Picnic in the Cemetery - Program

APR 26 – MAY 6, 2018 BERKELEY STREET THEATRE

picnic in the cemetery

A Music Picnic (Toronto) & Point View Art (Macau) Production in Association with Canadian Stage

17.18 Season Sponsor

Proud Sponsor 17.18 Berkeley Season

performers

creative

VI O LI N I S T

CREATOR, COMPOSER, CO-PRODUCER, ARTISTIC AND MUSICAL DIRECTOR

洪 逸宇 HONG IAT U C E LLI S T

余志力 NICHOLAS YEE P E R FO R M E R

陳紫茵 IRIS CHAN CHI IAN P IA N I S T

楊 光奇 NJO KONG KIE

S PAC E A N D LI G HTI N G D E S I G N E R

馮國基 FUNG KWOK KEE GABRIEL FI LM M A K E R

歐陽永 鋒 AO IEONG WENG FONG

楊 光奇 NJO KONG KIE

I N K A RTI S T

THIS PERFORMANCE RUNS APPROXIMATELY 75 MINUTES, THERE IS NO INTERMISSION

VI D EO D E S I G N E R

Supported by

吳少英 CINDY NG SIO IENG 何文 裕 FISH HO MAN U S TAG E M A N AG E R

林碧 華 LUBY LAM PIK WA

Media Sponsors

Music Picnic’s association with Canadian Stage began in 2006 when Kong Kie participated in the inaugural BASH program. Fast forward to 2011, Kong Kie performed for the first time at the Bluma Appel Theatre with La La La Human Steps. Music Picnic extends our heartfelt thanks to Matthew, Sherrie and the entire staff and crew of Canadian Stage for welcoming us to the Berkeley Street Theatre with the Company-in-Residence program.

POST SHOW TALK BACK Wednesday, May 2

A S SO CIATE P RO D U C E R

黃嘉 穎 KEVIN MATTHEW WONG P RO D U C TI O N M A N AG E R , P ROJ EC TI O N CO O R D I N ATO R , CO - P RO D U C E R

鄺華歡 ERIK KUONG WA FUN

NJO KONG KIE

(TORONTO)

Creator, Composer, Co-Producer, Pianist, Artistic and Musical Director

creative + performers

Fung Kwok Kee Gabriel

Njo Kong Kie

Erik Kuong Wa Fun

Kong Kie composes for dance, opera and theatre.

His works include Infinity by Hannah Moscovitch, knotty together (with Anna Chatterton), Mr. Shi and His Lover (with Wong Teng Chi) - the first Chinese language production at SummerWorks, Tarragon Theatre and the National Arts Centre English Theatre. Long-serving music director of La La La Human Steps, Kong Kie worked with companies including Nederlands Dans Theater, Ballet National de L’Opéra du Rhin, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Singapore Dance Theatre and Ballet BC. TV documentaries include Fisk: Untitled Portrait and China Rises. In development: The Year of the Cello; The Futures Market, and I swallowed a moon made of iron (Canadian Stage, May 2019). Kong Kie is the artistic producer of Music Picnic, musicpicnic.com.

ERIK KUONG WA FUN (MACAU) Projection Coordinator, Co-Producer

Fish Ho Man U

Kevin Matthew Wong

Erik is an independent producer of interdisciplinary and intercultural projects. He is a member of the “Asian Producers’ Platform” and has worked as programmer and festival producer in the cultural department of Macau government for more than a decade. Erik has produced fringes, arts festivals, film festivals and many other public events. His most recent focus is on curating and producing international arts collaborations in Asia and beyond.

FUNG KWOK KEE GABRIEL (HONG KONG) Space and Lighting Designer

Luby Lam Pik Wa

Cindy Ng Sio Ieng

Ao Ieong Weng Fong

Iris Chan Chi Ian

Gabriel is a Hong Kong-based theatre lighting designer. He has collaborated with Chung Ying Theatre Company, Theatre du Pif, CCDC, Actors Family, Theatre Ensemble, No Mans Land, Prospects Theatre Company, Hong Kong Arts Festival and U-Theatre (Taiwan). His designs have appeared in festivals such as the International Dance Festivals of Beijing and India, Edinburgh Fringe, Festival d’Avignon and Festival International de Artes Cênicas in Brazil. In 2003, Gabriel was awarded the Hong Kong Drama Awards for best lighting design in both drama and dance. He holds an MFA in film directing from Hong Kong Baptist University and is actively involved in independent filmmaking and research around the crossover between theatre and the moving image.

LUBY LAM PIK WA (HONG KONG) Stage Manager

Hong Iat U

Nicholas Yee

Luby is a freelance stage specialist with an honours Bachelor degree from the Arts, Event and Stage Management Department of

Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts. She has stage managed for the Hong Kong Arts Festival, Macau Arts Festival, Edinburgh Fringe, Kuandu Arts Festival (Taiwan), International Contemporary Dance Festival (Poland), SummerWorks Performance Festival (Toronto), and the Performing Arts Meeting in Yokohama (Japan) among others. In 2017/18, Luby stage managed the critically-acclaimed tour of Mr. Shi and His Lover to the Tarragon Theatre and the National Arts Centre English Theatre.

AO IEONG WENG FONG (MACAU) Filmmaker Fong (AKA Mr. Forgetful) is a movie director, photographer and social observer. Co-founder and director of the Macau-based Soso film studio, his works include film production, arts and culture, dance theatre, fashion and indie music.

Fong is an alumnus of the Graduate School of Visual Communication Design of National Yunlin University of Science and Technology in Taiwan.

