Founded in 1982, is one of the nine major professional arts companies in Hong Kong, and has established itself as a premiere experimental theatre locally, regionally and internationally. Zuni’s theatre has always stayed on the cutting edge of media technology in presenting the interactive relationship between multimedia and theatre, as well as in probing the possibilities of form and content in 'theatre space' through experimentation and exploration.

Zuni has been most inspiring in developing theatre aesthetics in Chinese society, with its experimental and subversive nature, and this could be seen in the interactive experiments in the non-narrative form, physical movements and theatre space in its early works. The same spirit could be found in the multimedia design in lights, images, sounds and spaces as in the attempts in the area of cross-media performances, to the cross-boundary political and civil area, and to cross-region international cultural exchanges. The topics covered stretches from popular culture to social taboos, from the traditional to the contemporary.

Dou Wun Reminiscence: Experiment Deishui Naamyam + Stage Technology Talks is a performance that interprets the traditional Guangdong art of singing and storytelling with innovative technologies for the contemporary stage. The programme also features guided viewing of the intangible cultural heritage of Deishui Naamyam. Students will also learn about the fusion of art and technology in stage performance through a case study of the performance, as well as innovations in traditions through the demonstrations of novel stage technologies.

Male singers of Deishui Naamyam are called gu si (blind songster). Born in 1910, Dou Wun began learning Naamyam in the early 1920s. When the civil war broke out, he moved from Guangzhou to Hong Kong, where he earned his living by singing. Dou improvised his singing on current affairs topics in the RTHK radio programme Dou Wun’s Naamyam in the 1950s. In the 1970s, Naamyam went downhill and became a lost art amidst the prevalence of European and western music. In 1975, Professor Bell Yung came to Hong Kong to make recordings of Dou’s performance. To fully reflect the artistic merits of Dou and to be truthful to the originality of Naamyam, Yung made the live recordings in Fu Loong Teahouse. The outcomes became a treasure. In 2019, Zuni restores the recordings of Dou using audio and imaging technologies of the theatre to relive the audio-visual space of Deishui Naamyam.

Artistic Director and Photographer of Dou Wun’s pictures: Bell Yung
Director and Set Design: Mathias Woo

Download Application Form (Chinese version only)