CRI听力:Drama 'Cold Little Hands' Calls for Concern for People with Depressive Disorder

Anchor: A play 'Cold Little Hands' that focuses on those disturbed by mental illnesses in urban society has recently been debuted in Beijing's Drum and Tower West Theatre.

Though the play is labeled a suspense thriller, its director Lech Mackiewicz thinks there's also black humor in it. Xu Fei takes a closer look.

Reporter: Lech Mackiewicz is a polish actor-director. He acted and directed for stage and film in Poland, Australia and Japan. His theatre directing credits include King Lear for Playbox (李尔王) touring nationally in Australia and also to Japan and South Korea.

And according to the director, the play about depression would not keep audience members tense throughout.

"It has humor in it as well. I believe that everybody could see himself and even have a lighter take on his own psychological problems that you can see if it's a matter of our own decision whether we want to cross the line or not. Sometimes it's beyond our control. But very often we can make decisions not to cross that line."

Depression can cause people to go through periods of extreme sadness and despair. The play's main character Fang Fang has melancholia disease, and undergoing such extreme disappointment as one day, she jumped out of the window. Fortunately the rescue squad came in time and saved her life.

Fang Fang has a lover called Li Shu, but their love is a combination of both love and hatred. She told Li Shu that she was not committing suicide but that someone attempted to murder her. Why does she say so? Who is the perpetrator?
Aside from the couple, there are seven other roles which include a doctor and a nurse in the madhouse. Lech Mackiewicz thinks what adds to the entertainment of this play is the spontaneous design.

"And we decided to put a few situations upside down, in terms of mental situations. The most-mad person is doctor and then is the nurse, but the patients are actually quite normal. So, we try to pursue the reversal of the whole situation and it's quite funny."

This is a highly entertaining detective love story. There is murder, painful love and deep scars that people don't dare to touch. Having experiences in directing both feature films and theatres, Lech Mackiewicz admits theatre may not be the best way to present this suspense story, but he and his crew have invented a supplement to make it well-presented.

"The fact is that the film would be much easier to tell this story. We present a group of actors who tell the story. So actors enter the stage as actors not as characters. So we have to find a device and that device was the set, plus the fact that we are not telling the story through characters but through actors who become characters on stage right in front of us."

By showing how a married couple become enemies, the play is designed to reflect a common social issue that most of us seem to endure due psychological and social pressure. But no one dares to talk about it.

The second round of the 74 minutes long play of 'Cold Little Hands', which is literally translated into "Xiao-Shou-Bing-Liang", will soon be put on stage.

For Studio Plus, I'm Xu Fei.