2025 IC Award - Audience Award Shortlist

Lychees of Chang’an

The Xi’an People‘s Theatre

Review

The Lychee of Chang’an, the powerful stage adaptation by Xi’an Drama Theatre, captures the spirit of Ma Boyong’s novel through a deeply human lens. Centered on Li Shande—a low-ranking official benched with the impossible task of transporting fresh lychees across 2,000 km of Tang-China—it balances historical tension with black-humored absurdity and quiet emotional resonance.

What makes the play especially worthy of the 2025 IC Audience Award is its remarkable ability to bridge eras and audiences. As a “spiritual honey-friend”, it speaks with an immediacy that resonates with younger and older viewers alike—using sleek, contemporary stage aesthetics and smart craftsmanship to make ancient court intrigue feel intimately present-day. Audiences repeatedly return to the show (“full-attendance fans”, “repeat attendees”), finding fresh moments of warmth and surprise with every performance—engraining it in the communal memory of each city it tours.

In short, The Lychee of Chang’an doesn’t just invite spectators—it gently carries them along Li Shande’s absurd yet poignant mission. Its blend of situational satire, emotional clarity, and cultural humility turned spectatorship into solidarity, earning heartfelt, audience-driven acclaim.

Synopsis

Produced by Xi’an Drama Theatre, The Lychee of Chang’an is a stage adaptation of Ma Boyong’s acclaimed novel. The play revisits the Tang dynasty tale behind the famous verse “A galloping rider brings a smile with lychees,” shifting focus from imperial romance to the struggles of ordinary people.

At its heart is Li Shande, a low-ranking official tasked with an impossible mission. His journey exposes the harsh realities of bureaucracy, the weight of responsibility, and the resilience of the human spirit.

Blending classical aesthetics with contemporary stagecraft—traditional costumes, symbolic set pieces, and multimedia design—the production creates a dialogue between past and present. It is both a historical story and a modern allegory, asking how one preserves integrity while caught in the machinery of power.

Premiered in Shanghai in 2025 and now touring nationwide, the production has also been selected for digital presentation at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe “Our Culture Week 2025,” marking its step onto the international stage.

## The 24 Solar Terms

QFunTheater – Children's Experimental Theatre Troupe (China)

Review

QFunTheater’s 24 Solar Terms is a rare gem at the 2025 Edinburgh Fringe — a production that transcends cultural boundaries while remaining deeply rooted in Chinese tradition. Using the ancient calendar of the twenty-four solar terms as its framework, the piece maps the universal journey of childhood: birth, growth, struggle, and renewal.

The performance is striking in its simplicity. Without relying on words, it communicates through physical theatre, rhythm, and evocative visuals. Children delight in its playful imagery, while adults find themselves reflecting on the cyclical nature of time and the resilience of human life. This dual accessibility — tender enough for young audiences, profound enough for older ones — is one of its greatest strengths.

What makes 24 Solar Terms particularly deserving of its place in the IC Audience Awards shortlist is its ability to create an immediate emotional connection. Audiences respond not only to the beauty of its stagecraft but also to its universality: the reminder that our lives are part of a greater natural rhythm, shared across cultures. In a festival filled with noise and satire, this production stands out for its quiet power, offering a meditative yet celebratory experience.

It is no surprise that audiences voted for 24 Solar Terms. It speaks gently but resonates deeply — a theatre piece that lingers in the memory long after the curtain falls.

Synopsis

24 Solar Terms is a poetic physical theatre production by QFunTheater that draws inspiration from the ancient Chinese calendar system of the twenty-four solar terms.

Through movement, music, and vivid stage imagery, the piece traces the journey of a child’s growth — from birth to maturity — mirroring the cyclical rhythm of nature. Each solar term becomes a metaphor for change, resilience, and renewal, celebrating the harmony between humanity and the natural world.

Lolo's Boyfriend Show

Lauren O'Brien (United States)

Review

Lolo’s Boyfriend Show is not just a performance—it is a mirror, a diary, and a companion for every young girl standing at the crossroads of growing up. With wit, tenderness, and raw honesty, the show explores the fragile excitement of first love, the confusion of identity, and the quiet battles of self-worth. Its brilliance lies in the way it turns deeply personal stories into a universal language: every sigh, every laugh, every moment of hesitation on stage feels like an echo from the audience’s own memory.

