New magic-acrobatic drama Dreammaker: Secret Realm, a fantastical journey of courage
Original headline: New magic-acrobatic drama Dreammaker: Secret Realm (kicker)
A fantastic journey of pressing bravely forward (main headline)
A thrilling human transposition, an inconceivable escape high above the stage, dozens of white doves flying from the auditorium to the stage... The China National Acrobatic Troupe's new magic-acrobatic drama Dreammaker: Secret Realm was recently staged at the China Pingju Opera Theatre in Beijing. For the first time it brings together the artistic languages of magic, acrobatics, drama, song and dance, and with a distinctively structured narrative it takes the audience on a fantastic journey.
Dreammaker: Secret Realm tells the story of Hu Linglong, a "game designer," and Yuyan, a "screenwriter," who use their own imagination and skills to build dreamscapes that are by turns illusory and thought-provoking, and who in the end find inspiration and grow within the dreams they themselves have made. The original inspiration for the piece came from the Beijing swift, a bird known as the "legless bird." The Beijing swift has weak legs, and once it lands it finds it hard to take off again, so it must stay in flight for long periods. Because of this particular habit, people have made it a byword for the spirit of "never landing" and "pressing bravely forward."
This idea of the Beijing swift fits perfectly with the "bird production" sleight of hand at which the China National Acrobatic Troupe's young magicians Hu Bo and An Yanyan excel. Secret Realm, the magic act starring this gold-medal duo, won the gold award at the Golden Chrysanthemum Award national magic competition. The act not only carries an important part of the magic in Dreammaker: Secret Realm; as the story unfolds, it also conveys the ideas of striving hard, pursuing dreams, caring for animals and protecting nature.
But how is magic to tell a story? How can magic effects be placed within the plot so that the audience grasps what the plot conveys? This became the greatest challenge the creative team faced at the time.
"Stage magic effects are all completed in an instant, so presenting a play through magic alone is far from enough; richer artistic forms are needed to support it," said Fan Yupeng, the young director of the play, his face lighting up as he spoke about the creative process. He took the high-altitude escape in the play's third chapter as an example of how magic is woven into the plot: through the actors' dramatic performance the play shows the black eagle imprisoning the male lead, using the story to string the magic together and push the magic effect to its climax.
"The hundreds of magic effects used in the play need the dramatic passages to drive the plot forward and to deliver emotion to the audience; in the passages that carry the story to its climax we use the form of musical theatre, because music and singing strike the audience's heart more strongly; and the high-energy Latin dance used in certain sections makes the visual effect fuller of colour. I hope that every chapter of the story gives the audience a different visual, aural and emotional output — presented through so many artistic forms and yet 'varied without being chaotic,' fully showing the imagination and youthful spirit unique to this play," Fan Yupeng said.
The innovative approach opened up more possibilities for the fantastical effects of the production, and at the same time tested every performer and staff member across many departments of the China National Acrobatic Troupe. In the opening scene, to show the overlap between the protagonist's real and illusory worlds, a high-flying magic effect is used: the performer walks slowly up toward the sky and then floats in mid-air. This passage of about two minutes looks simple, yet it requires stage lighting, multimedia, performer scheduling and every other artistic department to coordinate and work together. "The audience will surely guess that the magic performer must be lifted or suspended in order to float in the air, but we use changes of lighting, the light and shade of the background colour, even the ebb and flow of the music, to build the atmosphere; through these technical means we keep the performance seamless, so that the audience cannot spot any flaw. Without a first-rate team it could not be done," Fan Yupeng said.
Magic is an art that allows no mistakes. The magician Hu Bo knows this deeply, so before every performance he checks his props carefully to make sure that nothing can go wrong. To achieve the best performing effect, Hu Bo not only studies diligently the advanced techniques of foreign master magicians but also, through his own innovation, keeps raising the difficulty and refreshing the routines.
In Hu Bo's view, producing "living creatures" is the hardest thing to control in a magic performance. The bare-hand card production of the American magician Peter Marvey is already an extremely difficult technique; building on it, Hu Bo produces doves from empty hands, taking his own sleight of hand to the extreme. "A dove is alive; it is not as easy to control as a playing card, so the difficulty of the act rises greatly. During a performance, if the mechanism fails to open, the dove cannot come out and the rest of the show cannot go on. That is an enormous test for a magician, and every performance is full of inner pressure," Hu Bo said. "And so it is precisely the indomitable spirit of the Beijing swift that has kept encouraging me. I hope that through the play Dreammaker: Secret Realm we can encourage more young people to dare to pursue their dreams and to press bravely forward toward higher goals."