在2015 APAF Art Camp上做的两篇演讲

                
                
大家好，感谢你们抽出宝贵的时间坐在这里，请允许我做一个简单的自我介绍。
Hello, everyone. Thank you all for being here. Please let me give a short introduction first.
我叫蔡艺芸，来自中国，现在工作生活于北京，我出生于80年代的上海，前不久，中国政府刚出台一个新的政策，允许生二胎，我想这在全世界都是一个闻所未闻的具有中国特色的社会主义政策，所以我们这一代，也就是80后，便成为了中国唯一的一代独生子女，这种时代背景在我身上刻下了深深的烙印，也带入了我的创作。
I’m Cai Yiyun, coming from China. I am now working and living in Beijing. I was born during the 80s in Shanghai. Not so long ago, the Chinese government has released a new policy, making it legal to have two children in any one given family. I imagine this policy is unknown by many people in the world except for Mainland China. It is very much the Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. Therefore, my generation, born after the 1980s, will be the only generation that went through Chinese Only-Child policy. This kind of social environment, under which my generation and I was brought up, made a deep influence on my work and me, personally.
我的创作大致可以分为三个阶段：文本的探索、导演的探索和作为演员的行为探索。前后大概有十年的时间。
My creative career can be roughly divided into three stages: exploration of playwriting, exploration of directing and exploration of performance as an actor. Putting all three stages together, it would be about ten years.
2006年，我毕业于上海戏剧学院戏文系，主修编剧，大三开始我便和同班同学一起组建剧团——“聆舞剧团”。也就是在那一年，我公演了我的第一个作品《默默与粘粘》，这部作品带有德国表现主义的强烈风格，描写一个叫“默默”的女孩从出生到她成年所经历的一系列事件，具有鲜明的时代印记，粘粘是她的一个布娃娃，映射了她完全不同的两个自我（这是当时的剧照，参见PPT），这个戏演了五六场，只有一场是在我的母校上海戏剧学院内，其他均在上海的一个叫“下河迷仓”的独立剧场进行，现在这个剧场因为资金问题已经倒闭，之后如果有机会，我可以和诸位继续探讨中国当代戏剧的现状，包括剧场的分布和资金的走向。
In 2006, I graduated from Shanghai Theater Academy with a bachelor degree of playwriting in the department of dramatic literature. I started forming my own theater company with one of my classmates when I was a junior in college – Linc2 Theater Company. During that year, my first theater piece “Momo & NianNian” premiered. “Momo & NianNian” was very much influenced by German expressionism. It depicts the growing-up experience of Momo from birth to adulthood, strongly influenced by the special events of my time. Niannian is Momo’s doll. Those two characters represent two completely different sides of Momo. This work had about 5, perhaps 6 public presentations, having one performance in the theater of Shanghai Theater Academy. Other than the one performance in Shanghai Theater Academy, it was shown mostly in an independent theater Mecoon. This theater is now closed because of economical reasons. If I had further chance, I would like to discuss the theater scene in contemporary China, including the distribution of theaters and the flow of money and resources.
    现在，请允许我继续讨论我的创作之路。之后有三年的时间，我一直在做演员和制作人的工作，没有剧本创作，直到2009年，我写了我公演的第二个剧本《鱼仙》，因为当时深受荒诞派戏剧的影响以及对贝克特的强烈喜爱，这个剧本是一个向贝克特致敬的作品，它讲的是两个人被困在铁路的中央，不能前进也不能倒退，而火车正在徐徐开来，什么时候开来他们并不知道，在这个过程中，他们探讨生命的意义并陷入对往昔深深的回忆，这个剧本后来被收入在《再剧场》这本书中（这是当时的剧照，参见PPT）。
For now, I will proceed with my creative career. During the three years after the production of my first piece, I was working as an actress and producing, not as a playwright. It is not until 2009 that I had my second piece written and premiered “Fish Numen”. I was influenced by the theater of the absurd and had a strong appreciation for Samuel Beckett at that time. “Fish Numen” was a piece that is dedicated to Samuel Beckett. It tells the story of two men stuck in the middle of a railroad. They can’t move forward nor retreat backward. The train is approaching both of them, but they don’t know when it will arrive. In the process, they discuss the meaning of life and were caught up in the memory of the past. This work was latter included in the book “Re-Theater”.
