What is method? What are rules? How did means come about? How did rules come about? What have means and rules got to do with technology? Is technology developing means, or developing a new set of rules? Maybe, means and rules are setting limits for the development of technology?

The development of technology obviously has a very clear interaction with the development of theatre. From the technology of 500 years ago, and that of 10 years ago, and how we look at the future development of technology, we can see the theatre in the past, the theatre 10 years ago, the theatre now, and the theatre in future, and what kind of interaction they have with technology. Of course, when we talk about technology, the most apparent technology on stage is lighting and sound. As for sound, when we bring into the theatre some sounds other than those already existing in the theatre, then those brought-in sounds would become some sound effects, certain effects produced by recording or broadcasting.

But if we are to challenge the technology of sound in theatre, we'd say the technology of sound is recreating an experience of some real sounds; or, we'd say, technology is playing a role in enabling us to hear certain sounds, and those sounds are actually digitised sounds, and not the real sounds. Then, we come to lighting. You all know that in theatre...theatre in the early stage, they used torches, and before that, they didn't perform at night. They performed during the day, using sunlight. After the use of torches, then came gaslights, candles and then gaslights.

With the invention of electricity, they started to use electric lights as lighting. Up till now, many sorts of lights have been developed using electricity. Today, we have electronic lights, LED, self-illuminating lights, and lights that can rotate 360 degrees, and all sorts of lights that could change colours, become darker or lighter. All these are the influence of the language of lighting by technology. Lights are extremely important in theatre because without lights, there will be no theatre. With lights, you could see the messages and themes in the theatre. Without lights, it will be darkness. Of course, darkness could be content as well. Yet, most of the time, we still use lights to tell what we want to say. If you've read the Bible, you'd know that on the first day, there was light.

So, light is closely related to how we see the world. The development of lights till now... Audio and video recordings are also very crucial technology. Audio and video recordings seem to make us feel that we could make a record of history, and then reproduce history. Of course, there would be some difference from the real history. But it is because of these two technological skills that we could have a more in-depth dialogue in the theatre, exploring how we and technology look at history, how to look at past records in order to review our own creative works. More than a decade ago, I created a work called “The Outcast General”.

This work is basically an adaptation from a traditional Peking opera, and it is about a very tragic character, and it's a solo act. This general was looking down from the hill and watching the battle going on down there. He was a general under the commander Yue Fei, but Yue Fei would not let him fight in the battleground, and he was very upset. As he saw his army losing the battle, he defied the order of his commander and ran downhill. Eventually, he was killed, because he didn't listen to the order of Commander Yue Fei. In this work, I used video recording to examine how we should look at the story, how we should look at the past, as well as how we look at history selectively, and deal with our memories selectively. In “The Outcast General” I used the live feed device. So, in the performance, the audience saw the general standing on the stage, there was a screen behind, and on that screen there was another screen, and another one on that screen, many layers going on endlessly.

I was trying to use the concept of two mirrors facing each other here, to carry out an experiment. And then, I also tried to use a software to record his move by making a still image of the starting point where he took his step, when the general went from one spot to another. Then, I recorded his second spot by making another still image, and then recorded another still image of his third spot. Eventually, his story was told by a series of still shots. Very often, we use text and recorded history to tell past stories on a stage. But that time, we used images to do that. That image was the effect resulting from the use of recording technology that has evolved up till the present. This is also about how we read ourselves. When we read ourselves by looking at pictures, it is entirely different from when we read ourselves by looking at a video recording.

How we examine our own situation by looking at the still shots is very different from how we see the way we think or the way we do things in some moving video recording. Both are important. Thus, in “The Outcast General”, we made use of technology to discuss how technology could provide us the chance to reexamine history and the past, as well as how to read how we read, when we do read. That's the experiment “The Outcast General” set out to do. Of course, there was another important theme in “The Outcast General”, and that is when we discuss about traditional performing arts under the influence of the development of technology, is there a new way to read all the classical works, and reexamine the relationship between technology and contemporary as well as traditional arts.

In fact, the theatre has been in constant discourse and critique on the language of theatre. Maybe, with new technology, we could refresh our knowledge of the existing language. In 2000, I created a work called “The Four Grand Inventions”. Of course, when I rehearsed that performance, I was discussing about the four great inventions of China, but at the same time, I was trying to talk about lights, sounds...the beginning of the many elements of theatre, and their development up till now. Let me give you an example, there is a kind of light for the stage called “follow spot”.

