Asia Connection: Producers Camp to Bring Together Producers From Eight Asian Countries

TAIPEI, Aug. 5, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Asia Connection: Producers Camp (ACPC), a collaborative project by Taiwan's National Theater & Concert Hall (NTCH), Singapore's Esplanade-Theatres on the Bay, South Korea's National Theater of Korea, and Japan's Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre, will take place for the first time in August and September 2021. Working around COVID-19, this inaugural Camp will be held fully online.

After a selection process conducted jointly by the four partnering theaters, 16 producers from eight Asian countries - Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan - will join the camp's workshops, which will take place in nine days over three weeks. They will participate in group and individual sessions that will develop their communication skills to work better with creative artists. Outstanding works selected through the project will be co-produced by the four theaters, with opportunities sought to perform them internationally.

NTCH's General and Artistic Director Liu Yi-ruu hopes that, the world will have more opportunities to see what Asia has to offer through ACPC and that everyone walks away with new ideas and perspectives on the arts that are uniquely Asian.

In the individual sessions, ACPC will provide selected producers with guidance and mentoring by celebrated curators and producers. The participant producers will work with their mentors on case discussions and proposal exercises, and on how to better work with creatives as they further explore what Asian cultures have to offer. The project's team of invited mentors comprises Farooq Chaudhry, Executive Producer, Akram Khan Company, United Kingdom; Ong Keng Sen, director, Young Curator Academy of Maxim Gorki Theater, Germany; Wouter van Ransbeek, Creative Director, International Theater Amsterdam; Alistair Spalding, Artistic Director and Chief Executive, Sadler's Wells, London; and Annette Shun Wah, Artistic Director, OzAsia Festival, Australia.

Moreover, NTCH and its three partnering theaters will be conducting two symposiums that will consider how theaters and the performing arts have been affected by the pandemic, and how they might act in response. As speakers, ACPC has invited Caroline Barneaud, Director of Artistic and International Projects at Vidy-Lausanne Theatre, Switzerland; Jeff Khan, Artistic Director of Performance Space in Australia; and Virve Sutinen, Artistic Director of Germany's Tanz im August festival to talk about how live and digital performances are being revolutionized in preparation for performances in the post-COVID world.