Shadow-to-shadow: The Urban Theatre
Team
Name: Yiyi Zhou
Nationality: China
Institution / Company: Taubman College, University of Michigan
Name: Yuchun Huang
Nationality: China
Institution / Company: Taubman College, University of Michigan
Name: Lei Guo
Nationality: China
Institution / Company: Taubman College, University of Michigan
-FINALIST of HEALING Competition
The Coronavirus pandemic has largely impacted our lives. As a result of the social distancing orders around the world, people sacrificed their public life in the quest for health. In this case, Shadow-to-shadow instigates a new mode of distant social interaction that projects real and fictional accounts of our new [ab]normal private lives toward the public realm.
Learning from the Shadow Dance, where performer and audience interact through casting silhouettes on a screen, the project proposes a huge canvas hanging outside people’s windows as an urban communal space that gathers people’s shadows at night-time. Shaping this ever-changing open urban theatre, people are able to project themselves on it and invite others to gather around. The cast of shadows suspends social distancing and they can interact with each other freely on the collective two-dimensional screen.
The project can be replicated in various urban environments and entertain endless citizen’s customization. Light and shadow bring people in isolation together on the same surface, creating an alternative public dimension to fulfill people’s social needs during the pandemic. It invites people to break through the limitations of space and project their real or imagined public personas in this urban theatre.
#ProtectedSocialInteractions #PublicDomesticities #SocialDistancing #Shadow #UrbanTheatre
