The Irish Festival of Arts and Culture has been drawing huge audiences in China, writes Rosita Boland
Cultural exchanges between countries always produce some unexpected results. As the Irish Festival of Arts and Culture in China nears the end of its second week, Irish performers have been learning to factor in a few surprises from their audiences. During the three-night run of the Gate's production of Waiting for Godot in Beijing's Capital Theatre, the actors had to get used to some interaction from the audience in the form of mobile phones. Calls were made and received, sometimes at normal speaking volume, and screens lit up with beeping text messages throughout, initially disconcerting the actors.
The announcements that are standard in Western theatres and cinemas to switch off phones prior to performances are rare here. It's not a question of intentional disrespect; it's more that the Chinese audiences have a less formal attitude to being a member of the audience than Westerners do. The boundaries are less defined. It was similar at the ongoing exhibition of contemporary Irish art at the futuristic Millennium Art Museum in Beijing: curious visitors unabashedly fingered artwork and installations, clearly interested to find out what the exhibits felt like. The security guards did not seem to notice, nor did they object to the frequent use of flash photography, although there are signs forbidding both.
The festival, which runs in Beijing and Shanghai until June 16th, has been attracting attention in the Chinese media. CCTV 1, the national television station which broadcasts throughout China in Mandarin, featured the festival in its news reports. Beijing TV, which broadcasts to an estimated audience of 30 million in Beijing and the surrounding area, has so far run three excerpts from the festival: footage of the opening night with Riverdance and Altan; Waiting for Godot; and the traditional music concert, From Clare to Here. CCTV 9, an English-language channel broadcasting across China, interviewed pianist John O'Conor after his recital at the Concert Hall at the Central Conservatory of Music.
In the print media, China Daily, the government-run daily national English language newspaper (which sells for one yuan, about one cent), ran a large feature on Waiting for Godot and a long review of the play. Godot was first staged in China only in 1991, in Chinese, at the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing. The critic, Mu Qian, wrote of the Gate's version in China Daily: "Though most Chinese audiences had to check the subtitles from time to time to understand the lines, the general atmosphere of the play seemed to be well-perceived." Qian went on to make a political point by noting that director Walter Asmus's version of the play, particularly Pozzo's lines, had inspired the audience "with lines that might have been buried in other versions, like 'Let us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. Let us not speak well of it either. Let us not speak of it at all. It is true the population has increased.'"
In other print coverage, tonight's gig by The Frames in Beijing's Yan Club has been getting the most attention, with a front-page splash on the cover of the Beijing Weekend. Metrozine, a monthly bilingual arts and listings magazine, focused on the visual arts end of the festival, and ran short interviews with two of the artists in residence in Beijing, John Behan and Amanda Coogan.
Donal Shiels, the festival's manager, has been keeping track of attendance at the events in both Beijing and Shanghai. Riverdance and Altan, who stepped in at short notice after the illness of Paddy Moloney caused the Chieftains to pull out, sold out in the Poly Theatre in Beijing, with an audience of 1,400. This event was the most expensive of the festival, with tickets costing around €80, which is a month's salary for the average Chinese worker. Godot, in an 800-seat theatre, sold out two of its three nights. David Holmes's club gig attracted 400 people in Beijing and 650 in Shanghai.
The trad concert, presented by Donal Lunny, sold out in both Beijing and Shanghai, to 1,400 in each city. The poetry reading by Paul Muldoon and Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill sold out to 250 people. John O'Conor's recital was almost full, with an audience of 300. There is a request to extend Views from an Island, the visual arts exhibition, by a week in Beijing before it travels on to Shanghai.
So who is attending the festival? It depends on the event, but there is a mixture of local Chinese people and members of the ex-pat community. John O'Conor's recital, which was held at the Central Conservatory of Music, was attended mostly by Chinese music students at the conservatory - who gave him three hugely enthusiastic encores.
The Anthology of Irish Literature was launched at the Irish Embassy to an invited audience consisting of Chinese academics, diplomats, the Chinese and Irish press, and all the festival's cultural partners in China. David Holmes played to an audience that was half ex-pats and half young Chinese in Beijing, and two-thirds Chinese in Shanghai.
For Donal Shiels, Holmes's Shanghai gig provided him with his most memorable festival moment to date: "Watching young Chinese people dancing to Jesus Christ Superstar, and thinking this would have been impossible to imagine 10 years ago."