This Morning, and Last Night’s Dream

In a frozen city in northern China, neighbors live stacked in identical concrete apartment blocks, each shut inside a room and a life of their own. A teenage couple plans to run away. A newlywed couple’s wedding night is hijacked by a broken washing machine. A shut-in man suspects he may already be dead.

Then the first big snow in years buries the cars, and for one morning the neighbors gather in the courtyard and talk about what they dreamed last night. By eight o’clock, the cars pull out one by one, and everything goes back to normal.

Told in six scenes and four interludes, the play is staged with rolling wooden frames on carts, a washing machine, an old TV, and an iron grid that slowly lowers over the stage until it rests on the floor.

The design began with a sketch of warped apartment blocks, people sitting on the rooftops with their washing machines, sofas and TVs, as if moving out or with nowhere left to go. Each life becomes a wooden box on a cart that actors push across the stage, so every scene change is a small move. Above them an iron grid hangs high, then descends, then lands, and every frame passes through its gaps untouched.

I designed every piece for the campaign, all built on one system: a framed title, one lit square, and grayscale images. Each exists in Chinese and English. Click any image to enlarge it.