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In order to promote the development of arts and culture in the community, the Leisure and Cultural Services Department (LCSD) is co-organising the Community Oral History Theatre Project - Islands District (Tai O) with Chung Ying Theatre, the Neighbourhood Advice-Action Council and the Hong Kong Heritage Conservation Foundation. An outreach performance, "Below the Lantau Peak: Tai O, The Nostalgic Water Village" (in Cantonese), will be staged at 3pm on September 27 (Saturday) at the Atrium on 1/F of Fu Tung Plaza in Tung Chung. Members of the public are welcome to enjoy the performance free of charge.
Through organising a series of workshops, the project aims at gathering the personal experiences and valuable recollections of the elderly and writing scripts with the collected oral history, providing an opportunity for the elderly to act out their stories on the stage themselves. The project seeks to encourage active participation in arts and cultural activities by the elderly, and it is also hoped that the performances by elderly people will enable young people to not only gain an understanding of how the older generation grew up but also reflect on their own lives as a result. The oral history theatre outreach performance being staged by Tai O elderly participants together with Tung Chung counterparts this month in Tung Chung follows drama training and script collection workshops held since May 2013 and site-specific oral history theatre performances held in November 2013.
The story of "Below the Lantau Peak: Tai O, the Nostalgic Water Village" tells of the changes over time, with hundreds of Tai O fishing families moving away from their home village for decades and leaving behind old photos of boat dwellers. Man Kwong Photographic Studio was the only photo studio in the old Tai O. Ms Hoong Wai-lan, who was the studio's "lady photographer", still has a box of old negatives and photos. She used to process negatives and print photos by herself. The faces of the boat dwellers in those photos remain clearly visible, even after half a century. Over the years, she has made every effort to return the photos to their owners. When they finally meet in Tai O after a long time apart, the old folks are delighted to share with her tales of the ups and downs of the fishing village in bygone days.
The running time of this performance and experience-sharing session is about 45 minutes.
For programme enquiries, please call 2591 1300 (LCSD), 8106 8336 (Chung Ying Theatre) or 3140 6365 (the Neighbourhood Advice-Action Council), or visit www.lcsd.gov.hk/CE/CulturalService/ab/en/OH_taio_phase5.php.
Ends/Wednesday, September 10, 2014
Issued at HKT 11:02
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