GPO Box No.211 - Chun-Shing Au / Theatre du Poulet

GPO Box No.211

“They can lock up my body, but they can’t lock up my mind”

My friend Siu Ming* and I have been sending letters to each other since he has been imprisoned two years ago, for participating in the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2019. 

We share our everyday life situation with each other. We share our dreams and limitations. We tried to talk about the political situation, but the officers censored thoroughly. We learn to read between the lines, and our writing becomes poetic. 

Even though I am writing these letters in a country with freedom of expression, staring at the blank paper, I feel the limitations of my own mind. What does mental freedom actually mean?

At this moment, we have exchanged around 12 letters. 

GPO Box No.211* is a dream-like silent journey, inviting us to a visual reflection on topics such as liberty of mind, isolation and communication through the lens of object theatre. An attempt to keep a friendship alive through the prison walls and across two continents - even if the distance sometimes seems unbridgeable.

*GPO Box No. 211 is the address I send my letters to, in order to keep my own address anonymous. 

* Name is anonymous

Chung Shing Au

Chun Shing Au (1989/Hong Kong) graduated with honours from The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts in 2012. Utilizing his acting background as a springboard - Chun Shing has been working across disciplinary boundaries, including mask & puppetry, projection design, sculpture, installations and performance since 2017. He lived for 25 years in Hong Kong, 6 years in Canada, and 1 year in Prague, CZ. He is now based in Amsterdam, NL. Thanks to his extended arts and theatre network, his works have been performed across those countries.

In his research, he is mostly interested in pushing the boundaries of mask and puppetry performance in order to explore the gap between visual poetics and political context. 

Chun Shing and his wife, Carmen-Lee formed Theatre du Poulet.

Queering Puppets Festival Amsterdam

From March 25 to 30, the Plein Theater and Cat Smits Company present the fourth edition of the International Queering Puppets Festival Amsterdam!

Since 2022, Queering Puppets Festival Amsterdam has offered a stage to queer perspectives through groundbreaking forms of visual theater, object theater and puppetry. This quirky festival defies the norm with a motley and bold program full of exuberant, visual outburst from the Netherlands and abroad.

The theme of QPFA 2025, CREATING BODIES, challenges us to see bodies not as just given, but as something that is constantly being created, shaped and defined — by ourselves, by others, by systems and structures, both political and cultural.