2010年，我应邀参加由上海戏剧谷主办的“两岸三地青年导演作品展演”，作为上海的青年导演代表，我写出了《暗房》这个剧本（这是当时的剧照，参见PPT），通过之前的文本探索，我进入了新的阶段，希望用一种完全不一样的方式去写剧本，所以在这个作品当中，只有台词没有任何舞台提示，而我将场景设置成了并列的五个房间，这五个房间可以同时表演，观众有权选择看哪个房间，他们被包围在这五个房间的中间，这是我第一次开始考虑“如何颠覆普通的观演关系”，也就是镜框式舞台带来的限制。在题材上面，我也大胆探讨了“性与暴力对于两性关系的影响”，因为中国的审查制度，这部戏只演了两场就被禁演，上海文广局给我打来电话称这个作品“伤风败俗，对青年具有破坏性影响”，之后，我可能上了创作的黑名单，具体怎样我并不清楚。
In 2010, I was invited to participate in“Youth director works exhibition”hosted by Shanghai onedrama. As a young director from Shanghai, I wrote “Dark Room” (here are the photos, please see the PowerPoint). Passing through the first stage of my creative career, the playwright exploration phase, I entered in a new phase in my creative career, wishing to write the script in a completely new way. Therefore, in my work “Dark Room”, there are only lines for the actors but no stage directions. I arranged scenes into five rooms that were placed side by side. Performances go on simultaneously in the five rooms. Audience has the privilege to choose which one of the five rooms they wanted to see, placed in the center of the five rooms. This is also the first time I started to think about “How to challenge the conventional performer-audience relationship?”challenging the limitation of proscenium stage. For the content, I chose to explore “the impact sex and violence have on gender relations”. Due to the censorship in China, this work only had two public performances and was banned afterwards. Shanghai Bureau called me, saying this work “is immoral. It is destructive for the young people.” I guess I was on their blacklist afterwards, but I don’t know the details.
2012年，我转战北京，开始了一个全新的阶段。《写诗》便是我在这个阶段最成功的一个作品，至今为止，它已经演出了三四十场，分布于世界各地，从北京启程，一路到了上海、杭州、深圳、重庆等地，2014年还受邀参加了“哥本哈根戏剧节（CPH STAGE）和台北为你朗读三城叙事单元”，与我们合作过的诗人多达十几位，其中两位女性作者的文本被收入到《丹麦戏剧选》，即将以丹麦文公开出版。这部作品开创了一个全新的文本模式，每到一个城市我们便邀请当地的诗人进行驻地创作，作为导演，我利用他们类似散文的文本进行解构并呈现在舞台上。
In 2012, I moved to Beijing and starting a new phase of my creative activity. 《Writing Poems》 is the most important work of this phase. Until now, it had thirty or forty public performances. This work also toured extensively in China and abroad, starting from Beijing to Shanghai, Hangzhou, Shenzhen, Chongqing and many other places. In 2014, it was invited to participate in “Copenhagen Stage and Theatrical Reader 3-Beijing/Taipei/Macau Connection”. There were more than ten poets involved in this work. Among them, two female author and their work were selected in 《Danish drama》， and it will soon be published in Denmark. This work created a new way of writing. We invite local poets once we’ve arrived in any given city and collaborate with them. As a director, I deconstruct their prose and present it on stage.
