崑曲戲房《遊園驚夢》

Lunar New Year's fifth day — a fine day for theatre.

For the 2026 Lunar New Year, Echoes From China joined forces with close collaborators A Moment Books and Toronto Yú Theatre for "She Xi," a weekend-long festival of community arts celebrating the Spring Festival. As the traditional opera program, students and instructors of the Echoes Kunqu Studio brought something they had never tried before: Kunqu Backstage — dissolving the boundary between stage and backstage, and opening the insider's view of classical opera directly to the audience.

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大年初五,宜看戲。

2026年春節,回響傳統文化研習社與好朋友們——旦夕書店、多倫多虞劇社——攜手發起了貫穿整個週末的春節系列活動「社戲」。作為其中的傳統戲曲單元,回響崑曲研習計劃師生帶來了一次全新嘗試:「崑曲戲房《遊園驚夢》」。

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Through a guided backstage studio, a live performance, and a post-show conversation, audiences stepped behind the scenes to watch a Kunqu production take shape from the very first brushstroke of makeup, then experienced the six-hundred-year-old masterpiece Wandering the Garden, Waking from a Dream performed at close range. As precious as the performance itself was the chance to talk face to face — about how opera can grow in a modern city, and how traditional arts can become part of young diasporic lives. The feedback we gathered was sincere, specific, and is already shaping our next season.

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這是我們第一次打破前台與後台的界限,把傳統戲曲的「內行視角」直接展開在觀眾眼前。通過後台探秘講解、折子戲演出與演後交流三種形式,觀眾得以近距離走入崑曲藝術的台前幕後,看見一場戲曲演出如何成型,理解一份傳統如何被傳承。與能把《遊園驚夢》相對完整地呈現同樣珍貴的,是與觀眾朋友們面對面交流的機會——關於戲曲如何在當代城市中生長,關於傳統藝術如何更好地走入青年海外華人的生活,我們收獲了很多真誠而具體的建議。