CINDY NG SIO IENG

(MACAU/BEIJING)

Ink Artist Cindy has liberated ink from its subordination to the brush and from its longstanding obligation to render words and images. Born in Macau, Cindy did extensive research of the Chinese calligraphy and painting collection of the British Museum from 1993 to 1994. She continued her studies in contemporary ink painting in Taiwan. Art critic Haoson Chan described her works as “adopting traditional skills with fresh ideas and generating new arts beyond classical connotations”. Her works have been exhibited in many countries in Europe, America and Asia. She now lives and works in Beijing.

FISH HO MAN U (MACAU) Video Designer Fish is a graphic designer, video artist and filmmaker. A graduate with a BA in multimedia from the Macau Polytechnic Institute, Fish is committed to multi-media video creation and filmmaking. Fish has been involved in projects such as the U.S. TV shows Amazing Race and America’s Next Top Model, and HK/Macau films such as Battle and Macau Story 2: Love in the City. Fish also collaborates frequently with artists creating the making-of videos of stage works.

KEVIN MATTHEW WONG (TORONTO) Associate Producer Kevin is a theatre creator, performer, producer, and the Artistic Director of Broadleaf Theatre, a company that merges environmentalism

and theatre. The company’s recent work, The Chemical Valley Project, is a multi-media solo-performance by Kevin that explores environmentalism, reconciliation and the activism of Aamjiwnaang First Nation water protectors Vanessa and Lindsay Gray. The show tours to Victoria, Vancouver, Germany, and throughout Ontario in 2018/19. Kevin is the Associate Producer of Music Picnic and has recently worked with Cahoots Theatre, the Koffler Centre, Theatre PasseMuraille and Carousel Players. Connect with Kevin at: kevinmatthewwong.wordpress.com.

IRIS CHAN CHI IAN (MACAU) Performer Specializing in Chinese and contemporary dance, Iris is the choreographer and principal dancer of Ieng Chi Dance Association (Macau). Iris’ performance career started at the age of seven, and since 2013, she has been participating in various tours and exchange projects in Greece, Poland, South Korea, Singapore and Mainland China.

She is a graduate of the renowned Beijing Dance Academy, obtaining the Chinese Dance and Dance Teacher certificates.

As a choreographer, Iris’ works include Black-faced Spoonbill, Muses in the Scrolls: Night of Dunhuang and Depth of Love.

HONG IAT U (MACAU) Violinist Born in Macau, Iat U is a graduate of the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, the leading music school in China, where he studied with professors Chen Wen and Xie Na Fu. An active performer in the Macau arts scene, Iat U regularly collaborates with theatre artists and performs as a jazz musician on both the violin and electric bass. Iat U also maintains an active teaching schedule in Macau.

NICHOLAS YEE

(EDMONTON)

Cellist Nicholas is a cellist best recognized for his popular interpretations of songs and soundtracks on YouTube. His instrumental arrangements have been described as sonorous and sophisticated, and videos of his performances have garnered over 13 million views online. Notable recordings include an arrangement of music from the Netflix series Stranger Things which has over 3 million YouTube views and a cover of Shawn Mendes’ Stitches which Nicholas had the opportunity to perform alongside Mendes at the Canadian JUNO Awards.

artistic + general director’s note I first met Njo Kong Kie onstage at the Bluma Appel Theatre. He was the musical director for La La La Human Steps’ production called Untitled, part of my first programmed season at Canadian Stage, and was perched behind his piano as I ventured on to the stage to greet the dancers. Since then our paths have crossed often – at Banff on a couple of occasions, where we were both in residency; in Seoul where he was travelling with his group from Macau; in Toronto where he has always been an attentive spectator and a powerful, if discreet voice in the musictheatre community. Having met Kong Kie in so many places and situations is a nice mirror to the nature of his work itself, always curious, unfettered by aesthetic or stylistic boundaries, full of understanding and a subversive kind of compassion and humour, intangible. Now he invites us to picnic in the cemetery, to repast amongst the memories and the ghosts, to celebrate life right until its very end, and then beyond. And thus I celebrate my nine years at Canadian Stage, right until the very end and, of course, beyond.

MATTHEW JOCELYN

creator’s note Perhaps it is too sentimental or cliché for someone to say that their show is a labour of love, but for me, Picnic in the Cemetery was indeed born out of friendship and doing something for the pure fun of it.

In the early 2000s, I met Montreal musicians Simon Claude and Alexandre Castonguay.

The three of us performed with La La La Human Steps, touring the show Amelia. While on the road, I wrote a bunch of ditties to amuse ourselves. These became the album Picnic in the Cemetery, so named because I love having picnics at Mt. Pleasant Cemetery.

By serendipity, the contradiction contained within this fanciful title represented for me the joy of meetings, but also the melancholy of the inevitable partings. This duality became the underlying theme of the work when, along with some new friends in Macau, I made the first Picnic in the Cemetery show in 2013 for the Macau Arts Festival with selections from the album and some new tunes.

We called our team the Folga Gaang Project, referencing the uniquely Macanese colloquial idiom - Folga is Portuguese meaning “day off”, and 更 (gaang) is Chinese meaning “work shift”. Folga 更 refers to the extra work shift someone takes on on their day off. Just don’t call us workaholics.

As creators we thought about how much of the power of visual arts comes from its ability to allow viewers to impart their own unique insights onto what they see, based on many fragments of impressions, memories and associations. In creating Picnic, we set out to create a similarly open and personal experience for our audience.

Many more friends have joined our Picnic since then and the production constantly evolves to involve new collaborators, new venues and new audiences. I therefore cannot predict fully, at the time of writing this, what the show will end up being. I can only say that we are working hard to lay out a sumptuous spread to welcome you.

We hope you will enjoy the picnic.

NJO KONG KIE