THOUSAND OAKS, Calif.—John Franz, who works as a director of marketing in the insurance industry, was enthralled with the unique storytelling presented by Shen Yun Performing Arts at a recent performance on March 26.
“We love it,” Mr. Franz said, who was at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza with his father.
“It’s very colorful and amazing—just the live entertainment. You’re used to live entertainment with singing and a lot of talking. Just how they do everything with no talking and just the visual aspect of it is phenomenal.”
He liked how the stories were presented in “small little snippets, how they do everything not all in one bit, to where you get overloaded.”
“The projection is phenomenal: The way they drop in and fly up and they come back—it’s unbelievable. All he keeps saying to me is ‘just beautiful,’” referring to comments from his father, George Franz.
The elder Mr. Franz was impressed. “I’m ready for the third time. Third time,” he said.
“The music is really great,” John Franz said. “You hear about classical stuff and ancient Chinese. [But] being an American from [Silicon] Valley, you don’t get a lot of cultural type of things.”
“The Asian aspect [of Shen Yun], especially the Chinese music, it’s almost heartfelt and uplifting, is the way you can say it,” he said.
“The thing about it is you can see how its people are struggling and never give up. It’s something that you feel when you leave here, like young love.
“But then, you see the older people that are involved with it too, and helping the young people. And then the young people that are not willing to listen to the old people. Then, they finally come around and actually listen to the old people.
“It’s something that you always hear, right? So it’s something that I can come around to, being almost 60 now. When I was younger, I never listened to my parents. And now, all of a sudden, I have my 93-year-old [father]. I should have listened to you a long time ago.”
Mr. Franz had this to say about the performers: “I think they’re phenomenal. I think a lot of people, especially Americans, have no idea what they’re missing here.”
“We have nothing that’s like this,” he said.
Mr. Franz commented that most people only know about “Chinese shows like acrobatics and gymnastics. And this is way more. This is like a Broadway theatrical. It’s something that everybody needs to experience one time in their life because you don’t know what you’re missing.”