2013年开始，我渐渐离开剧场接触当代艺术，与许多美术馆合作，利用美术馆现有的场地进行创作，这其实也是一种不得已的迂回政策，因为在中国搞当代戏剧，“钱”是一个关键词，在没有钱没有场地的情况下，如何继续搞创作，是我这两年的一个重要课题。2014年，我应上海外滩美术馆的邀请，根据贝克特的小说《无法称呼的人》改编的作品《无名的人》在那里演出，是当代艺术家Ugo Rondinone的展览《呼吸行走死亡》的表演部分，在这个作品中，我引用了“装置”的概念，我与朋友合作做了一个叫“词语碎片”的装置，矗立在美术馆的场地中央，装置与表演具有同等地位，五位现代舞舞者带领观众深入到美术馆的各个角落进行体验，也是我在试图再次打破传统的观演关系。2014年下半年，我应邀北京南锣鼓巷戏剧节创作的作品《电—巴赫变奏曲》首次采用了一对一的观演关系，即在一个空间内的一段时间内，只有我和观众两个人，而演出要由观众和我一起完成，这个作品也是我首次将音乐表演作为主体进行创作。
    From 2013, I started getting in touch with contemporary art, collaborating with many galleries and using their space to create. Creating in the galley was not my original intention at that time, but it was a necessary one. Creating theater in contemporary China, “money” is a key word. “How to create works continuously with limited budget and space” became an important topic for me recently. In 2014, upon the invitation of Rock Bunk Art Museum, I adapted Beckett’s novel “The Unnamable” and did a work named “The Unnamable” in that gallery. It was part of Ugo Rondinone’s exhibition “Breath Walk Die”. In this work, I brought in the idea of “installation”. My friend and I created a installation called “Words fragment”, standing in the center of the gallery space. Installation and performance are of equal status in my work. Five contemporary dancers guided audience and led them to every corner of the gallery. This is another attempt at challenging the conventional performer-audience relationship. For the second half of 2014, I was invited to create a work for Nan Luo Gu Xiang Theatre Festival. My work “Electricity - Variations of Bach” was a one-to-one experience for the audience. During the performance, only one audience and I were in the space. This audience member needs to interact with me in the performance. This is the first time I used music as the base and main element of my work.
在这个期间，我还创作了两个小剧场作品，《一个女人一天中的10小时》和《女人，她说》，前者是进行文本探索的又一个阶段，将现有的经典文本重构，把几个经典的女性形象并置拼贴在一个文本里；后者是对于前一个剧场作品的解构，《女人，她说》是一个半个小时的独角solo，它的文本建构在上一个戏《一个女人一天中的10小时》之上，《女人，她说》的女主角是《一个女人》的导演，假定她排了一个失败的戏，现在作为导演，也是一个女人的她要说出她自己的故事。
    During this period, I also created two other theater pieces, “a women of ten hours a day” and “woman she said”. “A women of ten hours a day” is another phase of playwriting exploration. It deconstructs classical literature, collaging classical female characters together in a parallel fashion. “Woman she said” deconstructs the previous theater work “A women of ten hours a day”. It is a half-hour one-woman show. It is based on the literal structure of “A women of ten hours a day”. “Woman she said” was performed by the director of “A women of ten hours a day”. In the play, it assumes the director produced a horrible theater work. Now, as a woman and a director, she is telling her story.
从2006年到2015年，将近十年的时间，作为编剧、导演和表演者的我创建了“聆舞剧团”和“歇斯底里剧团”，后者是我作为个人创建的一个具有强烈自我风格的剧团，注重视觉和形式的表达，通常以女性视角出发进行创作，而从今年开始，我可能会重新回归到传统剧本的创作上，谢谢。
     From 2006 to 2015, I’ve been working in theater for almost ten years. As a playwright and director, I established “Linc2 Theater Company” and “Hysteric Theater Company”. The latter is tailored mostly to my personal interests and working styles, focusing on the visual and formal elements in theater and creating through women’s perspective. Starting from this year, I will return to the creation of playwriting in a more conventional sense.
Thank you all for listening.
