The drama in the drama

_IDGSA

The drama in the drama

Yuhan Que

“The world is a psychiatric hospital” – said Japanese drama director Tadashi Suzuki. Everyone wants to escape from real life because of various real pressures. And movies, drama can bring people directly into another world. Not only because people can be immersed in other stories, but also because people are in a new atmosphere of “constructed” and “designed”. The immersive drama space is the expression of “escape from reality” because the audience cannot distinguish between reality and falsehood after entering the play. Through case analysis, literature and archive research, and theoretical analysis, this paper extracts the two keywords of “reality” and “illusion”, trying to create a dreamlike drama space.

And take Wuzhen as the background, extract its architectural elements; Choose an appropriate Chinese classical opera, split the story plot. The architectural elements and stories are recombined to form a dramatic space in one space. Use the language of parallel montage to show the space, with mobile viewing and performance to convey the story. We hope the audience can experience multiple space and time in this space, and travel through dreams and reality. When audiences are in different performance Spaces, they will feel the interlaced sense of “reality” and “illusion”. drama within drama, let the audience thoroughly immersed in the play and dream. Finally, using this complex, interwoven spatial sensory experience, let people think about life and space.

Have you ever wanted to escape from reality because of the trivialities and problems in real life? What do you choose? Drama and film are one of the ways to escape the real world for a short time. Because in just a few hours, people can experience other people’s stories, feelings, and get pleasure and relaxation that can’t be obtained in the present. At the same time, people are not only immersed in other stories, but also in a new space that is “created” and “designed”. Immersive drama achieves such an experience to the extreme. People are in a carefully designed immersive atmosphere, and they are mentally confused because of the wonderful story and the reality of the atmosphere, unable to distinguish “reality” from “illusion”.

In China, a small town called Wuzhen is like a large immersive performance space. Taking it as the background, I try to create a drama performance space where reality and fantasy interweave so that people can completely immerse themselves in this dream, to escape from reality.

“The reason why drama can temporarily make people forget the reality is that the “illusion” of drama makes the audience believe that all these things are real or as if they were experienced by themselves” (Yue Gao. “Analysis of the Fusion of Illusion and Theatre in Drama Art). However, the traditional theater model clearly divides the boundary between the audience and the stage. The audience can only see the stage, but cannot produce more interaction or even affect its development. In an immersive space, the atmosphere is also very important, because the audience needs to be completely immersed in the atmosphere created by the story. <Creating interior atmosphere> mentions that to create the atmosphere of performance space requires the selection of background and props; The use of special effects and the combination of colors, patterns, light, and shadow. In my opinion, in an excellent performance space, the creator will choose to focus on a certain way according to the different types of scripts. For example, compared with traditional dramas, immersive dramas magnify the stimulation of smell and touch and make people more immersive.

DREAM AND DREAM, ILLUSION AND REALITY INTERWEAVE HERE,

PRODUCE DERANGEMENT, LET A PERSON BE LOST AND TRANCE.

Therefore, in my opinion, both immersive drama and immersive space can make people feel immersive, because, in the space, people and scenes from all kinds of backgrounds are present, which is like creating a huge dream with intricate dreams. In such an immersive drama space, the audience can just be the observer, or they may forget their real identity and time as the plot deepens. The stories that the audience and the actors experience together in the play are like little dreams.

Located in eastern China, Wuzhen has been redeveloped in the name of “protecting history and culture” in recent years and has become a very popular tourist town. In people’s eyes, it is an ancient water town in the south of the Yangtze River with a history of 1,300 years, where you can experience the traditional Chinese water culture. But an article titled “Wuzhen is fake” revealed the “FRAUD” . In Wuzhen, you can see many small shops and family hotels run by local residents. You can see the daily life of the local residents. But in fact, these “RESIDENTS” are all employees under the unified management of wuzhen tourism company. Their behaviors and activities are all fake and “PERFORMANCES” in a sense.

Based on Tschumi`s theory, I form my own methodology.I try to form the theatrical space by DISASSEMBLING architectural elements and story plots, and then RECOMBINING and REDEFINING them. And try and explore by doing models. Meanwhile, I wonder if parallel montage can be used to show the space and convey the story through mobile viewing and performance. The audience can experience multiple space and time in this space, through dream and reality, and feel “reality” and “illusion”. I tried to put the various components together and replace the original traditional materials with modern materials without changing the shape of the traditional components. At the same time, the color of the building in Wuzhen is mainly black and white, so I added a high-saturation color that Wuzhen would not use.

The whole space tries to include the architectural elements of “reality” and “false” in Wuzhen, creating a drama that seems to tell the history of its past and present. Visitors enter Wuzhen, where they can find the original architectural space elements, but not the same as the real Wuzhen. Tourists travel in the space and forget the troubles of the world. This is like the scene of a garden in Chinese opera. It is an escape space from the problem of reality because for the character, the whole space is open, it breaks through the confinement of reality and leads to the ideal.

For the immersive drama space, the story of the drama itself is also very important. The audience may think, resonate, and finally immerse themselves in the story. But in fact, this is also because of the interaction between the audience and the actors. Different storylines take place in different spaces, and the audience follows the actors and walks in different spaces. The audience can be an observation of the distance, or they can choose to enter the story, become part of the play, and get lost in the story. From the very beginning, the audience represents “reality” (from the real world, objective perspective), the actors represent “illusion” (the story of non-existence), and then slowly the audience is immersed in the play, and gradually becomes “illusory”, lost in the play. So I chose a traditional Chinese story about dreams and reality, and the storyline also happened in the garden, added it to the entire theater space.

The audience put on the blue mask and entered the theater. For the audience who is represented by “reality”, they observe and then step by step become the actors in the eyes of other audiences, and finally fully integrate into the drama. They are step by step into the space of the play, then are they audiences or actors?

The entire building space is like a drama that tries to convey the past and present of Wuzhen. The interior space is connected by various scenes of “The Dream in Visiting the Garden”. Whether the audience wants to simply explore the entire building space or watch the drama, they all come in. Experience the space and feel the atmosphere of “reality” and “illusion” combined. In the end, the “drama in the drama” was formed, and people were immersed in such a dream and drama. At the same time, I also tried to explore the expression of the new stage drama space.