Thrilling daredevil stunts performed on a bicycle and a DIY runway? A wonderfully satirical show in which the duo Action Hero, who formed in 2005, use low-tech devices to question our obsession with impossible feats as entertainment

In this intriguing work, two local actors perform the story of a relationship, but there is no prior knowledge of what is to happen or how they are to react, only a set of instructions delivered by headphones while on stage. With different artists for every show, each pair bring their own interpretation to the instructions, making all the performances unique. The best proof that there are no “second takes” in life.

“She Who Encountered Kafka X The New Rendezvous with Nalan” explores Czech author Franz Kafka’s world through improvisation, physical movement, spoken word, chanting and unconventional performance spaces in the theatre, while the audience can experience Qing dynasty poet Nalan Xingde’s literary world through a synthesis of dramatic and poetic arts.

“Kafka Fragments” will present, in a beautifully lit and surreal show, minimalist music pieces by Hungarian composer György Kurtág that were inspired by the letters, diaries and notebooks of Kafka.

When loneliness causes a city-wide epidemic,
absolute apathy in human relationships is said to be the only way out…

A seemingly familiar city is ravaged by an epidemic – a cold with an extremely high fatality rate and its permanent cure improbable. Investigation by experts and governing rulers concludes that the disease is linked to: loneliness. To fight the epidemic, the government imposes a firm grip on such feelings, and introduces a number of measures: new homes for patients who have recovered with new family members assigned to ensure a non-lonely lifestyle, in order for them to become integrated into the normal society again. Suddenly, everyone is in the new profession of “family”. Forced to live together, they lead a lifestyle of being made transparent. Those who survived the disease will now also be spared from loneliness, or so they claim…

The Common Cold was adapted from an original novel by Hon Lai Chu, hailed as Hong Kong’s own Kafka, in addition to receiving the top ten Chinese novels by Yazhou Zhoukan, the Recommended Prize in the Fiction Category at the Hong Kong Biennial Awards for Chinese Literature, the First Prize in the Medium-length Fiction category at the Unitas Literature and Fiction Prize for New Writers, as well as the China Times’ top ten recommended original Chinese books award. Her writing fuses together imagination and reality, critically inquiring into the human living conditions. The Common Cold is also veteran theatre director Lee Chun Chow’s first production for the Hong Kong Repertory Theatre.

Love! L’amour!! Ai!!! Is it worth dying for? Romeo and Juliet, Madame Butterfly, Princess Changping, the Butterfly Loves have all done it. But when it comes down to the most classic, who takes the crown? These tragically romantic characters are given a second chance to tell (or sell) their stories through an a cappella music theatre show that takes a look at the perils of passion through laughter and tears.
Mixing wit and whims with passion and intrigue, Our Immortal Cantata marks Yat Po Singers collaboration with composer Leon Ko and lyricist Chris Shum. A lively song and dance comedy with a whole new take on sacrificing it all for love.

Born in Kerala, South India, theatre director Roysten Abel is renowned for exploring his country’s cultural heritage on stage. Following The Manganiyar Seduction, presented to great acclaim in Hong Kong in 2011, Abel returns with another music theatre boundary-breaker that sets out to invigorate all five senses and delivers an entrancing emotional and spiritual experience. The Kitchen wondrously reflects on the intimate relationship between cooking and life. An estranged couple wordlessly confront each other as they go through the rituals of blending ingredients for two large pots of paal payasam, a traditional rice pudding. Behind them sit 12 mizhavu temple drummers in a remarkable, multi-level edifice, built to resemble the sacred instrument they play. As the sensuous performance unfolds, the theatre is suffused with palatable aromas and mesmerising drumbeats, actively drawing you in to the intangible conflicts embroiling the couple, their inner selves, and their journey towards reconciliation. In Hindu mythology, the body is the vessel of the soul. Here, you too get the chance to taste how Indian cuisine can serve up tantalising food for thought about the meaning of life.

Directed by Yukio Ninagawa, a leading figure in Japanese contemporary theatre, and performed by Saitama Gold Theater, “Ravens, We Shall Load Bullets” will be staged in Hong Kong next week. Featuring more than 30 actors aged over 75 on average, the production offers a breathtaking revolution in acting norms as the story of a gang of elderly armed rebels taking over a court unfolds.

Saitama Gold Theater comprises a remarkable group of elderly performers. Without training before joining the group, they have successfully learnt to draw on decades of experience to develop a unique and naturalistic acting style under the guidance of Ninagawa.

“Ravens, We Shall Load Bullets” is a thought-provoking work written by playwright Kunio Shimizu in the 1970s. In the story, the solemn trial of two young protesters, who are in court for throwing explosives, is suddenly disrupted when a gang of elderly women breaks into the courtroom with broomsticks and bombs. Disregarding rules and standard behaviour, the grannies turn defendants into plaintiffs and prosecutors into hostages, and they even have to fight the renewed flames of desire.

True battlers in their roles and in reality, the elderly performers constantly test their own limits and those of theatrical convention, breathing life experience into characters to create a profound impact. The programme is a radical reworking of the possibilities of both stage and old age.

Six dark-humoured, interwoven tales about handling the harshness of reality
One morning, a woman is driving to work. She is listening to the radio playing “On a Clear Day”, while thinking that life could not get any worse when a body suddenly lands in front of her car. She is shaken. However, her initial shock soon gives way to selfish anger as she begins to blame the “jumper” for disrupting her schedule. And so the story begins, 24 hours before death. On this “Black Monday”, a group of people struggle with their jobs. They work to live, but should work really stop them from living? Who will survive in the end?
[Taiwanese writer and cultural critic] Lung Ying-tai said Hong Kong people are highly efficient but our approach to work destroys our personality. I sometimes think we even lose our humanity” – Candace Chong, playwright

In 19th-century playwright Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, the main character Nora Helmer bravely leaves her family. Here, the Norwegian “father of modern drama” adds to his complex female protagonists with a story revolving around the gracious, clever and ambitious Hedda Gabler.
Previously in love with a talented but temperamental young writer, Hedda, the well-to-do daughter of a general, eventually marries a kind-hearted but dull academic. Bored by the end of their honeymoon, the newlywed is made more discontented when she discovers her former lover is in another relationship with her old schoolfriend and has managed to complete a masterpiece. Riven by jealousy and frustrated by lite’s turn of event, Hedda starts to lose her grip: she despises her unimaginative husband, hates to see the happiness of her friend, and is embittered by what her former lover has achieved. Gradually, her troubled mind drives herself and others towards disaster.
Premiered in 1981, Hedda Gabler was initially criticized as immoral. It has gone on to be regarded as one of Ibsen’s most challenging and compelling plays, and continues to be regularly staged in Europe and the US today. In this pioneering New Vision Arts Festival-produced performance, Adrian Noble, former Artistic Director and Chief Executive of the Royal Shakespeare Company, provides a thrilling new interpretation with leading artists from Hong Kong. Together, they traverse Hedda’s middle-class mindset, her improvidence and self-indulgence, resentment and cunning, and how a seemingly ideal life is transformed into tragedy.