Chinese alternative drama and small theater groups are at their best in summer. These nonprofessionals are mostly drama and arts graduates or students still in theater academies throughout China.

They are passionate about theater, not the standard easy-going fare that's popular on the commercial stage. They get together and rehearse as hard and diligently as professionals, if not more so.

These young drama lovers, however, often have no regular income and no stable income from their performances.

Many of these groups come and go as not everyone can persist in the pursuit of art as they get older and face more obligations.

But these groups are always emerging and are particularly active during summer, when student actors can enjoy their long holidays.

Some of them adapt and perform classical dramas and standards, Chinese and Western, seeking to find their own styles. Others are more daring and create their own performances based on how they feel about society.

Shanghai Daily has picked an interesting one titled "Lunatics," staged in Mecoon, an alternative drama space well-known among pioneering drama fans. It's performed through Sunday by the Nantes Barrel Theater Group.

In the 80-minute play, there are two protagonists in wartime, seeking refuge in a forest primeval. They enact the primary, primal relationship of all human beings - the relation between a man and woman from their first encounter to the end.

A man and woman, "everyman," pass through stages like suspicion, understanding, bonding, love and hatred.

It's not a sweet, garden-variety romance. There is no "romantic" scene. The ambience is tense and sometimes violent.

The metaphoric script is about humans responding to their inner selves, to each other and the outside environment under extreme circumstances.

The Nantes Barrel Theater Group is a collective that was formed in 2007. It's just one of many small theater groups struggling to survive with few resources and unstable income.

Most members of the company are drama students or workers in drama-related areas. They have squeezed time out from ordinary life since April to rehearse.

The scriptwriter is Chen Guofeng, a famous stage drama scholar and university professor, who goes by his pen name Mai Tian, something like "The Catcher in the Rye," regarded with nostalgia by many Chinese intellectuals.

Chen doesn't consider the play an absurdist drama although he admits there are surreal and absurdist elements.

The story is simple, almost a cliche. In a fictional world war, a man wearing the uniform of a general is shocked and terrified. He escapes to a forest and encounters a young woman.

Both have witnessed cruel killings during the war, and are afraid of trusting each other though they know they cannot survive alone in the forest.

They experience complicated feelings.

It would have been a real cliche if it ended happily ever after in a tranquil forest far away from war and conflict.

"Lunatics" doesn't end like this. The ending is surprising, yet realistic based on unfolding of human nature in the play.

(Shanghai Daily July 10, 2009)