Lying Flat 2.0 (Tangping 2.0 躺平2.0)
English-Language Premiere and Artist Residency
Written and directed by Wang Chong 王翀 and produced by Tarryn Chun
What moment in your life made you feel most alive? First staged in Mandarin Chinese at the Wuzhen Theatre Festival in 2024, Wang Chong’s Lying Flat 2.0 (Tangping 2.0) is an immersive, participatory theatre work that integrates live-feed video projection and real-time use of AI in performance to interrogate pressing existential questions.
Tarryn Chun, associate professor of theatre in Notre Dame’s Department Film, Television, and Theatre, brings the world-renowned experimental Chinese theatre director Wang Chong to Notre Dame for a guest artist residency and the English-language premiere of Lying Flat 2.0 at the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center. During the residency, Wang Chong will work with Notre Dame students enrolled in a special spring-break arts intensive seminar to rehearse and perform the play. Students will take on roles ranging from actors to videographers to assistant director, designers, and marketing team members. Wang Chong will direct performances and teach students how to operate and act with live-feed video, while Tarryn Chun will guide the classroom experience, modeling production dramaturgy and leading students through readings of the script and scholarship on contemporary Chinese theatre and intermedial performance.
Credits
Wang Chong
Wang Chong is the founder of Théâtre du Rêve Expérimental, a Beijing-based performance group. He is the most internationally commissioned Chinese theater director, with his works performed in over 20 countries across six continents. His work critically interrogates the impact of contemporary technology on humanity. Wang's notable productions include The Warfare of Landmine 2.0 (2013 Festival/Tokyo Award), Lu Xun (2016 Beijing News Best Chinese Performance), Teahouse 2.0 (2018 One Drama Award for Best Little Theater Work), and Waiting for Godot (a 2020 live online performance that drew an audience of 290,000). Since 2022, he has embraced a global nomad lifestyle.
Tarryn Chun
Dr. Tarryn Li-Min Chun is associate professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre at Notre Dame, where she holds a concurrent appointment in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and is a faculty fellow at the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies. She researches and publishes widely on topics in modern and contemporary Sinophone theatre, with emphasis on examining interrelationships among performance, technology, and media. Her award-winning first book, Revolutionary Stagecraft (University of Michigan Press, 2024) examines the relationships among technological modernization, artistic innovation, and politics in early-to-mid 20th-century Chinese theatre.
Notre Dame’s Department of Film, Television, and Theatre
Notre Dame’s Department of Film, Television, and Theatre (FTT) offers a liberal arts approach to the study of performing arts — a unique mix of design and production, writing and performance, history and theory. FTT prepares students for real-world applications where artists frequently move between and among the different entertainment spheres.
Funding & Support
This is a partner program of the 2027 Notre Dame Arts Biennial, supported with funding from the Notre Dame Arts Initiative.
This project is also made possible with funding and support from the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre, the Franco Institute for Liberal Arts and the Common Good, the College of Arts and Letters Teaching Beyond the Classroom program, the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies, Notre Dame Global, and the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center.
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Images and Media
- Production photos of Wang Chong's Lying Flat 2.0 (Tangping 2.0 躺平2.0). All photos courtesy of Wuzhen Theatre Festival.
- Video courtesy of Wang Chong.