A Playlist for the Revolution
"The video design adds a vibrant dynamism to the visuals… designer Gillian Tan gives the audience a final reality check. She covers the back wall with footage from the real demonstrations, showing the millions who marched."
Broadway World"A final, and all-important, shout out must go to the show's lighting and video from Gillian Tan… Tan's work is magnificent. In a final, incendiary moment, footage from the real-life protests plays against the wall of the auditorium — the emotions rich and deserved."
All That DazzlesNominated for the Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Affiliate Theatre, 2024. Emily Ling Williams’ debut as a director and winning her The Stage Debut Award for Best Director. This marked the beginning of a longstanding collaboration between Emily, designer Liam Bunster, and myself.
Hong Kong, 2019. Jonathan is pretty sure his life will look like his father’s. Chloe is about to leave for university in England. Over months of shared music and late-night messages, something begins — empowered by BTS, M.I.A, and Beyoncé, carried by AJ Yi’s sharp, surprising writing. A Playlist for the Revolution is a rom-com right up until it can’t be, set against the largest demonstrations in Hong Kong’s history.
The lighting and video design is part of the play’s structural logic — a playlist, a sequence, something built from fragments that accumulates. In the final scene, footage from the real protests fills the back wall. The cast stop. They watch.
Production
- Venue
- Bush Theatre, London
- Year
- 2023
- Director
- Emily Ling Williams
- Producer
- Bush Theatre
Creative team
- Playwright
- AJ Yi
- Director
- Emily Ling Williams
- Lighting & Video Designer
- Gillian Tan
- Composer
- Nicola T. Chang
- Sound Designer
- Jamie Ye
- Designer
- Liam Bunster