As the audience entered, hair dryers, music and the sound of toilets flushing were heard in the theatre during warm up.
“Who wants to wash their hair?”, or, “Which lady needs a manicure?”, were the refrains which came from the actors already on stage.
The improvised-mini performance amplified the sense of expectation, in part for the play itself but also for the new urban icon where it was being staged.
“Crazy Barber Shop” (疯狂理发店) is the first major production to be put on in the 1956 Star Theatre in Jiangsu Province’s coastal City of Yancheng. First since COVID and first in what used to be the Yancheng Cinema. Both the performance and the venue more than got The Nanjinger’s attention.
For theatre in China is on the whole a very staid affair.
But this ground-breaking, interactive comedy challenges that. Debuting back in 2021, this year’s tour of Crazy Barber Shop officially opened in Yancheng on the evenings of 22 and 23 February.
Spoiler alert; it’s a murder-comedy. And one which presents itself with another opportunity to engage the audience. This time not for a shampoo and blow dry, but to lead them towards the climax of the performance as witnesses to a crime, with the play’s detective reminding them to constantly collect random clues to the case.
It’s stuff hitherto very rarely seen on a stage in the Middle Kingdom. And that’s why the venue chosen for the tour’s local stop was all the more appropriate, itself a one of a kind that is also an architectural marvel.
The 1956 Star Theatre is to be found in downtown Yancheng, along Jianjun Zhong Lu. Built in 1956, it was the former Yancheng Cinema and since had undergone two phases of renovation. With subsequent various uses by retail stores, all cultural character had been lost.
Shanghai-based Offhand Practice was the architectural firm given the task. Their client, the City’s Tinghu District Urban Asset Investment Co., wished to reintegrate the design and recall the unity of the historical building, fulfilling the functions of theatre and exhibition.
The architects carefully identified where the new was to be inserted and where the old should remain intact. While restoring every detail of the original front facade and preserving the existing structures, the two wings were reconstructed in a contemporary design language, humbly attached to the original building.
The result is world-shattering architecture with a sense of restraint therein.
But would people ever get to appreciate its splendour? It was early 2021 and COVID was still simmering in the background. April of 2022 saw the project come to completion and Yancheng now has the 1956 Star Theatre, delivering performance but also serving as an urban cultural hall. When there are no performances going on, local citizens can come to explore the venue, and feel the fusion of art and culture.
The 1956 Star Theatre is a poster child for a totally new kind of China. And if it keeps putting on the likes of Crazy Barber Shop, it’s one of which we could do with seeing a lot more.
Designer: “Offhand Practice” / “Photograph: “half half”. Images from Crazy Barber Shop: Yangtze Evening News