                
                
这是我第二次来东京，我记得去年我第一次来东京的时候，刚下飞机的一刹那就感觉很不一样，我在心里喊“哇，这是日本，这是东京”，扑面而来的漫画、日本的文字都具有很强的视觉冲击力，虽然日本人看上去和我们长得很像，但因为文化和环境、历史的不同，我们还是不一样的，比如走路的方式，日常的习惯，当然还有我们所说的语言，如果我不会说日语，我就不明白你在说什么，所以我开始思考，我们是否可以找到除了语言以外的共同点，比如美，比如音乐、图像还有我们的身体，如果我直接给你一个拥抱，你可能就会感觉很温暖。语言固然非常重要，但语言终究是一种符号，就比方说，当我们说桌子的时候，我们的脑子里会出现桌子的画面，而这张桌子是什么样的却可能取决于你的记忆。所以当我回到国内，再想起这短短的十天，我会想起在座的每一位的脸庞，想起我们一起学习过的教室，想起你们的笑声，想起一起吃饭的小酒馆，想起食物的味道以及地上的一片落叶，我想这些珍贵的记忆对我来说就像是你在这个浮华的世界中发现的美，认识到不同的人，接触了不同的文化，知道世界上有一群人和我过着不一样的生活。这十天来，我一直在思考为什么我选择了艺术以及如何持续的做艺术？杜尚说“我的艺术就是我的生活”，我深表赞同，我想艺术对我来说就是“用我的眼睛去发现这个世界”，我呼吸，我生活，我感受。
This is my second time in Tokyo. I still remember when I arrived at Tokyo for the first time. It feels quite different as long as get down the airplane. I was shouting inside “This is Japan. This is Tokyo.”. The city is full of manga, and Japanese characters which are very visually stimulating. Although Japanese and Chinese look quite alike, we still have different cultures and social environments. For example, Japanese and Chinese walk in very different ways and have different life styles. Of course, the language is also different. If I don’t speak Japanese, I wouldn’t be able understand what you are saying. Therefore, I started thinking about this “Is it possible for us to find similarities and connections even we don’t speak the same language?” The answer is yes, we can all understand beauty, music, and image. We can also communicate through our bodies. If I give you a hug, you will feel the warmth. Of course, language is very important, but it is till a kind of sign or symbol. For example, when we talk about “table”, images of tables would pop up in our minds. The kind of table you see depend on your personal memory. When I go back to China, recalling the 10 days here in Tokyo, I would remember the face of everyone of you, the classroom we all studied in, the laughter of each one of you, the inn we used to dine in, the taste of the food and the leaves fallen from the tress to the ground. Those precious memories are beauty found in this busy world, getting to know different culture and people, knowing that there are people living a different live from my life. In the past 10 days, I kept thinking about questions like “Why did I chose to do art?” and “How do I continue to do art?”. Duchamp once said “My life is my art.” I deeply agree with his statement. For me, I think art is “using my eyes to discover this world”. I breath, I live, I feel.
感谢Tokyo Festival给我这次机会再次来到东京经历这些美妙的瞬间，当然除了这些之外我还学到了丰富的知识，了解到亚洲其他国家的艺术家们正在做什么经历什么以及怎么做，特别是几个大师讲座让我受益匪浅，Satoshi Miyagi老师独特的方法——将台词和动作分开，由两个人扮演同一个角色，Miwa Yanggi老师独特的视觉形象，女模特们穿着统一的制服，将真实的模特和真实的场景结合后产生了虚幻的不真实感。正如我前面所说，艺术就是“用你的眼睛去发现这个世界”，所以作为一个艺术家，你必须是独一无二的，你必须找到一种只属于你的语言，只属于的方法，只属于你的视觉，这是你的，不是别人的，这就好像用一种很个人却又很世界的方式在对你诉说，那么对于戏剧艺术，可能就是用一种私密的方式在一个公众的场合表演，虽然台下坐着那么多的观众，但每一位观众都觉得这台演出只属于我，因为你说出了深藏在我内心的话，揭开了生活的面具。
Thanks to Tokyo Festival for giving me this opportunity to experience the beautiful moments in Tokyo again. Other than things I mentioned above, I learned a lot of knowledge as well. I got to know the things that other Asian artists are doing, how are they doing it and what are they experiencing. The master classes taught me a lot. For example, Satoshi Miyagi’s method of separating words from movement, having two people playing the same character. Miwa Yanggi’s unique visual images, having female models wears the same uniform, combining real model and real situation and creating a sense of illusion out of this combination. As I mentioned before, art is “using your eyes to discover the world”. Therefore, as an artist, you will need to be unique. You will need to find your own language, the one that only belongs to you, and the unique visual language that only belongs to you as well. Those are only yours and not others. This is like speaking to you in a very personal yet universal way. As for theater art, it is like performing intimacy in public. Although there are many audience members, each one of them feels the show is only for him or her. Because you are telling the story from deep inside, letting go of the “masks” we are wearing everyday.
