MimiRichi | May 31 | Guangming Culture and Arts Center

MimiRichi, Ukraine’s treasure of physical comedy, will grace the Shenzhen stage with their signature work “Paper World” at Guangming Culture and Arts Center. Built from a string of wildly inventive comic vignettes, “Paper World” transforms an everyday object — a plain sheet of paper — into the creative motor of an entire performance, inviting audiences into a theater ruled by imagination rather than logic.

The production opens in a deceptively ordinary way: A clown sweeps up discarded scraps of paper. The next moment the papers seem to come alive — chasing, multiplying and upending the stage’s order. From there the show unfolds as a continuous cascade of physical invention: exaggerated yet precise body work, vivid sound design, and spontaneous shifts of action that let surreal, absurd and hilarious ideas arrive one after another.

Onstage the plain paper continually mutates. It grows, stacks and tears into forms that become monsters, barriers, hiding places and coveted trophies. The clown hides from it, fights over it, gathers it into new shapes that speak of dreams, desire and collective imagination. This is not chaos for its own sake but a deliberately “ordered disorder” — MimiRichi’s mature control of comedic structure letting apparent mayhem reveal deeper shape and meaning.

After the riotous interlude, the same paper softens into tenderness. It no longer sows disorder but becomes a medium for connection — a poetic metaphor for sharing, coexistence and feeling.

“Paper World” has won international acclaims at Edinburgh Festival, Arosa International Humor Festival in Switzerland, and Barcelona International Clown Festival. In China, it has completed more than 200 performances with positive audience response.

MimiRichi, founded in 1989, is one of Ukraine’s most internationally influential comedy ensembles, standing among the world’s leading mime and physical theater artists.

Time: 3 p.m., May 31

Venue: Guangming Culture and Arts Center, Guangming District (光明文化艺术中心)

Metro: Line 6 to Fenghuang Town Station (凤凰城站), Exit B