War play

Wang Chong (middle) says despite the laughter it intrigues, the play uncovers the cruelty of wars. Provided to China Daily

Using loudspeakers as his main tool, theater director Wang Chong attempts to tell a story about the mechanisms of war in his latest production The Warfare of Landmine 2.0. Xu Lin reports.

Six people in colorful trousers make a circle on a pink montage foam floor. When one black loudspeaker lands slowly in the middle of the circle, they fall down one by one and huddle up.

It's a scene about the atomic bomb from The Warfare of Landmine 2.0, the latest production by theater director Wang Chong from the Beijing-based Theatre du Reve Experimental.

The play will soon have its world premiere in Festival/Tokyo, one of the biggest performing arts festivals in Asia, and later go on stage in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.

"It's a unique production about introspection of wars and arts related to wars," Wang says.

He says the loudspeaker may be an interesting gadget in real life, but in the play it represents deadly weapons such as landmine and cannon. When someone dies, it lands on the ground and symbolizes death.

Wang is known for using multimedia in his recent works such as Ibsen in One Take, in which he stationed a cameraman to film the performers, and project them onto a big screen for the audience.

But for The Warfare of Landmine 2.0, Wang incorporates sound, and it's a challenge because no one has ever used so many loudspeakers in a play.

During the onset of the performance, performers use several loudspeakers onstage to record different voices to represent sounds of weapons or wars. The sounds are then released throughout the play. That's how the performers communicate with each other.

The sounds include cries of a baby, gun shots and landmine explosions.