Three days after Chinese New Year, CAN Festival 2021 opens on 15 February with a host of eclectic and surprising new exhibitions, performances, screenings, comedy and scratch nights from British East and South East Asian artists. The Festival, now in its third year, takes place at some of London's most distinctive venues including Soho Theatre, Two Temple Place and Little Angel Theatre, and in Chinatown.
Things kick off at Soho Theatre where CAN, in association with the venue, presents a new version of its Augmented Chinatown 2.0 app which expands the app adventure to begin at
Dean Street leading to Newport Place and Chinatown.
From 20 February to 21 March, the Festival moves to Two Temple Place, an architecturally-extraordinary late Victorian mansion on the Embankment, as part of an expanding cultural and community programme at the venue. In a new partnership, CAN Festival has commissioned five artists to create a wide-ranging exhibition to be installed throughout the building's beautiful spaces,
Augmented reality and architectural artist Donald Shek (co-creator of the Augmented Chinatown app, above) teases out ideas of Chinese diasporic identity and mythology from the history of the venue itself. Fine artist and singer-songwriter Chloe Wing is creating a cut-out paper gown and headpiece, representing the invisible and silent feminine presence in a traditionally masculine space. Former lawyer and performance artist Jack Tan references the nearby legal chambers and the Royal Courts of Justice.
The exhibition will culminate in immersive promenade performances through the building and artworks, directed by CAN's artistic director An-Ting Chang. New music commissions, part of CAN's ongoing Coalesce project, will be played live on both Chinese and Western instruments and there will be excerpts, live and on screen, from Jasmin Kent Rodgman's Instagram opera nineteen of ways of looking - one of six digital commissions from Chinese Arts Now in response to Covid-19. There will also be workshops and talks as part of the exhibition.
In April, at venues to be confirmed, will be Queering Now, two nights of live performance and one night of film screenings from an eclectic mix of British East and South East Asian LGBTQIA+ artists. The programme will be curated by performance artist and Chinese Drag King, Whiskey Chow. Chow, whose interdisciplinary work combines embodied performance with moving image and experimental sound, will present a new piece based around the iconic actor, director, martial artist and philosopher, Bruce Lee.
At the Little Angel Theatre in April, Little Bean Theatre returns to CAN Festival with a new bilingual (Cantonese and English) show for children aged 0 to 2 and their parents. What's that sound? will be presented both live and digitally for maximum accessibility. Little Bean is the only Cantonese-speaking family theatre company in the UK. Founded in 2018 by a group of London-based theatre, music and multi-arts practitioners and artists, it makes interactive theatre for children and families involving music, movement, puppetry and sensory elements. A digital version of the show in development will be available on the Little Angel You Tube channel from February.
London's iconic Chinatown is a key location for CAN Festival and an important centre for the Chinese diaspora. In the run up to the Festival (until 11 March), Westminster Council is presenting a history of Chinatown exhibition in Westminster City Hall (which also features in the Soho Theatre Augmented Chinatown app).
Stay Connected is a new festival strand gathering artists from the 2019 and 2020 Festivals (who are not in the 2021 edition) and offering them a platform to share their work with Festival audiences. 36 artists have been offered small commissions to either create new work, share existing work or even work in development. Stay Connected artists will also run artists' networking events during the festival.
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