, we indeed found a grocery store, you know, the one called Lawson's—but maybe there have been some changes since the first (and last) time we went there, several months ago.

That's what we get for buying tickets right in front of the speakers. But the hearing loss was worth it — The Legendary Roots Crew, the hip hop band from Philly, put on a damn good show. And yes, they even did a brief Led Zeppelin cover (and A Tribe Called Quest and Biz Markie and many others). But for the most part, Black Thought, ?uestlove, Hub, Kamal Gray, F. Knuckles and Captain Kirk Douglas rocked their originals, and the seemingly capacity crowd at Yunfeng Theater (packed predominately with expats) loved it. The musician solos were intense — the boys can play. Also a highlight was Black Thought's uncanny ability to work the word "Shanghai" into just about every song they performed. After their two-plus-hour show, The Roots hung around on stage, shook hands, signed autographs, posed for photos and hurled autographed drumsticks into the crowd. No injuries were reported.