
Richard III (Li cha san shi), directed by WANG Xiaoying, The National Theatre of China (Beijing) | Premiered at the London Globe during the 2012 Globe to Globe Festival Read More
Richard III (Li cha san shi), directed by WANG Xiaoying, The National Theatre of China (Beijing) | Premiered at the London Globe during the 2012 Globe to Globe Festival Read More
In 2016 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death, the Chong Qing Theatre Company staged a new experimental production of the tragic play Macbeth. This adaptation written by Cai Fujun from the Art Institute of Fu Jian Province features only three performers, and the setting is a slaughterhouse which includes a pool of water in the center surrounded by a raised platform and thick chains hanging from the ceiling. Macbeth is played by a woman while Lady Macbeth is played by a man. However, their roles are reversed twice over the course of the play. A third actor plays the roles of Banquo, Macduff, and Fleance. The three witches do not appear on stage, but their voices are heard delivering the prophesies. The deaths of Duncan and Macbeth are represented by the running of electric saws with sparks flying. Read More
Coriolanus was co-directed by Lin Zhaohua and Yi Liming and performed by the Beijing People’s Arts Theatre. Created in 2007, the production starred Pu Cunxi (as Coriolanus) and Xue Shan and was staged again in 2013 for the Edinburgh Festival.
Read interview with director Ma Yong’an where he discusses this jingju adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello.
This production was adapted into huangmei opera and performed at the Ruijin Theatre, Shanghai, China, by the Anhui Huangmei Opera Troupe, April 20-22, 1986. Read More
In the 1980 Macbeth, Xu Xiaozhong, another 1950s Moscow-trained director, drew a parallel between the socialist new China and the Renaissance idealized by Engels. Xu’s vision of Macbeth was as “a giant” who “wanders, stumbles and eventually drowns in … whirlpools of blood.” [Note 9] The “giant” image derived from Engels, and the image of “stumbling” came from Marx’s description of Louis Napoleon. [Note 10] Xu followed Shakespeare in showing that Macbeth “is destroyed by his own individual ambition.” Xu’s interpretation emphasized, however, that Macbeth had the potential to become a revered national hero. Yet Macbeth, in addition to ruining himself, ruined his country: “Macbeth is also a tragedy of the people. Shakespeare reveals that a careerist and tyrant like Macbeth can bring disaster to his ancestral land and its people” (Xu Xiaozhong 1996, 243). Citing Marx and Soviet Shakespeareans, Xu declared: “Shakespeare not only wrote a tragedy about an individual, it was more a tragedy of history at a turning point” (1996, 240).
In China, theatre is expected to propagandize the government’s policies, and there were suggestions that Xu’s production represented an attack on the “Gang of Four” whose trial was then in progress. Although this would have been politically astute, Xu rejected such “high praise.” Xu had a strong social consciousness and wanted to deal with the serious questions facing China. As a sincere believer in Marx and Engels’s writings on realism, he would not simply echo current Party propaganda. Nor, however, was he content with Kott’s idea of “Shakespeare our contemporary,” since Xu accepted Marx’s view that dramatic characters should not be reduced to “mere mouthpieces of the spirit of the times.” Nonetheless, striking parallels emerged through Xu’s staging between Macbeth and the leaders, not excluding Mao himself, whose hubris had been responsible for so many disasters in China.
Lear and the Thirty-seven-fold Path of a Bodhisattva, performed by Performance Workshop, premiered at the Kwai Ching Theatre, Hong Kong, March 2000, as part of the Experimental Shakespeare festival. It was also performed in Taipei, 2001. Read More
King Qi’s Dream is an adaptation of King Lear performed in the Beijing Opera style and directed by Ou Yangming. In an ancient Kingdom there lives an old king. One day announce a big decision to divide his kingdom into three parts for his three daughters to govern. His two elder daughters agree with their father and so they obtained their land. But his youngest daughter gets no land for she opposes his idea. Years later the two elder daughters drives their father out, making him wander in the wild. His loyal subjects, Kun Fu and Xue Ying (his youngest daughter), saves his life. He wants to take back his power and kingdom but it is too late for one of his officials has taken over the power to rule the kingdom. Read More
Lear hands over control of his global business empire to his daughters. In his Shanghai penthouse, he asks them to justify their inheritance. The older sisters flatter their father in elegant Chinese but English educated Cordelia, no longer fluent in her father’s tongue, says “Nothing” and the loss of face sends Lear into a spiral of fury and madness. Read More
The Tragedy of Prince Zi Dan (Revenge of the Prince), directed by Shi Yu-kun, is an adaptation of Hamlet in the style of jingju by the Shanghai Peking Opera in 2006. Read More
In 928 A.D. a power struggle emerges in the palace of China’s emperor (Chow Yun-Fat). A cruel man, he is secretly having his wife (Gong Li) poisoned with a substance that will eventually drive her insane. Meanwhile the empress is having an affair with Prince Wan (Ye Liu), her husband’s son from a previous marriage. But the prince secretly wishes to run away with Chan (Li Man), the daughter of the imperial doctor. Read More
The Banquet is a 2006 Chinese film, also known as Legend of the Black Scorpion. It is a loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and is set in 10th century China. Read More