Director's Notes

It is my great pleasure to return to Queen's University to complete the production that had to be cancelled due to the pandemic at the end of my undergraduate studies.

I first encountered this play in 2018. After five years, staging it has finally become a reality. This production has posed challenges in multiple ways: aesthetic innovation, narrative subversion, and ideological questioning. Rather than targeting the mainstream market, this play needs a campus-like stage where people can freely and creatively explore the content between words, imagining a realm of performance that can accommodate all narrative methods, even just under a few stage directions. This world is full of crises: the silent majority and many shouting until complete exhaustion without receiving a response. Sadness comes from unconscious empathy; many people have sunken into the darkness of silence after repeated efforts deemed fruitless. The Bystander Game is bringing an Awakening which has never been so urgent.

We need this play, and this play also needs us. I want to thank all the production team members: including those who participated in the 2020 production, which was forced to cancel. Today’s performance is the collaboration between students and professional theatrical artists— more than 60 people have worked tirelessly—“a group of fearless people gathering together creates a festival.” This is the courageous outcry of passionate and extraordinary people unwilling to remain silent. Everything in this production, whether perfect or imperfect, is beautiful.

I want to offer my sincerest gratitude to the actors on stage, the designers, the production team, and the marketing team off stage. I also want to thank playwright Hu Xuan-yi for her continued trust and support for me and Yü Theatre Society. Yü is the embodiment of beauty and unease. I believe that the spirit of Yü Theatre Society can touch every audience who leaves here.

Nick Fangzheng Wang

Translated by Natasha Siyi Zhang