What makes this piece especially powerful is its role as a guiding voice. For many young women, adolescence can feel isolating and unsafe; Lolo’s Boyfriend Show offers reassurance that their experiences are valid, and that they don’t need to face them alone. It is as if the performance sits beside you like a friend, offering warmth, humor, and courage in equal measure.

Audiences voted for it not just because it entertained, but because it cared. It created a space of solidarity, where vulnerability is strength and self-discovery is celebrated. That is why Lolo’s Boyfriend Show so rightfully won the 2025 IC Audience Award: it is theatre as empowerment, reminding us that art can guide us toward a kinder, safer, and braver version of ourselves.

Synopsis

A punk cabaret solo show by Lauren O’Brien, Lolo’s Boyfriend Show is an outrageous yet heartfelt journey through love, loss, and redemption. After her dream European tour collapses, Lolo returns to her childhood bedroom haunted by the ghosts of disastrous relationships. O’Brien embodies 18 characters with dazzling quick changes and fearless physicality, blending biting humour with moments of raw vulnerability. Winner of the Audience Choice Award at NYC Fringe and acclaimed Off-Broadway, the show resonates across generations, transforming personal chaos into a universal story of resilience, survival, and self-discovery.

The Gummy Bears' Great War

Batisfera (Italy)

Review

Batisfera’s The Gummy Bears’ Great War is a brilliant demonstration of how tiny, ordinary objects—gummy candies and table‑top lamps—can be transformed into an opera of existential absurdity. Set atop a modest tabletop, this object theatre/puppet satire uses everyday sweets to stage a futile war between the gelatinous Gummy Bear nation and the bureaucratic Dinosaurs, framing a tragically inevitable outcome with uncanny seriousness.

Through seven poetic chapters of narration, each vividly lit gummy bear—Lemon Yellow, Raspberry Red, Apple Green—reveals its inner fears, hopes, and convictions. The narrative unfolds with rhythmic tension and haunting clarity, reflecting on the existential need to find meaning in the meaningless.

Despite its miniature scale, the show delivers epic emotional punch. Viewers invest in the fate of each candy—only to confront war’s absurd futility and bureaucratic folly. This bold juxtaposition of mundane materials with profound themes is what made audiences resonate deeply, elevating it to the 2025 IC Audience Award. The Gummy Bears’ Great War proves that even the smallest objects—and the simplest stories—can leave the greatest impact.

Synopsis

At dawn, the gummy bears declare war on the dinosaurs. The outcome is certain—yet their stubborn resistance raises timeless questions of fate, will, and meaning. Performed on a tabletop with real candies, small lights, and intimate audiences, this object-theatre gem transforms the absurd into the profound. Blending humour and tragedy, the piece becomes both playful spectacle and existential allegory, proving that even the smallest stage can hold the largest questions of life.

Narcosis

Playwright / Director: Yi Qu, Performer: Yin Yuhao (United Kingdom)

Review

Narcosis is an unforgettable theatre experience—a deeply immersive solo performance adapted from the acclaimed indie video game. Crafted by Yi Qu and performed by Yin Yuhao, it plunges audiences into the eerie aftermath of a deep-sea accident, where reality and hallucination drift indistinguishably in a haunting fight for survival. The production’s fusion of minimalistic live acting with richly designed CG environments creates an uncanny, almost cinematic immersion that leaves the ocean both a physical space and a mirror to the diver’s mental collapse.

This work stands out for its visceral intensity: time fractures, space dissolves, and the audience experiences that suffocating depth alongside the performer. It’s not a film, nor a traditional stage play—it’s an unrepeatable sensory journey that resonates long after the lights come up. These qualities—that rare blend of innovation, immersion, and emotional resonance—are precisely why Narcosis earned its place among the 2025 IC Audience Award winners. It’s theatre redefined, drawing viewers into the depths of the ocean and the human psyche with unforgettable impact.

Synopsis

Inspired by the award-winning indie video game, Narcosis is an experimental solo performance that plunges audiences into the psychological aftermath of a deep-sea accident. Blending live performance with cinematic CG environments, the piece creates a disorienting, immersive journey where memory, time, and perception fracture under pressure. Neither film nor conventional theatre, Narcosis exists in the in-between—haunting, atmospheric, and deeply affecting. It challenges audiences to confront fear, isolation, and the fragility of the human mind in the face of the unknown depths.