Chinese Arts Now's CAN Festival 2021 will open on 15 February 2021 for ten weeks featuring exhibitions, performances, screenings, comedy and scratch nights from British East and South East Asian artists at London venues including Soho Theatre, Two Temple Place, Little Angel Theatre and Chinatown.
At Two Temple Place, a late Victorian mansion on the Embankment, CAN Festival has commissioned five artists to create an exhibition to be installed throughout the building, which will culminate in immersive promenade performances through the building directed by CAN’s artistic director An-Ting Chang. New music commissions will be played live on both Chinese and Western instruments and there will be excerpts, live and on screen, from Jasmin Kent Rodgman’s Instagram opera nineteen of ways of looking. There will also be workshops and talks.
In April, Queering Now will feature two nights of live performance and one night of film screenings from British East and South East Asian LGBTQIA+ artists curated by performance artist and Chinese Drag King Whiskey Chow, who will present a new piece based around the actor, director, martial artist and philosopher, Bruce Lee.
At the Little Angel Theatre in April, Little Bean Theatre will perform a new bilingual (Cantonese and English) show for children aged 0 to 2 and their parents, What's that sound?, both live and digitally.
In the run-up to the Festival (until 11 March), Westminster Council will present a history of Chinatown exhibition in Westminster City Hall.