China Daily Article... (about me?) :)
Amateur theatre and acting workshops in Beijing help foreigners hone their performance skills, and more importantly, become involved in local life, as Erik Nilsson finds out.
The curtain is rising on a new type of cultural exchange between foreigners and locals in Beijing.
An increasing number of foreign-founded amateur theatre performances and acting workshops popping up throughout the city could create a dramatic shift in the capital city or at least on its amateur performance stage.
"For the expat community, I think that making some sort of art, theatre or satire about ourselves and the city allows us to be a real part of this place, not just the transients we so often are, dipping our toes into China, but never really getting in," said American Jonathan Haagen, 25, of Durham, North Carolina.
Haagen recently played the role of a lusty laowai in the recently performed comedy, "I Heart Beijing." Written by 26-year-old American Elyse Ribbons, of Detroit, the satire deals with the typecasts of characters often found in the capital: the sassy American woman, the American-born Chinese (ABC) who constantly complains about being caught between two worlds, the domineering Chinese man, the Western womanizer who picks up harems of Chinese girls at English corners and the young Chinese woman trapped between modernity and tradition.
However, as the plot unfolds, these stereotypes are built up only to be torn down like a pre-Olympics Beijing skyline.
American Frances Chen, 36, of Chicago, who played the ever-complaining ABC, believes that the performance's mixed cast made the show more powerful.
"It reached out to a broader audience," she said. "Audience members could relate more to the cast and characters. Although Chinese audiences seem to watch 'Friends,' they don't really relate to it and think it just represents Americans and an American lifestyle."
Xiao Lu, of Beijing, who played Liu Tingting an independent Chinese girl who lives under the authority of her older brother said that performing with a mixed cast created new platforms for cross-cultural exchange.
"It is a special and useful way to get foreigners and locals to think about life in Beijing and talk about life in Beijing," she said.
This is exactly what Ribbons said she had in mind when she wrote the script.
"Beijing is not a Chinese city any more and its culture is more than just Beijinger or Chinese, but rather, a mixture of the world," she said.
also posted on the www.iheartbeijing.com blog here