On the evening of 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 one of the works in the first "Great Theatre in Beijing" showcase season. The play's innovative artistic presentation and its profound writing of the spirit of the age left this writer not only marvelling at the audiovisual experience but resonating strongly with the ideas the work conveys.
Magic and acrobatics have long struck audiences as art forms that deliver audiovisual sensation through thrilling, unexpected feats. But the creative team behind the China National Acrobatic Troupe's "Dreammaker: Secret Realm," as participants in the artistic development of the age, hold that art in the new era should not leave traditional magic and acrobatic skills at the audiovisual level of "formalism"; within the bounds of what is reasonable and plausible, it should attend to and express the ordinary yet meaningful stories of social life today. Hence this splendid staging of "Dreammaker: Secret Realm."
In the play, the protagonist Hu Linglong is a "game designer" and "Swift" is a "screenwriter." By profession, both are "dreammakers" who use their imagination and skills to build dream stories that are either illusory and bewildering or thought-provoking, and at the same time they are the "dreammakers" of their own life dreams. In social terms, the younger generation, as the mainstay of the age, are likewise striving for the dreams of their own lives. The play's "dreammaker" is therefore the very symbol that links the stage to the spirit of the age.
The play's "secret realm" is a metaphor for the living conditions and mental health of young people in the workplace. Hu Linglong is hopelessly absorbed in the virtual world he has created — the "secret realm" — because he cannot fit into the social groups around him; the "secret realm" is the harbour of the heart in which he protects himself. Hu Linglong's real circumstances and state of mind are a true portrait of many young strivers. Outstanding as they may be in their own professional fields, the "Hu Linglongs" of this world cannot mix smoothly and easily with neighbours, colleagues and the rest in daily life. The urge to prove themselves, together with the "996" work regime and the like, has cost them the time, the energy and even the ability to socialise. The work passes no value judgment on the "secret realm"; it presents objectively that realm's brief and illusory beauty, expressing full understanding of and concern for the weary inner world of the young.
Beyond marvelling at the sensory excitement of the artistic presentation, the audience sees the protagonist draw enlightenment and the strength to grow from the dream he has built himself, and takes away a reminder as well: after a short rest, the heart must still face real life with courage.
The play draws together many artistic languages — magic, acrobatics, song and dance, musical theatre — borrows a good deal of comedy, and uses a distinctive narrative form to tell of the strange adventures of today's "Beijing youth" in their "spiritual world," giving the audience an audiovisual and artistic experience worth far more than the price of admission.
At its core the play is a fusion of magic and acrobatics. The unexpected appearances of magic wrap the audience tightly in one mystery after another and hold their attention completely. When the audience is fearing for the life of Hu Linglong, locked by the Black Hawk gang in an iron box high above the stage, he suddenly bursts out from among the seats, letting the audience feel, between fright and delight, the gripping appeal of the magical "escape from a sealed chamber." There are also the "production of a live person" in the great birdcage and atop the high platform, and Black Hawk's "flying cards," which enrich the play's aesthetic expression. In the acrobatics, whether the performers are floating and walking high in the air or dancing aloft on silk ribbons, their confidence, composure and steadiness display the essence of acrobatic art and the performers' superb artistic level.
The support of song and dance is another of the play's features. For different emotional registers, the creative team has aptly woven in elements of ballroom dance, tango and musical theatre: the ballroom dance shared by Hu Linglong, Swift and several other performers when the mood is sweet, and the tango that conveys Hu Linglong's disappointment in love, both advance the shaping of the characters exactly as they should.
Comedy, moreover, though not the play's core artistic feature, serves as the finishing touch. When Black Hawk comes on, her "tsundere," haughty bearing and tone, her little sidekicks' "banter" with the audience below, the gentle kick she aims at a sidekick, her use of women's speed-skating movements to represent flight, and her line "My eyes are a ruler" — the internet catchphrase born of Wang Meng's commentary during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics — all draw a knowing smile that dissolves the audience's "aversion" to the villain Black Hawk represents and enlivens the atmosphere on stage.
The stage design also deserves praise. On the multimedia backdrop, every lit window stands for a young office worker still at work deep in the night, while the moving images designed as an electronic space represent Hu Linglong's profession. Through many such details these elements enrich and complete the play's theme.
Faced with the spiritual predicament of young people in the context of the age, the creative team did not stop at rendering that predicament artistically but sought to explore strategies and paths towards a solution. They therefore probed and distilled the question of "spiritual strength" as well. In the play, the white "Beijing swift" and the black "Black Hawk" meet in the "secret realm" and go through a series of emotional entanglements and "conflicts of interest." Although Swift and Black Hawk appear to stand for forces of good and evil respectively, in essence both are embodiments of "justice" — the "life mentors" who help the "Hu Linglongs" leave the "secret realm," overcome themselves and break out of their spiritual predicament.
First, the "Beijing swift" is a bird built for flight; over the course of evolution its feet have almost lost any ability to help it take off from the ground, so it can only beat its wings into flight as it drops from a height. In the play, then, the "secret realm" as a comfort zone stands for "flat ground," where the swift loses its ability to migrate with the seasons and where its life would accordingly come to an end. The swift may seem to share Hu Linglong's affliction, yet it still longs for a "real" life of flight. It leads Hu Linglong to step bravely out of his comfort zone and meet the many challenges of life.
Second, "Black Hawk" and her two sidekicks commit "evil deeds" against Hu Linglong — intimidation, abduction and the like — in order to leave the "secret realm." Yet the blue sky Black Hawk longs for is precisely the "hell" that Hu Linglong imagines and fears. From her first appearance Black Hawk questions the "secret realm" and keeps a clear head: true happiness lies outside; the secret realm is only an illusion, a cage, the embodiment of selfishness and inner desire, and only by breaking out beyond it can one find a truly broad world and a real home.
"Dreammaker: Secret Realm" presents the living conditions and the inner world of today's young office workers; by giving artistic form to their pursuit of love and freedom, it shows the pain and the choices, the struggle and the transformation they undergo. The interplay and mutual commentary between people and birds in the play, and the distillation of the spiritual strength of Swift and Black Hawk, both embody the traditional Chinese aesthetic spirit of unity between heaven and humanity and of harmony between people and nature. The play's successful staging and its exploration of the "new magic-acrobatic drama" as a theatrical form let audiences see how traditional Chinese art can reflect and write the spirit of the age and how it can serve to guide values and the spirit, and let them see as well the exploratory spirit, the enterprise and the sense of mission with which China's acrobatic artists move with the times. There is reason to believe that Chinese acrobatic art will achieve still more brilliant results in the future and make an even greater contribution to the flourishing of contemporary Chinese art and literature.