Theater of life
An interactive entrance and everyman's quest for enlightment turn a play at Wutai Mountain into a journey of self-discovery, Chen Jie reports in Shanxi.
People attending the ongoing show Encore Wutai Mountain can get lost as soon as they enter the theater. They don't walk into the auditorium - they walk into a winding space that evokes the bedroom of your childhood, the classroom of high school and the dormitory at college, with the repeated recordings of parents' reminders, teachers' words and conversations between first-time lovers.
At the end of the lane, audience members find themselves in a bustling community where all of those everyday scenes of life are acted out: trivial quarrels with a spouse, criticism from a boss, parents scolding kids or struggling to care for dying parents in a hospital.
