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⚑ 1989: Tanks run over protesting students on Tiananmen Square.
The official number of victims is unannounced.
The incident is nowhere to be found in the country’s history.
⚑ 2019: Two million people march on the streets in Hong Kong.
⚑ 2020: A political purge begins.
⚑ 2024: Article 23 is passed in Hong Kong.
Any act of treason, insurrection, sabotage, or endangering national security can lead to a life sentence.

Any event can be erased, but it exists in many sleepless nights, letters from prisons, silenced candlelights, screams of bereavement, eyes of tens of millions of billions.

The Mending Room is an immersive piece which combines sensorial, participatory and performative elements, in which spectators will experience a fragmented stream of thoughts, roving through hyperrealistic memories, imaginary landscapes and forgotten nightmares.

She has a will of her own.
She exists where she is wanted.
She tries to mend a relentlessly dilating hole.
She brings the spectator on an intimate journey, rooted in search of hope.

Darkness is present. Pandas too to bring comfort.

Credits:
Directing, Scenography and Performing: Jovita Siu Ji Chin, Kristina Kellnerová
Sound Composition: Stanislav Pecháč
Graphic Design: Jovita Siu Ji Chin

Estimated duration: 60 min
Performance in Czech OR English

Multi-sensorial | Object | Immersive

The Mending Room is a 50-minute sensorial performance intended for 8 to 12 spectators. The piece tries to accompany the spectator, within a determined time and space, through an intimate journey, shared by thousands of people. Upon their arrival in the room, the visitors sit around a rectangular table. Hot jasmine tea welcomes them. The room talks through invisible speakers, soon she will ask its visitors to blindfold themselves with the cloth in front of them. The journey begins in a flat in Hong Kong, on the 4th of June 1989, the day of the Tiananmen Square massacre. This first stop is a hyper-realistic memory, but soon The Mending Room will dive into imaginary landscapes that stalk below the surface.

It is a fragmented piece that simulates the spiralling of a dream turning into a nightmare. In the form of a collage, The Mending Room explores the aftermath of the oppressive behaviour of the Chinese Communist Party, the years of silence, the fear, the confusion and numbness. The Mending Room unwraps pivotal historical events, diving into a stream of thoughts where deepest fears meet reminiscence and imagination. Inside, the smell of grandma’s soup appears as a character, the toy tanks point and shoot, the reporters hide in the darkness, and the panda-dogs lead innocent games.

To build this collage of personal memories, historical facts and fantasy, the piece utilises elements from both sensorial and participatory theatre, object theatre and also audiovisual components.

The Mending Room has a will of its own. She can travel through time and expose inner thoughts, she can play and create expectations, she can make rules and control where the stream goes within her. Nonetheless, she has her limits. Alone, she cannot change what happens outside.