Namaskar Oct 2015

COMMUNITY
STEVE JOBS & YOGA?
Local stage director connects the two
in an original play
BY CHLOE YATES
A scene from Tang Shu Wing’s play “Why aren’t you Steve Jobs?” which will be on 12 - 22 November in Hong Kong
Tang Shu Wing, actor and notable stage
director. Born in Hong Kong, Tang studied
and practiced law before moving to Paris to
pursue his true calling: acting. For the last
20 years,Tang has headed his own theatre
company dedicated to minimalism and
physical theatre. A firm believer in the body
as a primary means of expression and a form
of creation, Tang uses meditation and
pranayama as part of his actors’ training,
also challenging his actors in physically and
psychologically demanding asanas. First
introduced to yoga in the US, Tang journeyed
to India in 2004 to receive his formal yoga
teacher training. His latest production titled
‘Why Aren’t You Steve Jobs’ is a direct result
of his continuing research with his actors.
Tang sits down with us to discuss this
fascinating new piece, life and his experience
with meditation and contemplation.
PLEASE TELL US ABOUT YOUR PLAY
It’s about creativity, using Steve Jobs as a
starting point. Life, problems in life, how we
see these problems and how people believe
they can find solutions to solve these
problems are some of the major themes.
Intuitively, I constructed the set up in a yoga
studio, the stories of four students and their
communication while waiting for their
teacher who is running late. The story
revolves around a group of characters in
their early to mid 30’s. It’s a story of selfrealization,
the discovery of your own
journey using ordinary problems to involve
the audience in the process. Religion,
sexuality, love, money, death, the way people
are drawn together; all these aspects
implicate the audience.
WHAT WAS YOUR INSPIRATION
BEHIND CREATING THIS PLAY?
The production is the fruit of my research
with my actors; it’s a devised piece. After
using many classical plays such as Hamlet
and Titus Andronicus as a platform for my
actors to explore themselves and improvise,
employing my physical theatre approach and
minimalist aesthetics, I became convinced
this was the direction I wanted to lead.
I believe creation has to be balanced with
sincere research, so we worked everyday at a
systematic approach to training, trying to
discover how the actors could improve
themselves both physically and mentally. I
put the actors in to different scenarios and
recorded them as they improvised. I then
wrote the script around these interactions.
It is also the result of my yogi training. I
recall studying pranayama in the Himalayas,
witnessing my teacher die. I wanted to recall
this difficult experience in the play and
confront the notion of death.
Grotowski, the Polish theatre director is
also an inspiration. In an age of TV and film,
he was convinced theatre still has value. He
had an auto revelation of the actors being an
organic human being, his discovery of thisis
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