Working in theatre is a series of beautiful encounters and reunions.
My first encounter with It's Only the End of the World took place in Paris, during my first year of acting school. After reading it, I had this rather wild idea (yes, a wild idea — at the time, I never imagined that one day I would actually make it happen): this play is so Chinese. I want to translate it into Chinese and bring it to China to be performed.
It's Only the End of the World begins with the return of a prodigal son, someone who hasn't exactly been going home to visit his family.
“Going home.” These two words stir something in all of us. The development of any society inevitably involves urbanisation and migration, and with them come separations and reunions, carrying all kinds of emotions. In China today, in a society developing at such extraordinary speed, “going home” takes on an even deeper meaning.
Whenever traditional holidays approach, “Don't forget to go home and visit your family” is a message we see repeated across the media.
In It's Only the End of the World, the eldest son's return raises a troubling question: why, at a moment that should be filled with the warmth of reunion, surrounded by love, does every member of this family — the eldest son, the mother, the sister, the younger brother and his wife — remain so profoundly alone?
This is a story about all the love they cannot put into words.
Although I have lived in France for so many years, having grown up in a traditional Chinese family, I still constantly feel that there is so much love within me that I cannot express.
I see it, and I feel it, in the people around me — my family, my friends. They, too, carry so much unspoken love within them.
And when love cannot be expressed, when we cannot open our mouths and say it out loud, perhaps it turns into a kind of pain, a kind of regret.
I think that by watching this family in It's Only the End of the World, we may be seeing our own reflection. We are looking at ourselves.
This is the kind of deeply human story I have always been searching for in theatre: to confront, to feel, and then to ease the pain that comes from love.
Perhaps this is what the ancient Greeks sought when they spoke of “catharsis” in theatre.
What a wonderful, almost magical power!
I love theatre.
When I was in high school, going to the theatre was the most exciting part of my day.
As night fell, I loved sitting in the auditorium (often in the highest, furthest, cheapest row), waiting for that feeling just before a performance begins: entering another space.
In that space, I could feel “human nature”, and experience those extraordinary moments when it is magnified: a word, a silence, a gesture, a look, a sigh… any one of them could stir something deep inside me.
These moments are everywhere in It's Only the End of the World.
That is why I love It's Only the End of the World. I love the familiar humanity within it. I love all the unspoken love that lies scattered throughout the play.
It is a delicate love, a restrained love, a love that can be painful to feel.
There is something very Eastern, very Chinese about it.
And so, more than ten years went by.
It took me about a month to translate It's Only the End of the World into Chinese, and then another ten months to revise the translation.
Through translating and revising, I was reunited with the play.
I took it with me to meet producers and executive producers, to meet or reunite with actors I had long hoped to work with, and with technicians from different departments: in studios, in cafés, at roadside juice shops.
I introduced them to the characters in It's Only the End of the World, told them about the things these characters say, and all the things they cannot bring themselves to say.
And then there would be a knowing smile, a helpless sigh, eyes filled with tears, or a warm, tight embrace.
It was in this atmosphere, full of human warmth, that we began creating It's Only the End of the World.
More than ten years later, I finally understood why it was only now that I could truly bring this play to China: because I had finally come to understand how many loving and tender hearts lie behind this story, which seems, on the surface, to be filled with tears.
And at this very moment, I am writing these words to introduce the play, so that It's Only the End of the World may encounter more people.
So that more people may experience the warmth and sweetness that we are experiencing now.
Sifan Shao
Beijing, May 2018