New magic-acrobatic drama Dreammaker: Secret Realm premieres on New Year’s Eve

By Jiang Xiaobin. Source: China Youth Daily app, January 1, 2023

China Youth Daily app (China Youth Daily · youth.cn reporter Jiang Xiaobin) — On December 31, 2022, "Dreammaker: Secret Realm," a new magic-acrobatic drama produced and performed by the China National Acrobatic Troupe under the Beijing Performance & Arts Group, premiered at the National Center for Local Opera Performance as a programme of the first "Great Theatre in Beijing" showcase season.

The "secret realm" is the "utopia" that the game designer in the play builds in the online world to escape his panic about the real world; it also stands for the place where people moor and rest their minds for a while when weary or confused by real life. The work does not define the "secret realm" in black and white but acknowledges its brief, illusory beauty, while the story finally comes to rest on guiding the mind, after that rest, back onto the track of facing reality with courage.

The "game designer" Hu Linglong and the "screenwriter" Yuyan in the play are both dreammakers by profession, using their imagination and skills to build dream stories that are by turns illusory and thought-provoking. Through these characters' professions the play distils the concept of the "dreammaker," which both sums up its characters and plot and echoes those in real life who "hold a dream" and "hold to it."

The story's theme, the "secret realm," comes from "Secret Realm," the magic act starring the China National Acrobatic Troupe's gold-award magicians Hu Bo and An Yanyan, which won the Gold Award for magic acts at the "Golden Chrysanthemum Award National Magic Competition," the highest honour in the Chinese magic profession. The troupe assembled a creative team led by the young director Fan Yupeng. In the team's view, artistic creation in the new era should not leave magic and acrobatic skill at the audiovisual level of "formal effect"; it should, where reasonable, give proper attention to and expression of the ordinary yet meaningful life stories of society today.

So they found the distinctive symbol of the "Beijing swift" and studied its habits carefully. The swift's trait of "never landing" struck and inspired the creative team greatly, and they took it as the prototype for the work's "spiritual force."

In telling the story the creators drew together the vocabularies of magic, acrobatics, ballroom dance, drama and song and dance to recount the strange encounter between today's "Beijing youth" and the "Beijing swift" in the "world of the spirit." Through the extensive use of magical effects, supported by mysterious stage design, they created a stage atmosphere of "magical realism." (All photos provided by the China National Acrobatic Troupe)