One Table Two Chairs Forum House Programme One Table Two Chairs Forum House Programme One Table Two Chairs Forum House Programme

A performing arts festival is an occasion when artists from different regions gather over an intensive period to showcase and exchange their work. An example is the Hong Kong Arts Festival founded in 1973, which was established to enrich cultural life by bringing international productions to local audiences.

Moderator: Liu Xiaoyi

Speakers: Ren Jiale, Yang Junfeng, 1–2 students from Singapore (NAFA), 1–2 students from Hong Kong

Respondents: Makoto Matsushima, Park Hobin, Rady Nget, Melody Yiu

Date & Time: Monday, 6 July 2026 | 14:00–16:00

Venue: Studio Theatre, HKICC Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity 

Contemporary educational institutions are caught in a tension: while it champions creativity and innovation, the actual operations is governed by performance metrics and rankings. The result is an skills-driven vocational training model that is justified by its market utility. In this system, creative knowledge and critical inquiry became undermined by an instrumental role of education in society.

Moderator: Melody Yiu

Speakers: Danny Yung, Liu Xiaoyi

Respondents: Makoto Matsushima, Park Hobin, Rady Nget

Date & Time: Tuesday, 7 July 2026 | 14:00–16:00

Venue: Studio Theatre, HKICC Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity

In contrast to the ephemeral festival and the cyclical school environment, public cultural institutions are often seen as the stable anchors in a volatile cultural ecosystem. Many public cultural institutions and emerged and expanded in the late twentieth century have, as stewards of public or philanthropic resources, tasked to support artistic creation and cultural exchange. Through funding, management, and dissemination, these institutions stabilize artistic production into an organized system, translating individual creative wills into collective actions.

However, this stability is built on procedures and norms shaped by particular agendas and values, which create both visible and invisible mechanisms that can limit creative freedom and experimentation.

This raises a basic question: What frameworks and boundaries are built into the organizational culture of these long-standing cultural institutions? And as cultural practitioners who operation within them to varying degrees, how aware are we of the inherited and internalized “house rules”?

Moderator: Melody Yiu
Speakers: Park Hoin, Makoto Matsushima, Rady Nget, Ren Jiale, Yang Junfeng, 1–2 students from Singapore (NAFA), 1–2 students from Hong Kong
Respondents: Liu Xiaoyi
Date & Time: Wednesday, July 8, 2026 | 14:00–16:00
Venue: Studio Theatre, HKICC Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity

Artistic creation is often imagined as a personal and internal affair, yet it can never be fully detached from surrounding conditions. Today, several intersecting forces are especially apparent in shaping the development of art and culture: policy, market, media, and technology. They do not merely set the stage for artistic creation but actively forming the conditions of cultural production: who can create, where, and with what resources, and consequently define the value system of art and culture itself. This poses an immediate question for artists and cultural practitioners: Do we comply, resist, redirect, or can we rewrite the script?

Facilitator: Liu Xiaoyi
With Participation of: All attending artists, Hong Kong & Singapore youth cohorts, and the live audience
Date & Time: Thursday, 9 July, 2026 | 14:00–16:30
Venue: Studio Theatre, HKICC Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity

The panels over the past four days dissected the spectacularization of festivals, the utilitarianism in arts education, the conservatism inherent in cultural institutions, and the external pressures squeezing artistic practice. Through it all, we have been asking one recurring question: What should the future cultural ecosystem look like?

To hunt for independent and visionary values while clinging to the conventional “stage-to-audience” lecture format is a compromise—a submission to the very power structures and mindsets we question. To dismantle a massive system, we must begin by upending the form of dialogue right here, in this room.

This is a decentralized, live happening. The space holds no singular center of authority and no rehearsed answers—only the constant friction of questions and responses.

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 2009, Yung was conferred the Merit Cross of the Order of Merit on Ribbon by the Federal Republic of Germany in recognition of his contribution to the arts and cultural exchange between Germany and Hong Kong.

