HOME X

Worlding by Donald Shek, original music by An-Ting Chang, Choreography by Si Rawlinson and Suen Nam, Voice by Colette Wing Wing Lam, and Holoportation technology by Ian Gallagher.

The project was originally conceived by An-Ting Chang, Ian Gallagher, and Donald Shek.

Experience Designer Henry Lam | Costume Designer Christine Ting-Huan Urquhart | Dramaturg Daniel York Loh | Actor Gamer and Intro Video Maker Mia Foo

Sound Consultant David Howard | Community Producer Katrina Man | Marketing Manager Sandy Wan | UK Administration Manager Apollonia Bauer

UK Production Manager Hannah Blamire | UK Stage Manager Brent Tan | Hong Kong Director Dino Fung | Hong Kong Producers Henry Lam, Fo Liu

Co-Developers Toshi Wong, Sin Hang Kan, Logan Lee | 3D Design Assistant Graeme Wallace.

Performed at York Theatre Royal, Cambridge Junction, and The Barbican 2023.

Home X is an immersive digital theatre performance commissioned by the British Council Hong Kong for the Spark Festival 2021.

Audiences enter a virtual world as an avatar that changes and grows as they interact with this strangely familiar but altered environment.  In this virtual world, they encounter characters created by dancers and a singer, performing together live using VR technology.  No longer either in Hong Kong or the UK, we all exist together in this virtual third space.

Home X explores themes of roots, belonging, destruction, and renewal.

“Home is where the family is.  The land is the witness of a continuous legacy, it’s the imprint of history.  This when you move, you leave the history behind, adrift.”

Original music by Kakilang Artistic Director An-Ting Chang and choreography by Si Rawlinson in the UK joins choreography by Suen Nam and the voice of Lam Wing Wing in Hong Kong.  The virtual environment was designed by Donald Shek and holoportation technology was developed by Ian Gallagher in the UK.

Credit

HOME X is co-produced by Kakilang (formerly Chinese Arts Now) and their Hong Kong partner, Don't Believe in Style, and co-commissioned by Cambridge Junction, Oxford Contemporary Music, York Theatre Royal, and The Barbican Centre. The work is supported by StoryFutures and The Space, originally commissioned by British Council Hong Kong.

Creative Team

Conceived by An-Ting Chang, Ian Gallagher, and Donald Shek

Directed and Composed by An-Ting Chang

Creative Technology by Ian Gallagher

3D Design by Donald Shek

Experience Design by Henry Lam

Costume Design by Christine Ting - Huan 挺歡 Urquhart

Choreographers/Dancers: Si Rawlinson (UK), Suen Nam (HK)

Soprano: Colette Wing Wing Lam

Dramaturg: Daniel York Loh

Actor Consultant: Mia Foo

Hong Kong Director: Dino Fung

Hong Kong Producers: Henry Lam, Fo Liu

Game Developers: Ian Gallagher (lead), Toshi Wong, Logan Lee

3D Design Assistant: Graeme Wallace

Production Team

Community Producer: Katrina Man

UK Marketing Manager: Sandy Wan

UK Administration Manager: Apollonia Bauer

UK Production Manager: Hannah Blamire

Supported By

Kakilang, Don’t Believe in Style, Bagri Foundation, Barbican, John Ellerman Foundation, Cambridge Junction, Oxford Contemporary Music, York Theatre Royal, Story Futures, Royal Holloway University, Creative Clusters, Arts & Humanities Research Council, Industrial Strategy, The Space, British Council Hong Kong, Arts Council England and, Jerwood Space.

The scene centers around a large ancient banyan tree that forms the location of a shrine representing To Tei Kung and To Tei Por.  According to the reconstruction tablet (1938)  inside Tai Shu Ha Tin Hau Temple, there was a big tree midway down the river between Tan Ka Wan and Tan Ka Po in Yuen Long 300 years ago.  The area was previously surrounded by water but today forms one of the largest districts in Hong Kong.  The original temple was built under the tree for worshipping Tin Hau and it formed a marker in history defining a junction of a new beginning as settlers migrated from the North of China to the fertile plains since the Song Dynasty along the Zhujiang River Estuary.  To this day it is not just a place of worship but a cultural and entertainment space that brings together old and new communities.  New communities in a sense families that had left these lands to migrate to other countries including the UK, returning to celebrate and to remember the past through tradition that can easily be forgotten when far away from home.

Wu Kang’s tree’s

Wu Kang is a figure in traditional Chinese folklore.  He is known for endlessly cutting down a self-healing osmanthus tree on the moon, a divine punishment.

Albert Camus describes the following absurd condition: we build our life on the hope for tomorrow, yet tomorrow brings us closer to death and is the ultimate enemy; people live their lives as if they were not aware of the certainty of death.  Once stripped of its common romanticism, the world is a foreign, strange and inhuman place; true knowledge is impossible and rationality and science cannot explain the world: their stories ultimately end in meaningless abstractions, in metaphors.  This is the absurd condition and “from the moment absurdity is recognised, it becomes a passion, the most harrowing of all.”