Zuni Theatre Season 26/27: Image Experiment Soundscape Experience Zuni Theatre Season 26/27: Image Experiment Soundscape Experience Zuni Theatre Season 26/27: Image Experiment Soundscape Experience

From poetic reworkings of classics to the pulse of Hong Kong suspense; from the historic streets of Sheung Wan to the energy of the football field. A series of cross-disciplinary performances is set to take the stage. 

April: Classics, The Female Perspective, Poetic Music Theatre 

May: Hong Kong, Literature, Suspense 

September: Children’s Theatre, The Five Elements, the Central & Western District 

October: Modernity, Tradition, Football 

November: Small Stories & Grand History 

December: Family Fun, Handicraft, Comics

Zuni is arriving at the Sheung Wan Civic Centre—but we aren’t staying boxed inside the theatre. We’re stepping out into the neighborhood to explore the streets with you, linking up the local cafes downstairs and the classic heritage shops next door. We perform in the theatre, we wander the city, and we feel the live vibe together.

Something fun is brewing in the district. It could be waiting at your daily street corner, or right inside your regular shop.

Stay tuned!

“What is about to be verified is not a play, but a solid entity cast by sound.”  

This season begins with a whisper in the dark. We return to theatre’s oldest magic: creating a reality sharper than the world outside the black box. In a time of high connectivity and high fragmentation, we offer a deliberate “short circuit”—- re-examining the body and the world through the Five Elements.

The Silent Film of Gold. Actors’ voices become iron; sound condenses into visible scratches. This is not performance but forging. History is metal—molten and cooled into today’s shape. When the hammer strikes, do you see the clay of the Qin Terracotta Warriors, or the casing of a data centre server? Metal defines boundaries; the frame of the theatre exists here.

Listening to Growth Rings. Microphones probe the cracks of ancient wood, amplifying the tearing sound of fibres. In that sound lies the chant of builders from the Ming Dynasty, and the stress of modern steel bars. The growth of a play, the spread of a forest, and the sprawl of an algorithm share the same rhythm. 

The Grammar of the Passing River. Digital water sleeves move without fabric, leaving only light trails captured by sensors. History is a fluid, and we are its particles. Can the flow of theatre be compared to the endless undercurrent of information as you scroll through social media? The riverbed of experience is washed by the same water.

Burning Archives. As the actor reads, projected pages turn black and crumble to ash. Does every “illumination” of civilization require “oblivion” as fuel? While AI extracts patterns from the fire of data, theatre attempts to salvage warmth from the embers of emotion. In the flickering firelights, do you see a ritualistic bonfire or neon lights of a sleepless city?

Settling and Resonance. Images vanish. Sound ceases. The “dust of sound”—- metal filings, wood grain, water stains, ash —- slowly settles. Earth accepts everything. In the silence, you hear your own heartbeat. Theatre becomes a vast “place” where experience settles and begins anew. 

This is not entertainment, yet it is. Entertainment is merely a matter of perception, —like breathing. Even the absence of thought or sensory stimulation can be a form of entertainment. In an era that is both hyper-connected and deeply fractured, this is a deliberate ‘short circuit.’ We re-examine the body through the Five Elements — in our meridians and blood flow, do we resonate in secret frequency with the city’s energy pipelines and data streams? We re-examine the world: while Artificial Intelligence connects all things, theatre bridges the isolated islands of emotion and memory. It is a different, more ancient form of ‘intelligence’.

In a time when art tourism seeks a ‘pseudo-reality’, stories are often viewed simply as echoes of the past. Yet, the past is always brimming with imagination. Some stories preserve beauty; others record sorrow. But in the theatre, a story is a sensation — an experience of sound, image, breadth of mind, and breathing. You may weep, laugh, or feel pain; these are raw sensations. Perhaps entertainment is simply about feeling —- the inscription of space onto the body. The reality that theatre offers is time developing within the collective consciousness. It cannot replace the experience of standing before Angkor Wat and feeling the stones breathe. But within this black box, it allows that breath to resonate — atomically — with the sweat of a craftsman from eight hundred years ago and with your gaze in this very moment.

So, what is art? Why technology? Perhaps they are the transmitters and receivers our species constantly tunes within an infinitely interconnected universe. The theatrical experiment seeks that precise frequency —- one that connects history, the future, the individual, the primeval, the coldness of metal, and the warmth of ash, all in a single instant.

The performance must eventually end. But as you step out, the sounds of the city rush in —- traffic is Metal, wind through the trees is Wood, rain is Water, engines are Fire, and the ground beneath your feet is Earth. You suddenly understand: theatre never removed you from reality; it simply tuned reality to its highest definition. Here, all experience is deconstructed, verified, and then returned to you, completely. The curtain has fallen. But the ‘Image Experiment Soundscape Experience’ has only just begun to rustle within you, becoming a living part of your memory.

An experimental art pioneer, Danny Yung is a founding member cum Co-Artistic Director of Zuni Icosahedron. Yung is widely regarded as most influential artist in Hong Kong and the neighbouring regions, and an advocate in experimental arts and new art forms.

In the past 40 years, he has been actively engaged in various fields of the arts, including theatre, film and video, comics, as well as visual and installation art. He has curated, produced, and directed over a hundred works, touring and exchanging ideas in more than 30 cities across Asia, Europe, and America. His accolades include the Hong Kong Arts Development Award for Outstanding Artistic Contribution and the Hong Kong Arts Development Award for Artist of the Year in the Drama category.

He often uses the stage as a platform for exchange, inviting renowned and emerging artists from diverse regions and cultural traditions to collaborate in innovative crossover projects.

As the co-artistic Director cum Executive Director of Zuni Icosahedron, Mathias Woo leads a career as a scriptwriter, director, producer as well as curator.

His works con-struct aesthetics in theatre through strong visual images and have toured in cities around the world such as Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Tokyo, Singapore, Taipei, Berlin, Brussels, Krakow, Milan. Woo’s theatre works explore subjects as wide range as literature, history, current political affairs, architecture, and religion. Arts director Stan Lai has remarked, “To know where the trends lie, look at where Mathias Woo is.”