Playing on the everyday madness

The stress, the noise, the disconnection — when people talk about cities nowadays, its negative aspects are often emphasized. There's a growing desire to escape and retreat into some countryside idyll, but director Li Yu pushes back against this romanticized idea of "escaping "urban life for a pastoral utopia.

"From the bottom of my heart, I don't believe that's the answer," he says.

One evening, Li stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows of a theater, looking out at an office building. As the lights inside were twinkling, the signs outside glowed, cars moved steadily along the road, and small restaurants lined the street.

"At that moment, I felt the city was truly beautiful. I wanted to use a playful, satirical tone to re-experience and reimagine the place where we live," he says, describing the moment when the idea for a new play occurred to him.

The first thing that came to mind was Diary of a Madman by Nikolai Gogol. Li envisioned its famous characters rendered in a comic-book style, reflecting the absurdities and struggles of modern life.