After Life | Hirokazu Kore-eda’s celebrated classic | Rebuilding memories, beholding life at this moment

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s celebrated classic
Rebuilding memories, beholding life at this moment
After Life

 
【HKRep】Can memory define an entire life? The setting for After Life is a transit station to Heaven. Newly arrived passengers must make a seemingly simple yet difficult decision within a limited amount of time: to choose a single memory of one’s life that will live out for eternity. This isn’t just a search for “the best” or “the happiest” moment, but an emotional journey digging directly into their hearts as they comb through life’s regrets and obsessions.
 
Award-winning playwright Jack Thorne adapted renowned Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda’s classic After Life as a piece of theatre, transforming the gentle gaze of the moving image into authentic, nuanced and fluid emotions on stage. Ever since its premiere at England’s National Theatre, the work has garnered critical acclaim for being “quiet yet profound”, with “its controlled narrative finding resonance deep in the audience’s hearts.” When the HKRep produced this work in its 2024‒25 season, two rounds of performances were added to its sold-out run. The revised production this season reunites HKRep Assistant Director Fong Chun Kit and HKRep Theatre Literature Manager Kwok Wing Hong, continuing the in-depth examination of life, bathing the audience in the warmth of memories while taking them by the hand to revisit what it means to live and summon the courage to bid farewell. After Life is based on a film by Hirokazu Kore-eda, adapted for the stage by Jack Thorne, translated by Kwok Wing Hong and directed by Fong Chun Kit, featuring Kalok Chan, ManMan Kwok, Angus Chan, Wong Hiu Yee, Chan Kiu, Chow Chi Fai, Karrie Tan, Wu Lui Fung, Cheung Ka Ying, Ng Ka Leung, Luk Ka Ki and Chu King Hei in the cast. The production runs from May 22^nd to June 7^th at the Hong Kong City Hall Theatre. Tickets are available now from URBTIX outlets. 
 
After Life: If memories must be measured palpably, are they two or three grams of feather? A bouquet of flowers? Or a hundred-ton ship?
 
If only a single memory can be replayed, how much should it weigh? Time with family or leisurely moments alone? After adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing—two or three grams for cuddling, several dozen for a passionate romance, a hundred tons for dialogue and murmurs—what else is left? After death, one must stop briefly at a transit station en route to Heaven. At this layover, guides help revive a precious memory for the deceased. Would it be about attachment or separation, something important or frivolous?
 
What if you… are me? 
 
Translator Kwok Wing Hong states: “If we say that the Hong Kong premiere of After Life focused on the lightness and heftiness of memories, this newly revised production provides us with the opportunity to burrow deeper into the ‘guides’ trapped in limbo at the transit station. During rehearsals, we keep pondering this question: How do people confront their memories? So often we are obsessed with finding the perfect and happiest moments we forget that in life, light and darkness coexist. Memories are never impersonal video replays; they help rebuild our self-image, which is aptly captured in the script equating illusion with reality. The process of accepting one’s full past through recognising what is ‘real’ in the ‘illusion’ is the magic that touches all of us not only in this play, but also in theatre itself. When we no longer avoid but are willing to accept both the good and the bad of our past, we truly establish our own existence. This time, After Life is not only a straightforward story about gentle farewells. We hope to bring forth something deeper, more philosophical, examining the choice of a single memory that lives out for eternity as well as how we bravely embrace every real ‘moment’ when we are alive.”
 
Director Fong Chun Kit shares the following: “One of play’s attributes that really attracts me is how memory becomes the tool as people contemplate life and death. Memories are specific. If this story takes place in Hong Kong and its characters are from this city, the passengers will recall taking walks in Tsim Sha Tsui and not a London park. Therefore, we must also address this question: ‘What do memories mean to us?’ This Hong Kong stage version will include local cultural characteristics emanating from different actors. These details will be savoured by the audience.”
 
About Translator  Kwok Wing Hong
Kwok Wing Hong is a graduate of the School of Drama of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (HKAPA) with a Master of Fine Arts (Honours) in Playwriting. While at the HKAPA, he was awarded a Sam Leung’s Studio scholarship; he was also a three-time recipient of the Cheung Tat Ming Playwriting Scholarship. Kwok’s Principle was nominated for Best Script at the 2018 Hong Kong Theatre Libre Awards and 2019 Hong Kong Drama Awards; he was nominated for Best Playwright at the 2019 Shanghai One Drama Awards. The screening version of Principle was awarded Best Script for the Hong Kong region at the 2022 Asian Academy Creative Awards. At the 2019 Hong Kong Theatre Libre Awards, his True Lies won Best Script. Later, he was nominated for “Script/Playwright of the Year” at the 2020 IATC(HK) Critics Awards. The State & Denki, a musical script he co-wrote with Hsu Cheng-ping, was among the finalists at the 19^th Taishin Arts Award. 
 
Kwok’s recent output includes such plays as Scapin in Jiānghú, Chap. 2023, Landing to Blossom and Principle (HKRep), True Lies (Poor Guy Diary), The Advocate (Chung Ying Theatre), The Courage to be Disliked (Theatre Farm) and the musical The State & Denki (Our Theatre x Theatre Space). His translated scripts include After Life (HKRep), Prima Facie (seeyousoon production), The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui and Mourning Becomes Electra (New Directors’ Movement, Theatre Horizon) and The Beauty Queen of Leenane (Project Roundabout).
 
Kwok Wing Hong currently serves as the HKRep’s Theatre Literature Manager.