On February 24, 2019, the member of the Wuming Theater Club gathered at Massachusetts Institute of Technology to prepare for their first shooting this year. Each year, the Wuming Theater Club will present two different theater shows at MIT, one in spring and one in fall. Before the actual performance, the club members will take a few pictures for the actors and actresses. These photos are used for creating posters and other promotional purposes.
Mingyue Li, a film and television student at Boston University College of Communication, helped the club to prepare for their shooting. She first helped the make-up artist Gabriella Gao to do the actor’s and actress’s makeup. It took them nearly two hours to finish. After that, Li helped the cinematographer Zhengrong Ni to set up video cameras and tripods. She also put up a green curtain to serve as the background of the pictures. After all these preparations, one of the actor Mengcheng Wang sat in front of the camera, while Li held the LED light stand for him, and finally, they began shooting. The whole preparation process took the seven club members for nearly four hours.
The play that the club is going to present is called University of Laughs. This is a Japanese comedy that portrays the conflicts between arts censorship and the freedom of the artists’ expressions. The original play only needs two male actors, but the director of the Wuming Theater Club Yuning Su created a new “girls’ version” and hired two more female actresses.
The play will be performed on March 30, 2019, at MIT for the original version and on March 31, 2019, for the new “girls’ version.”