Liu Xiaoyi is an artist, curator, educator, and cultural strategist who currently serves as the Artistic Director of the Singaporean arts group “The Emergency Stairs”. He is widely recognized as one of the most representative and pivotal figures in the fields of contemporary experimental theatre and intercultural exchange in Asia.

For over two decades, he has continuously pushed the experimental boundaries of theatrical language. He is particularly adept at initiating deep collaborations within cross-cultural and cross-regional contexts.

Melody is an urban researcher and designer focusing on cultural and civic architecture in Hong Kong and Asia. Her monograph, Cultural Architecture and Late-colonial Space (Routledge, 2025), presents the first comprehensive study of town halls and cultural centres in Hong Kong constructed in the late 20th century. Her current research investigates municipal cultural building typologies and cultural infrastructure in Asian cities.

Join in Pappa TARAHUMARA in 1983, in 2006 started solo works, and in 2008, 2010, 2018 being guest professor of the choreography department at Korea National University of the Arts. Matsushima graduated from the Nihon University of College of Art. He launched his stage career with the Japanese dance theatre company Pappa TARAHUMARA while he was still a student, and won critical acclaim both for his performance in television and on stage.

Rady began his dance training in 1999, specializing in the monkey role of Lakhaon Khol, the Cambodian classical male masked dance form. He graduated with a BA in Choreographic Arts from the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh in August 2013. Rady danced with Sovanna Phum Arts Association, an independent dance and shadow puppetry theatre company, from 2006 to 2010 and with Amrita Performing Arts since 2010.

Park Hobin is CcadoO’s artistic director and choreographer. He uses the collage technique or the body as an object, as in total theatre. Regarded as one of the most promising of contemporary artistic directors on the international circuit and acclaimed as Dancer of Our Time at the Dance Biennale Tokyo 2004.

Xiao is a member of the China Theatre Assocation, performer at The Northern Kunqu Opera Theatre, graduate of the Shanghai Theatre Academy. After graduation, he worked at the Kunqu Opera Museum of China and became an actor at The Northern Kunqu Opera Theatre. He has studied both Kun Opera and Peking Opera under famed performers Yue Meiti, Cai Zhengren, Bi Gaoxiu, Shi Xiaomei, and Ma Yusen.

Yang Junfeng, from Chongqing, is one of the emerging performers of contemporary Sichuan opera. He first entered public view as a film and television actor, beginning his performing career in 2007 with the television drama The Fairy Couple (Tian Xian Pei), in which he played Liu Daxia. He later gradually turned towards xiqu and stage performance, entering the professional theatre troupe system.

Gen Z Xiqu performer, majoring in Peking Opera at the National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts, specialised in wusheng (martial) role. Currently enrolled in the Peking Opera Department at the National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts, majoring in Peking Opera performance since 2019. In 2013, he began his studies at the secondary school affiliated with the National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts.。

Performance 1 | Danny Yung’s  Book of Ghosts 2026

July 4 (Sat) 4:00 PM

Performance 2 | Danny Yung’s Meeting of Gods 2026

July 5 (Sun) 4:00 PM

Performance 3 | Susie Au × Xie Shu “Off the Boundary”
July 6 (Mon) 8:00 PM

Performance 4 | Steve Hui  “Trial: Noise”
July 7 (Tue) 8:00 PM

Performance 5 | Edward Lam “14 Variations on the Theme of Yi Yi (Excerpt)”
July 8 (Wed) 8:00 PM

Performance 6 | Olivier Cong “The Border”
July 9 (Thu) 8:00 PM

Performance 7 | Liu Xiaoyi “School of Thoughts 2026”
July 11 (Sat) 8:00 PM

Reserve tickets now

Danny Yung Young Artists Academy 2026 is the second edition this year developed from the 3-year collaboration between Nanyang Academy for Fine Arts, University of the Arts Singapore. 19 final year students of the BA (Hons) Contemporary Chinese Theatres program come to spend 2 weeks in this program curated by Danny Yung for training and exchanges.

About Danny Yung Young Artists Academy 2025