We do not know where this falling will be ended. But as long as we fall, life goes on. A turbulent life of a rickshaw boy Xiangzi who comes from a rural village to Beijing

About the performance

Camel Xiangzi is a 1937 novel by Lao She (1899-1966), one of the representative humanist authors in the history of modern Chinese literature. It depicts the life of a fictional Beijing rickshaw boy. This modern novel was translated into English in 1954 and widely known in the Western world as well. The performance Camel Xiangzi , whose shows were all sold out at the 2019 Seoul Theater Festival, is performed by the Playfactory Mabangzen. Director Sun-woong, Koh dramatized the original text of Peking opera to stage the text. It is not a revival of a Chinese classic but a play for everyone combining wit and humor. On the theater stage which has no boundary of space and time, and with the director’s exceptional moderate directing style, the play vividly depicts cruel exploitation and misery of the early 20th century’s lower class people by telling us the story of a rickshaw boy.

Synopsis

"A rickshaw man is the wind. He is becoming like the wind.”

To a poor but hardworking rickshaw man Xiangzi, his rickshaw is special. He even appoints the day when he buys the rickshaw his birthday. 

“I am pleased because my rickshaw looks great. Running with my two legs, I hear the wind. There is nowhere I cannot go.”

But Xiangzi’s life falls ceaselessly. War without mercy, confused society, financiers’ exploitation... Although they are in different circumstances, people have a certain ceaselessly repeated situation. The same is true in different space and time. To low-income people, life is always irrational and illogical. Nonetheless, this story does not become pessimistic about life. To tell us about hope, it first looks into despair to make us think about the next step.

Playfactory Mabangzen

Founded by playwright-cum-director Sun-woong Koh in 2005, the theater company has performed actively not only in Korea but also in many other countries such as UAE, Chile, Turkey and China. Carrying the banner for ‘magical realism,’ the Company focuses on expressing the world’s bizarre phenomena and characters. Their goal is to find the original form of the theater and to return to it.

Credits

Translator and Dramaturg ｜ Soo-kyung Oh
Director ｜ Sun-woong Koh
Producer ｜ Kang-min Ko
Music Director ｜ Dong-wook Kim
Choreography ｜ Mi-kyung An
Set Design ｜ Jong-seok Kim
Light Design ｜ Back-hee Ryou
Costume Design ｜ In-sook Choi
Make-up Design ｜ kyoung-suk Jang
Assistant Director ｜ Da-sol Jung
Stage Assistant Director ｜ Yong-ui Zo
PD Production PD ｜ Eun-kyung Lee
Cast ｜ Chang-ho Seo, Yong-cheol Jang, Jae-ho Jang, Jung-hoon Lee, Euy-jun Hong, Yeong-no Kim, Go-myung Son, Kyoung-sik Won, Byeol Park, Jin-gu Lim, Ja-young Hong, Ha-yoon Choi