安排的几场演出也是精彩纷呈，让我看到了日本艺术家他们正在关注什么，受哪些艺术思潮的影响，如何呈现，《Danse Macabre》的大型音乐装置让我思考技术在演出中的重要性或者说未来的演出“技术”是否会成为主流趋势？来自亚洲三个地区的导演（台湾、印度尼西亚和菲律宾）所呈现的短剧让我看到日本年轻演员的才能，特别是对身体的控制。总之，我学习到了很多也看到了合作的可能性。这些天的讨论我们始终围绕着一个议题“合作”，不同地区之间的合作，不同国家之间的合作，“合作”意味着我们互相给予自己所拥有的东西来产生一个新的东西。
The few shows that we watched were amazing as well. It showed me the interest of Japanese artists. What kind of artistic movements inflected them most? How do we present a show? The big musical installation in “Danse Macabre” made me think of the importance of technology in performance. I was wondering if “technology” would be the dominant trend in future performances. Directors from three different Asian countries (Taiwan, Indonesia and Philippine) presented short performances. It showed me the talent of young Japanese performers, especially their control for the body. In short, I learned a lot and saw a lot of possibilities in collaborating with others. We’ve been discussing “collaboration” these days, collaboration in different geographical areas and in different countries. Collaborating means giving the unique element we each have and producing something new.
基于以上种种，我想谈谈我未来的计划，分为两个方面，第一个方面是长期的计划，第二个方面是短期的计划，先来说说我的长期计划，如何持续的做一个艺术家是我非常关注的一个议题，我想作为一个艺术家最重要的就是他（她）的作品，所以，你必须用所有的时间来进行创作，那么首先，我会持续的寻找“不一样的身体”，这里所说的“不一样的身体”也可以理解成“特殊的身体”，可以是身体上的缺陷，比如天生的残疾，比如因为紧张导致的奇怪的走路方式，奇怪的手势或者动作，我想发掘这些身体来作为一种新的语言呈现在舞台上，我想知道为什么？是什么导致了他们变的和别人不一样，在生活中，我也总是被那些奇怪的人所吸引。
With all he above being said, I would like to discuss my future plans. It will be divided into two categories, the short term and the long term. For the long-term plan, “how to continuously be an artist?” has always been something I wanted address. I think as an artist, the most important is his/her work. Therefore, you must take the time to create. I will continue to search for “a different body”. This “different body” can be seen as “a special body”. It could be a body with flaws, like a paralyzed body, a body that walks strangely because the person is nervous, strange hand gesture or other movements. I wanted to explore those bodies as a new theatrical language. I wanted to know why. What made them different? In daily life, I am always attracted to the strange ones.
