VietNamNet Bridge – The young Vietnamese director has been invited to work as the general director of the Asian Stage Festival 2009 in Shanghai, China from June 7-12, 2009.

A scene from “People of the Year 2222”.

The invitation, signed by the Vice Chairman of the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Institute, Professor, Dr. William Huizhu Sun, was sent to Duong in late November 2008.

The Vietnamese director accepted the invitation. He said he would organize a drama festival that has strong connections between traditional elements and the modern creativeness aspirations.

The director will also bring his work to the festival, a drama entitled “People of the Year 2002” (script by Le Duy Hanh, directed by Le Quy Duong). The work will have the participation of Vietnamese actors, as well as those from Japan, New Zealand, India and Singapore, most notably musician Dominoque Probst, from the Paris Conservator of Music, and musician Darrin Verhagen, from the Dorobo Music Centre in Australia.

The Asia Stage Festival 2009 will be held at the Shanghai Dramatic Art Institute, attracting over 20 experimental stage troupes in Asia and the Pacific.

The festival is a “young” event, which has been held in 1998, 2001, 2004 and 2007, for experimental dramas.

“People of the Year 2222” will be introduced for the first time at the Asia Stage Festival 2009. The drama is a story about a couple who manufactures robots and research cloning reproduction. The couple created a world of robots on the sun and a world of cloned men on the moon to avoid human’s problems, like wars, diseases, hunger and poverty, etc.

The two new worlds in the sun and the moon become increasingly worse, and the couple confesses that they are helpless. They die, becoming two pieces of debris that fall to the place in the earth where they were born, in the year of 2222. The story of the couple is passed down orally, with the belief that though the earth has many problems, but it is still the best place for the humans to grow up and love each other.

V. Tien