The Golden Dragon. Quantum Theatre.

Photo credit: Quantum Theatre

Part of the Quantum experience is the venue. The site of The Golden Dragon is Lake Carnegie in Highland Park. The space is stunning and vast yet tranquil and controlled. The stagnant lake, which is more like a pond, is equipped with a concrete path directly across the water and embellished with moving platforms and a cabin-like hut opposite the audience seating.

The play is focused around a Chinese-Thai-Vietenamese-Restaurant (called The Golden Dragon) and follows the tragedies of its employees, patrons and neighbors. The style of the play is more easily defined by what it is not. It is not realism, it is not naturalism and it is not boring. The play sets up its own narrative logic and storytelling technique that Bill O'Driscoll of City Paper has called a, "curious post-Brechtian style". The players speak directly to the audience, articulate their stage directions, assume multiple personas (that intentionally cross the boundaries of age, race and sex) and deny the audience the time to form any sort of relationship to any specific character over another.