20
The Arts
THE Sixth Hong Kong Festival of the Arts was the most ambitious yet. It lasted for a calendar month, and centred on an exhibition and theatre designed at the Star Ferry Pier by Mr J. A. Prescott of the University architectural department. Local societies and individuals displayed paintings, etchings, ceramics, sculpture, Ikebana, and photographs. Many thought the schools' exhibition of children's paintings and drawings to be the most rewarding feature of the whole festival. There was a special show of Han Dynasty ceramics and a collection of Italian prints from the Oriental Institute in Rome. Ivoryware, jade, beadware and masks were on show and visitors could see porcelain being painted and pottery being made. The arena stage supported a successful Garrison Players' production of Maxwell Anderson's 'The Bad Seed', some Peking operas and Cantonese playlets; highly-popular demonstrations by Gurkhas of their own and Scottish dancing; and many programmes of Chinese shadow-boxing and lion-dancing which were as acceptable to tourists as to the local people. Nightly talks were given in the lecture hall on many aspects of art, in English, Cantonese and Mandarin, with some most successful puppet shows-Chinese and English. Cantonese puppetry was a dying skill, which perhaps this festival has rescued. In all this there was greater variety than in earlier festivals, but the general lesson to be drawn from attendances and audience reaction is that the new City Hall theatre, concert hall and art gallery are badly needed, so that people may become used to looking at art regularly and acquire the ability to discriminate.
Elsewhere, as part of the festival, performances were given by the Hong Kong Choral Group of Vivaldi's Gloria and Mozart's 'Schauspieldirektor'; by the Jazz Club of its various streams of art; by blind youngsters of their own songs and music, taught by the Hong Kong Music Training Centre for the Blind; by the Chinese Drama Group of the Sino-British Club of Dr Liu Tsun-yin's