2018 Avignon OFF Festival

The Bedbug Prisypkin, a former worker and former party member with a taste for petty-bourgeois pleasures and an avant-garde vision of existence, abandons his comrades as well as his fiancée Zoya Berezkina to marry Elzevir Davidovna Renaissance. But following a fire, the wedding feast turns into tragedy: all the guests die, the hair salon where the celebration was taking place is completely destroyed, and Prisypkin ends up frozen in a block of ice, the water sprayed by the firefighters’ hoses having quickly frozen. A tough little bedbug, which had climbed onto Prisypkin’s head and clung there, is also frozen. A hundred years later—when time and cold had killed the bedbug—its spirit awakens with the revival of Prisypkin… In The Bedbug, this interval of a hundred years marks a boundary: roughly in the middle of the play, the stage splits into two completely different worlds. The first is rooted in the Soviet industrial tradition; the second reflects a modern atmosphere of electronic industry. The body, rock, and dance are integrated into the actors’ performance and express an entirely new conception of theatrical representation: Indie Theater. This gives the performance a very strong character, and a sense of freedom radiates from the stage. https://vimeo.com/248454301 Author: Vladimir Mayakovsky Director: MENG Jinghui Actors: WANG Xinhang, ZHU Jinliang, MAO Xuewen, XIAO Dingchen, DING Shaoyi, CAI Shujie, ZHU Hao, WANG Ting, ZHANG Xiyue, WANG Ying, LI Chengyang Set designer: ZHANG Wu Lighting: WANG Qi Sound: YAN Guihe Music: HUA Shan Lyricists: LIAO Yimei, LI Huayi, MAO Xuewen, CAI Shujie Music composition: La Bronze, HUA Shan, WANG Chuang Live music: HUA Shan (guitar), WANG Chuan (guitar/mixing), SONG Yang (bass guitar), Maomao (drums) Dramaturg: LI Huayi Costumes: YU Shuo Makeup: HU Mingming Production and distribution in France: Wang Jing Production assistant: WU Tianhao