Shanghai Daily news

With body movements as the sole vehicle of communication, the mime gala show, ``Strangers in the Night'' from the United States, is coming to China with Shanghai as the first stop on its debut Asian tour.
As a combination of mime theater, film, music and contemporary dance, the show is a gift from the Alithea Mime Theater to this year's Shanghai International Arts Festival. For its Chinese premiere, the theater will perform 10 program items, including ``Strangers in the Night,'' ``Electric Nights'' and ``Angel's Rising.'' ``Strangers in the Night'' is a smart combination of mime and dance in which the audience can peep into a bedroom through a ``window.'' A bed represents all kinds of delicate human relationships and what audiences see is actors' different sleeping poses with every turning movement executed with extreme elegance. The mystical illusions that can appear in the darkness are highlighted in ``Electric Nights.'' Waving hands suddenly appear in the dark and then change to fish swimming in the deep sea. Gradually, the fish turn into twinkling fireflies. Surprisingly, the second half presents different depictions of ancient China to the accompaniment of relaxing music. Compared with other items, ``Angel's Rising'' is a larger work which presents the inherent desire of human beings for competition. It utilizes slow motion in film and suspends movement to depict the theme of human competitiveness. Other items include ``Creation,'' a reinterpretation of the classic story, ``Lifesong,'' describing family relationships and ``Marionette,'' in which a puppet master recalls his heyday and there's an interesting section involving an impromptu interaction with the audience, who can experience the art of mime themselves in a 15-minute ``game.'' In 1990, the founder of the Alithea Mime Theater, Nicholas Johnson, developed Alithea Creations, a company dedicated to the production of single discipline and multi-disciplined performances in mime theater. For years, the theater has engaged in experimental procedures which combine mime with film projection, dance and original music. The stage space is transformed to include rear screen projection, broadening the artistic possibilities for the performers and the space they occupy on stage. Recognizing the need for a strong American identity in mime theater, Johnson, together with his wife, Sabrina Vasquez, began to create new works and restage former company pieces that later became the touring repertoire for the Alithea Mime Theater. The company puts on performances that highlight his group and solo choreography. Johnson's works greatly delighted Marcel Marceau, the French mime maestro. ``I've seen that his works have greatly expanded the boundary of this art,'' commented Marceau who is considered the ``father of mime art in the 20th century.'' At the invitation of Polish mime master Stefan Niedzialkowski, Johnson and Vasquez took Alithea's works to the International Mime Art Festival in Warsaw, Poland, in 2000. The Polish mime exclaimed that the value of Johnson's works ``could not be described in words.'' A documentary film, ``Beyond the Word,'' which recorded the tour, won a national award in the United States the following year. Also that year, the theater participated in the first International Mime and Physical Theater Festival in the Caribbean area held in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Another documentary film, ``Out of the Box,'' was made from Alithea's performance at the festival.

Date: November 11-14, 7:15pm
Venue: Shanghai Drama Arts Theater, 288 Anfu Rd
Tickets: 150-800 yuan
Tel: 6473-0123, 6473-4567