“Waiting for Testing — Rewriting Theater History,” an event featuring five talks, an exhibition and four nights of performances, will kick off Friday at OCAT Shenzhen. Talks and the exhibition are free to the public. “Amid the commonly experienced disorientation in this game-changing crisis, we propose to hold a discussion on the history of the past two decades to look again at how, in contemporary performance, fugitive resistance and personal insurgence have formed biographies of surprise, as well at how a collective heterogeneous energy was generated through fragmentary and inorganic connections, against the backdrop of the development of the socio-historical space and power landscapes in China,” curator Tian Gebing writes in the event profile. Performances • ‘Infection, State of Emergency, Beethoven’ by Paper Tiger, Passive Strategy Theater Among Paper Tiger’s projects, there was a pending project originally named “Why Do Chinese People Love Beethoven?,” which sets out to reflect and hold a discussion on China’s rapid development in the past 40 years through the stories of Beethoven’s music in China. The updated concept relates the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth this year with the unexpected pandemic. The planned tour of Paper Tiger’s “500 Meters” production has been changed to this Beethoven project and the original performers from “500 Meters” will also give an online performance of the Shenzhen live performance. Time: 8-10 p.m., July 3-4 Tickets: 218 yuan Venue: OCAT Hall A • ‘Red’ by Living Dance Studio “Red” (2015), choreographed by Wen Hui, is one of the latest works from the Beijing-based Living Dance Studio. As a documentary performance, it is derived from a nationally renowned revolution-themed ballet, “The Red Detachment of Women.” The 1964 ballet, which recounted the story a peasant girl who fled enslavement to join the Red Army-led women’s detachment in Hainan Province, was immediately hailed as an impeccable integration of revolutionary ideology and artistic mastery, a unique blend of Western ballet technique with the fundamentals of Chinese classical and folk dance. As it returns artistic and critical attention to heroic, gun-wielding youthful dancers balancing on their toes, “Red” also uses a variety of documentary materials — publications, audio-visual clips, memorabilia from the original revolutionary ballet, and interview footage. Onstage, from distinct perspectives, two generations of performers update and integrate the original choreography. “Red” premiered at the Shanghai Power Station of Art in December 2015. Since then it has been performed by invitation in Beijing, Hong Kong, Macao, and European and U.S. cities. Dates: 8-10 p.m., July 11-12 Tickets: 218 yuan Venue: OCAT Hall A Exhibition • ‘2020: Twenty Years Towards a World Theater’ Curated by Zhang Yuan and Liu Chao, the exhibition features archives of contemporary performances. Dates: July 3-Aug. 9 Hours: 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m., closed Mondays Venue: OCAT Hall B Talks • ‘Rewriting Theater History Waiting for Testing’ Time: 2-4 p.m., July 3 Venue: OCAT Library or Bilibili app (room No. 22321615) • ‘The Changing Fields in Performance Over 20 Years and Counter-disciplinary Attempts in Contemporary Performance’ Time: 3-5 p.m., July 4 Venue: OCAT Library or Bilibili app (room No. 22321615) • ‘Memory in Process: Some Observations on Contemporary Theater in China’ Time: 3-5 p.m., July 5 Bilibili: Room No. 22321615 • ‘Theater of Subjectivity’ Time: 7-9 p.m., July 10 Venue: OCAT Library or Bilibili app (room No. 22321615) • ‘Historical Contexts and Traces of Contemporary Performance in the Guangzhou-Shenzhen Area’ Time: 3-5 p.m., July 11 Venue: OCAT Library or Bilibili app (room No. 22321615) Add: OCAT Shenzhen, South Area, OCT-LOFT, Nanshan District (南山区华侨城创意文化园南区OCAT深圳馆) Metro: Line 1 to Qiaocheng East Station (侨城东站), Exit A(SD News) | 