If you go to watch a ballet or an opera, you'd see this round shaped light following the main actor here and there, and that is a “follow spot”. A follow spot is actually a spot light controlled by an operator to follow the main actor on stage, following that actor as he walks about. If he walks to the left, it will follow him to the left; and if he walks to the right, it will follow him to the right. That's the language of follow spot when lighting has developed to a certain stage. Then, I replaced the follow spot with video. In the beginning, the audience thought it was a follow spot on the stage when they saw the spot light. And then, that follow spot grew bigger and bigger, or perhaps would suddenly explode, and all at once there were ten follow spots. At that moment, the audience would realise that wasn't a follow spot, but rather a light created by a video. I think that raising discussions about the language of theatre is very important.

In the development of theatre, we need to have a dialogue with technology, need to have a dialogue with the new language. Only in that way can we make a step forward for technology and the new language. It is reconstructing the old language on one hand, and developing a new language on the other hand. Try to imagine, there are 200 lights lighting up the stage, creating a multi-layer development of the thing/s happening on the stage. You can all try to imagine all the 200 lights are electronic lights. Many live concerts are doing that already, but of course they would use a lot of smoke at the same time because with smoke you could see the source and the direction of the lights. We all know that with electronic lights, they can turn 180 or 360 degrees, and change colours at the same time.

This was used initially in discos and nightclubs...but actually, artists should have been the first ones to raise the questions of what these technologies are doing, and could we take one more step, and push it one step further. After electronic lights, came LED lights. I believe that in future, if there were 200 lights onstage, every one of them would be a video projection, and every light could have its own content. The content of the lights now, if they are produced by electronic lights, there'd be no problem with their colours, and no problem with their texture, and a gradual change of colours would not be a problem either. But still none of the stages (of the development) carries any content. Content means what the lights project are images or some symbols. That might require us to develop some software in order to do that, and we might be able to do that one day.

I hope that the technologies and skills of theatre could develop hand in hand, shedding influence on each other, enriching the theatre, striding forward in synchronicity with technology and history. Because, for us, theatre is a laboratory, and in this lab, we not only experiment with the content of theatre, but the technologies of theatre could be the content of our experiments too. In 1994, I did an experiment with space that has to do with technology, and the title of that piece is “The Trial”. In 2013, I further explored that concept and developed four performances, also with the title “The Trial”, but these four works have different subtitles.

What's most prominent about this series is the attempts on space, as well as on technology. The attempt on space is that I tried to turn the Studio Theatre of Hong Kong Cultural Centre into a well, putting the audience above, making them look down at the performing space like looking into a well; making the space exactly like that of a well, with mirrors on all four sides. Audience would sit above looking down, while the actor could only see himself, and then see the mirrors on the four sides. He would see the mirror in the mirror in the mirror, and himself. In 2013, I did another experiment with technology, making use of projectors.

In the many years between 1994 and 2013, projectors had undergone many new breakthroughs. I had the entire floor of the stage covered by white marley (performance surface), with two overhead projectors beaming images onto the floor. Of course, when the images were projected onto the performance surface, they would become infinite in the mirrors on the four sides. Let's say, if I project the image of an ocean on it, then the ocean would become boundless. If I project an image of a floor, then the floor would become infinite too. I made many experiments with this space because with technology, I could do such experiments.

Another experiment I'm doing now is to put a story, which is virtual, onto a real situation like this. I'm thinking what is real, and what is virtual – reality and virtuality. As I used white performance surface as background, I also put a lot of white A4 paper on the ceiling, and as they fell, they fell like leaves on the floor. While pieces of white A4 paper were falling, you could see some shadows on the floor when lights were projected on them. The shadows would become smaller as they fell. Why? The closer the paper is to the light source, the bigger the shadow, and when it is getting close to the floor, the shadow would become more or less the same size as the paper. Then, when the white paper landed on the floor, it would disappear. Because it would be white on white.

When I did that experiment, I was constantly considering how to deal with technology and lighting, and I wanted to talk about the relationship of what is real and what is virtual in reality. This is the experiment I was doing in 2013. I believe that the developments of projection and lighting technologies would allow us have more interesting dialogues with science and technology, and more interactions with them as well. I certainly hope the development of theatre would affect the development of technology, and that would shed influence on the development of communication technology, and on the whole development of organisational engineering too, because theatre is really the best laboratory that enables us to handle lights, sounds, and then the relationship between images, lights and sounds. And at the same time, it also allows us to handle what is reality, what is formless, and what is virtual.