abstractSynopsis:
The major material of this play is the Great Wenchuan Earthquake. This play tries to build a framework for a person who has never experienced any disaster to talk about a disaster. The play also presents this person’s exploration and discussion of the issues as the reconstruction of the disaster area, mental rehabilitation, the buried truth, Internet violence, agenda setting of media, regulation of speech, and the eternal question— “what is life?” Although most of the materials in the play are incidents that actually happened, they still went through a long period of reasoning and literary process and absorbed a few completely fictional stories. Therefore, I think this script uses reality as a source material but is not based on reality. Three major identities of one character, two types of ruins, one memorial and a journey of growth shape into a sort of bystander game, which can also be termed as reconstruction. The three major identities of the leading character are the playwright of this play, an apprentice who’s just been introduced to a new world, and a journalist. The two types of ruins are the ruins of buildings after an earthquake and the emotional wreck of human beings after a disaster. The memorial is the process the leading character will go through, from “not knowing why people commemorate” to “actively commemorate.” The journey of growth is the leading character’s contacting the real world, and getting in touch with what was hidden and covered. As to “what is looked on” and “what was reconstructed,” that will be the main content of the play.