Go wild at Electric Zoo
Electric Zoo: Countdown Shanghai
Saturday 12, Expo Garden Park, 399RMB
The giant New York-born Electric Zoo Festival, which this year hosted Tiesto, Hardwell, The Chainsmokers and Porter Robinson amongst others, comes to Shanghai with their debut China festival. Swedish DJ Dada Life tops the bill, alongside Sander Van Doorn, Hucci, Mako, Oshi, Codeko, Cavia and Fader One. Expect animal-themed performers, a giant octopus stage and other animalistic entertainment.
A top Chinese film
Time Out's Film Screenings: Suzhou River
Sunday 13, 4.15pm, Glam, free
Every month, Time Out Shanghai shows one of the greatest Chinese films of all time for free at Glam, M on the Bund, with free popcorn and specially tailored drinks. This month, we're showing number 17 on our list, Lou Ye's Suzhou River. A lunatic love story and existential film noir in one, Suzhou River jitters with yearning and virility with its roaming handheld camera, impetuous jump-cuts and quixotic twists on petty mobsters and elusive broads. Spaces are still available for our popular screening - to reserve your spot send the word 'film' to our official WeChat account.
Tim Robbins' Actors' Gang
Harlequino: On to Freedom
Until Sunday 13, Daguan Theatre, 120-680RMB
Academy Award-winning actor, director, writer and activist Tim Robbins (Mystic River, The Shawshank Redemption) is also the founding director of experimental theater group The Actors' Gang, which has produced more than 100 innovative plays since its formation in 1981. Robbins' latest work as writer and director is Harlequino: On to Freedom, a genre-defying play in which a group of rogue actors hijack a professor's lecture and slideshow on the classic Italian comedy form commedia dell'arte. Check out our interview with Robbins online.
Far East Foals?
Future Orients
Saturday 12, 9pm, Yuyintang, 80RMB
Beijing outfit Future Orients - formerly known as Eat or Die - hit Shanghai in support of their heavily Foals-influenced debut album. Future Orients’ main influence hasn’t prevented the band being hotly-tipped - it's our picks of the gigs this weekend.
The Biennale returns
Shanghai Biennale 2016
Until March 12, Power Station of Art, 20RMB
The 11th Shanghai Biennale, with the works of a whopping 92 participating artists and artist groups from 40 countries worldwide, occupying the atmospheric Power Station of Art. Alongside the main exhibition, other highlights of the Biennale include the project 51 Personae, a community-based project that aims to present the perspectives of ordinary people from every corner of the city. The project will feature three participants per week over the 17-week duration of the Biennale, displaying their ideas in unique and interesting ways, including a ferris wheel ride, a radio show and a football match. Follow Yancongpsa on WeChat for up-to-date information on all of the events.
The Tang-Shakespeare collab
Yue Opera: Coriolanus and Du Liniang
Friday 11-Saturday 12, 7.30pm, Shanghai Majestic Theatre, 80-580RMB
A brilliant Tang Xianzu-William Shakespeare cross-cultural experiment that combines Coriolanus and Peony Pavilion is better than you'd ever expect. The real star is Mao Weitao, whose rapid costume changes transform her from a wounded and defiant Roman general to a Ming Dynasty scholar in love with a ghost, and so smoothly you aren’t even sure it’s her until the chirpy, entertaining narrator points it out. Running time is three and a half hours, so don’t count on catching the last metro – but it’s worth the wait.
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