“Goodbye Mr. Loser,” and hello Eighthday Theatre: The Chinese student theater group is set to debut a new show this weekend in the Virginia Wadsworth Wirtz Center for the Performing Arts.
“Goodbye Mr. Loser,” or “夏洛特烦恼” in Mandarin, is a time travel tale filled with wit and nostalgia. While attending a wedding, the protagonist realizes he is in love with the bride and subsequently travels back in time to be with her. The results of creating this alternate reality are eye-opening, to say the least.
The play was originally published in 2012 and was made into a movie in 2015. Medill graduate student Marcel Iam, the show’s director, explained how the creative team adapted the production from previous works.
“I tried to merge the 2015 movie — and especially the jokes that everyone loves — back into the original play, while assuring that we are respecting the style and the tonality that the original play has,” Iam said.
Weinberg junior William Wang — co-founder of Eighthday Theatre and producer of “Goodbye Mr. Loser” — said the team behind the show had to make some adjustments to the source material to better suit the production for its cast and the audience.
The team wanted the show to be authentic and resonate with its audience of Northwestern students, especially with regard to the costume design, Wang said. This led them to purchase all of the costumes from China, he said.
“The moment I see the costumes, it definitely brings a lot of memories and nostalgia for me,” Wang said. “I feel like the Chinese public school costume — even though it’s really hideous — that’s part of me when I grew up. That’s a part of my school experience, part of my childhood, and it’s just really exciting to see these costumes back on stage again.”
While “Goodbye Mr. Loser” certainly belongs to the genre of comedy, the story is also deeply meaningful.
Medill junior Lucia Shen, who portrays a nurse and student in the production, said most of the show’s themes emerge in the scenes that deal with underlying elements of “what if?”
“If you did something differently, how would your life turn out?” she asked. “I think that’s a question that a lot of us wonder all the time. I think, in the end, (the story) is just telling us to stay in the present. It’s the little things that matter, little moments that matter.”
Speaking more to those little moments with her castmates, Shen is excited for the classroom scenes in “Goodbye Mr. Loser,” not only because she’s in them, but also because of how carefree and joyous they are, she said.
Shen said she enjoys the little moments that occur during rehearsal and on set with Eighthday Theatre.
“Being on set and then being able to observe all those interactions, being able to laugh, being able to just have fun — it means so much more to me,” Shen said.
Wang expressed a similar sentiment. He said he hopes the show is enjoyable for both the cast and audience, and encourages them to contribute further to the Eighthday Theatre community.
As the show represents a cultural staple — and the manifestation of months of hard work — Iam is excited to share the production with the masses, he said.
“It has a very strong cultural significance,” Iam said. “We really wanted to bring this play onto the campus of Northwestern to share this joy with our Chinese community, and to have more international audiences to get to know about Chinese theater.”
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Twitter: @JacksonWeier
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