Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre, Nodomain and Odense Teater have joint forces in a theatre co-production that pays tribute to the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard.
From the February 21 to March 3 four Chinese actors and five Danish actors will perform the theatre play, ”The Seducers Diary” in Shanghai.
The Sino-Danish co-production has already been well received in Denmark and now the time has come to present the Shanghai audience to a wordless journey through visual music.
The play is loosely adapted from the influential work ”Either/Or” by Søren Kierkegaard, a 19th-century Danish philosopher, who is considered the father of existentialism.
The play is set in a 1937 Shanghai nightclub, where Chinese and Europeans find themselves in a dreamlike world of decadence and temptation. A universe that suits the hedonistic writings of ”Either/Or” very well.
According to the Danish director and owner of Nodomain, Mr Anders Nyborg, the collaborative effort has not been without difficulties.
”As a Dane you feel like China is far away and China is a lot different from Denmark, and that is a challenge in the beginning. But now the people involved have become really good friends,” says Nyborg.
To Nyborg it has been very important to create trust among his Chinese collaborators. Trust makes it easier to work together he states.
One of the challenges of the co-operation was the language barrier.
”Translation is time consuming, but on a production like this one you eventually adapt new ways of communicating together. But both the Chinese and the Danish cast have been very understanding,” says Nyborg.
According to Nyborg the timing of the play could not be better. 2013 is the 200th anniversary of Søren Kierkegaard’s birth, which is what this play celebrates. The anniversary of Kierkegaard’s birth and the fact that China is highly visible in the Danish media landscape both are factors that contributed and made it easier to organise the play.
Source: The Embassy of Denmark in China
