(Edited from the report by Zhao Yue, intern reporter of Xinmin Evening News, on 22 October 2017)
Our country will flourish only if our youth flourish, our country will be strong only if our youth are strong. Rising Artists’ Works (R.A.W!) and R.A.W! Land of the 19th China Shanghai International Arts Festival (CSIAF) kicked off yesterday. During a period of one week, 19 commissioned works and 16 invited works of R.A.W! and with dozens of performances, exhibitions, master lectures, workshops and other activities of R.A.W.! Land will be held at the Shanghai Theatre Academy and a number of other venues of performing arts.
As the band activities of CSIAF, R.A.W! has entered its 6th year, and R.A.W! Land has also entered its 5th year, with many artists going onto the world stage every year because of their accomplishment on the platform provided by R.A.W! and R.A.W! Land. This year, this incubation camp for young artists, as well as aggregation site for original debut performances, will continue to exert efforts and further encourage the young people to assume the new cultural mission, make cultural creation in practical creation, constantly increase the cultural and artistic originality and promote cultural and artistic innovation, and write a magnificent chapter of life.
The stage of innovation
On the first day, a number of commissioned works were already staged at the Shanghai Theatre Academy, for example, the small theater experimental Shaoxing opera "Revived Predestination”, modern dance "Above Silence", new musical theatre “Hunger Artist” which is the first-ever joint performance by Chinese and foreign artists in the stage of R.A.W!, and devised theatre "Game of Empty Box", fully demonstrating the rich creativity of young people.
The stage of inheritance
R.A.W! and R.A.W! Land are mainly based at the Shanghai Theatre Academy. The involvement and participation of the students has made the audience here younger than that of the other activities of CSIAF ", and attracting and cultivating younger audience is a direction that we have been pursuing in our efforts to inherit and carry forward the traditional culture including Chinese traditional opera. In this regard, Ms Yang Qingqing, who is a professor at the Shanghai Theatre Academy and a curator, has presented a Chinese facial masks interactive media exhibition called “Knowing the Faces” at the Duanjun Theatre of the Shanghai Theatre Academy, with a view to inheriting and carrying forward the beauty of Chinese traditional opera and the beauty of facial masks.
The incubation Platform
This April, the first "Huashan Cup" Shanghai Institution of Higher Learning Cultural and Creative Product Design Competition was launched. This year’s R.A.W! Land also has also set up the “Working Bench - Achievement Exhibition of the First Shanghai Institution of Higher Learning Cultural and Creative Product Design Competition” in front of the Experimental Theatre of the Shanghai Theatre Academy. The exhibition displays the cultural and creative products designed by university students, graduates and young designers. The competition aims to discover designers with potential and capitalize on the platform advantages of the Huashan Creative Industry Park to push the award-winning designers onto the border platform of the industry and is in itself a commercial experiment combining the processes from designs to works, from works to products and from products to sales.
As far as the designers are concerned, the working benches are often where the art starts. Creating, polishing and refining is the inevitable path that all designers must go through. In this sense, the significance of R.A.W! and R.A.W! Land for young artists is the same as that of working benches for designers, providing the young people with a tolerant environment, an opportunity to make mistakes and a starting point for an artistic to take off.
