Photo provided to China Daily

No technical help was used. The actors were asked at the beginning of the rehearsal to keep their eyes tightly shut. They were trained as if they were really blind with the help of teachers from schools for blind children. They were taught to judge direction by the perception of light and then move around by measuring the stage with their steps.

"My character wears sunglasses in the play, so I have the chance to open my eyes once in a while without being seen. But after I open them, everything goes wrong," says Liu Xiaofeng, the lead actor.

"In the darkness, voices and even breath are the guide, and in this way I get to truly feel the inner world of blind people. So in order to maintain a stable state, I have to always close my eyes and find the right tempo of acting by only feeling."

The actors have done more than just close their eyes and stumble along, Guo says. They roll their eyes, squeeze their eyebrows and move their mouth, all in an acquired manner so as to resemble the look of the blind.

"But a similar look is not the most important thing. You have to convince the audience that you are a blind man by acting out his inner feelings. If you successfully do so, the audience won't even care if you have shut eyes or not," Guo says.

"It is of utmost importance whether the actors can render onstage the blind masseurs' spiritual life. That's what I am looking for, to reveal their self-esteem, self-abasement, extreme personalities and so on."

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