FRANCESCA WHITEHEAD has never performed before an audience larger than her class at St Stephen's Girls' School, but soon she will stand on stage in front of hundreds of people. It is a daunting prospect, but one that the eight-year-old takes in her stride.
'I will just tell myself, 'I can do it', and I will,' said Francesca. This gritty determination to succeed and set new goals is what Breaking Barriers is all about. The show marks a first for Hong Kong as well, bringing together local students and mainland acrobats.
Breaking Barriers is being promoted as 'edu-tainment' - a mixture of education and entertainment. The theme is travel and the performance is divided into three acts: land, sea and air travel. From Marco Polo to the Wright brothers, the audience will be taken on a journey through mankind's great travel breakthroughs.
Francesca, dressed as an alien in gold and silver with a multi-coloured wig, and her two alien cohorts, Richard Kennedy and Terence Young, will narrate, guiding the audience through the 21 scenes. All three child narrators are bilingual. Both Francesca and Terrence speak English and Cantonese and Richard speaks English and Romanian.
While the show promises to be informative, it will certainly be an incredible feat of logistics. More than 100 students from seven schools will come together on stage with the Tai Yuan Acrobatic Troupe. And since the 17 teenage mainland acrobats only arrived in Hong Kong on Sunday, the show took some careful choreographing.
Creative director Dr Vicki Ooi Cheng-har said the performance was put together in sections, with acrobats and students rehearsing in small groups and only coming together in the final days before the production.
The framework for the show was set, but the rest of the performance evolved through Dr Ooi's sessions with the students. Working around a theme, students were encouraged to find creative ways of portraying world events.