其次，我会持续的写作，这里所说的“写作”不止是创作剧本，而是跟写作有关的一切，小说、诗歌、散文，只要我想表达，我就去写，因为在从古至今的艺术门类里，“写作”是成本最低的一种创作方式，只要我有一支笔和一张纸，我就可以“写”，我想问我自己“为什么我需要写作？为什么我要用自己的母语进行写作？汉字对我意味着什么？”而在剧本创作方面，我可能又会回到我的起点，试图写关于我们这代人的故事。第三，我想有机会邀请我艺术营的同伴们去我的国家，北京、上海或者重庆，我长期在这三个地方活动，也分别在这三个地方工作，所以我可以带你看很多作为一个旅行者看不到的地方，我可以带你去看戏，可以让你了解到中国的年轻艺术家们正在干什么，怎么生活。当我们更了解彼此之后，可能我们才可以一起工作，一起分享彼此的经验来创作作品，我的朋友在重庆有一个剧场，他们已经完成了和香港、丹麦等地的国际合作项目，所以如果有机会，我们可以在重庆驻地，开发一些新的项目，如果我们可以找到基金来支持我们做这件事。
Next, I will continue to write. This is not only playwriting but also anything related to writing, novel, poem, prose. I will write all the things I wanted to express. In the spectrum of art, “writing” does not need a lot of resource, only a pen and a paper. I wanted to ask myself “why do I need to write? Why do I write with my native language? What does Chinese character mean to me?” In playwriting, I will go back to my starting point, trying to write stories about my generation and me. Thirdly, I would really like to invite artists in this art camp to come to my country, Beijing, Shanghai or Chongqing. I spent most of my time in those three cities, working and living. So I can take you to places where tourists would not go. I can take you to see performances, introducing the lives of young Chinese artists and their works. When we get to know more about each other, we can start to work together, sharing each others’ experience and create works. One of my friends has a theater in Chongqing, they’ve done interchange programs with Hong Kong and Denmark. If the time is right and we’ve got proper foundation to support us, we can do a residency in Chongqing and creating new projects.
接下来，请允许我简单的谈一谈我的两个短期计划，第一个是我要在明年完成的和丹麦的国际合作，去年我去丹麦参加哥本哈根戏剧节，认识了格利特女士，她是一个住在哥本哈根的艺术家，一个自由职业者，主修编剧，已经有多部戏剧作品在丹麦公开演出过，在我离开丹麦的时候，她给了我《小美人鱼》这个剧本（介绍一下这个戏，看一些图片）。我想这个项目非常契合这十天的主题，就是“国际合作”，我们会用中国的演员，中国的舞美设计师、中国的导演，但是音乐和编剧则来自丹麦，所以我希望不是原封不动的上演这个剧本，而是有所改编，加入中国的元素，从历史、女性等角度去阐释这个作品，这就像是两种文化的碰撞，西方文明与中华文明的碰撞，而在呈现方面，我会运用多媒体。
Please let me talk about my short-term projects. The first is doing an international collaboration with Denmark. Last year, I was in Denmark for the Copenhagen Theater Festival and met Ms Gritt Uldall-Jessen.She is an artist based in Copenhagen, a freelancer, mostly working as playwright. She has a few works publicly shown in Denmark. When I left Denmark, she gave me the script of “It Hurts, said the Mermaid” . I think this project is well fitted to the topic of our camp in the past 10 days, international collaboration. We will use Chinese actors, stage designers and director but the music and script is from Denmark. I don’t wish to perform this piece strictly according to the direction of the script, but rather doing adaptations, incorporating Chinese elements and presenting this work from a female and historical perspective. It is like a collision between two cultures, the western and Chines civilization. In the presentation of this work, I will use multi-media.
第二个短期计划是我想做一个调研，关于亚洲女性的，当然这个想法有点大，它可能需要很长的时间，作为一个女性创作者，这几年我总是问自己这个问题，是不是因为我是女人所以才会遇到这些困难？是不是女性不适合去做导演的工作？为什么我身边的女性创作者那么少？我想这种情况不光是在中国，应该也发生在日本还有亚洲其他国家。这个调研结束后我会做一个作品，叫《10个女人一天中的10小时》（介绍这个作品）
The second short-term project is a research about Asian women. It seems like a big project and needs a long time. As a female artist, I’ve been asking myself whether it’s because I am a woman that I am not well suited for the profession of a director? Is it because I am a woman that I run into all those difficulties? Why is it there are few woman artists around me? I think the situation of having few woman artists and directors is not only limited to China, but Japan and other Asian countries as well. After this research, I will create a work <10 hours day program for the 10 women>
最后，再次感谢Tokyo Festival邀请我来参加这次艺术营，作为艺术营的第一届学员，我度过了非常充实且愉快的十天，非常高兴认识你们在座的每一位，谢谢。
At last, thanks again to Tokyo Festival for inviting me to this art camp. As the participant of the first camp, I spent ten busy-yet-joyful days. I really appreciate knowing everyone here, thank you.