Danny Yung
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 2014, Yung is the laureate of the 2014 Fukuoka Prize – Arts and Cultural Prize. 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. In 2008, with Tears of Barren Hill he was honoured the Music Theatre NOW Award by UNESCO’s International Theatre Institute.
Beginning in 1997, Yung has initiated several important cultural and arts networks. Among them are the Asia Arts Net, Asia Performing Arts Network, and World Culture Forum. The City-to-City Cultural Exchange Conference initiated by Yung has been held for more than 20 consecutive years, and is the premier and the only exchange program conducted among Chinese speaking regions and on a city-to-city basis.
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. Yung has contributed significantly to the provision of a platform for both acclaimed and emerging artists to explore and carry out cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural collaboration. As director, scriptwriter, producer and stage designer, Yung has created over 100 theatrical productions, which have widely toured to over 30 cities in North America, Europe, and Asia.
Yung is the creator of cross-disciplined and cross-region Tian Tian Xiang Shang conceptual comics. TTXS has become an iconic figure in creative industry and education sector. It’s exhibition and educational program have reached out to Europe, America and Asia. On- and off-stage, Yung is an enthusiastic protagonist for innovation in cultural policy, cultural exchange, institutional development and creative education.
Liu Xiaoyi
Artist-in-residence of Zuni season 2021, Artistic Director of the Singapore arts group Emergency Stairs. A committed practitioner with a desire to push artistic boundaries, he is regarded as a promising figure at the forefront of the experimental theatre scene in Asia. Xiaoyi received the Young Artist Award awarded by the National Arts Council of Singapore in 2016.
A multi-talented artist, Xiaoyi was involved in over seventy theatre productions as director, playwright, and actor over the past two decades. As a director, the cornerstones of Xiaoyi’s oft lauded but controversial work are unsurprisingly experimentation, introspection, and poetry. Between 2017 and 2019, he created three new works under his Postdramatic Series that challenged the often-sacred theatre traditions here by introducing a new exploratory theatre format to the discomfort of his audiences.
Xiaoyi has also been actively promoting dialogues and creation across cultural and geographical lines for many years, particularly the exchange between tradition and contemporary art forms. As the Artistic Director, Xiaoyi has curated the Southernmost Project, an annual, first-of-its-kind “Arts festival for the future” in Singapore since 2017. The inter-cultural festival has regularly brought prominent artists across the region to Singapore for exchange.
An educator at heart, Xiaoyi has started and helmed several talent development platforms- the Practice Lab, Emergency Shelter and most recently, the Emergency Academy. He also founded the first Chinese theatre review platform, the Re-Viewers (众观), in a response to the dearth of critical writing in Singapore
