Chinese theatre finally gets its centre-stage moment

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Theatre lovers are almost out of time to take advantage of a rare opportunity to go on a deep dive into Chinese theatrical history with three extraordinary productions at the country’s two biggest repertory theatre companies.

The Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., is currently staging not one, but two adaptations of 13th-century plays from the Yuan dynasty about seeking justice, or revenge, for the dead.

Company member Michael Man’s The Orphan of Chao, a telescoped version of Ji Junxiang’s play about the near extermination of a family line after a palace power struggle, and American playwright Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig’s Snow in Midsummer, a combination murder mystery, ghost story and family epic inspired by The Injustice to Dou E that Moved Heaven and Earth by Guan Hanqing, both close on Oct. 5.

Meanwhile, the Stratford Festival has its biggest critical hit of the season with Salesman in China, a brand-new play by Leanna Brodie and Jovani Sy about cultures clashing behind the scenes of a 1983 production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman in Beijing. The English-Mandarin bilingual production, which has generated international interest, closes Oct. 26.

(Both Snow and Salesman will be remounted at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa later this season.)

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The Globe and Mail’s J. Kelly Nestruck spoke over Zoom with Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster, director of The Orphan of Chao and star of Snow in Midsummer; and Nina Lee Aquino, director of Snow in Midsummer and a dramaturge on Salesman in China about this centre-stage moment for Chinese theatre history and Asian-Canadian theatre artists in Ontario.

Can you tell me a little bit about how The Orphan of Chao and Snow in Midsummer ended up in repertory at a festival that, for most of its existence, limited its classics to contemporaries of Bernard Shaw?

Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster: Nina, TC [Tim Carroll, the Shaw Festival’s artistic director] had been talking to you for a while about Snow in Midsummer, isn’t that right?

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Nina Lee Aquino: It was all set to go – until I got the job as artistic director of the English Theatre at the National Arts Centre. I said: “I can’t do this right now. Will you wait for me?”

Lancaster: TC then talked to both Michael and I towards the end of 2022 about The Orphan of Chao. Michael and I get along well and have a friendship and a working relationship – and Michael also had been teaching some classical Chinese drama at George Brown College.

Did you have much experience or understanding or knowledge of classical Chinese drama, specifically from the Yuan era?

Lancaster: No, I was aware of it as a hole in my education – and saw this as an exciting opportunity as a result to do some research and immerse myself.

Why there was a golden age of drama at that time in China?

Aquino: The only reason why I know of the dynasties and the plays is because I’m also working on Salesmen in China. Playwright and director Jovanni Sy had given all of us on the team a brilliant Ted talk of Chinese history in 10 minutes, which explains what was happening politically that obviously influenced the kinds of dramatic writings that were coming out during that time period.

Lancaster: The Mongols were the occupying force in the Yuan era. So you had these scholar officials who had been part of the court and writing and performing within the governmental structure, and suddenly were all unemployed, is my understanding. Drama flourished as a result of the occupation, and they had time to write these plays. Both plays were being written under occupation, with a dose of social commentary, political commentary.

Aquino: In my head, they’re like sister pieces. In Snow, Francis really kind of takes what was trending back then – the political, the social – and contemporizes it and puts it in this container is just so quirky and so modern. Whereas Orphan stays true to kind of classical lines, text wise – although Courtney does a brilliant job of contemporizing the action as director.

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Courtney, can you tell me a little bit about the decision to make your production reflect current struggles around the world, the visual references to, say, pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

Lancaster: Michael wanted to stay true to the original text and make sure that it maintains that sense of social commentary, and I was immediately drawn to that desire as well. Let’s try to make a bit of a statement about legacy, maintaining a hope for a people, a hope for a history, a hope for a culture that might have to hide for a while, in the form of the child, the orphan in our story.

Aquino: If the Orphan of Chao was a way to kind of comment on the past and where we’re at now, Snow takes it into future. If we are not careful, if we don’t start righting the wrongs, if we don’t start bringing justice – not just a personal justice but climate justice – we are heading for disaster.

Courtney, I was interested in the question you asked in your director’s note, about you and your company of Asian and Canadian performers and creatives: “What claim do we have to the shapes, gestures and conventions of Chinese Opera?” Can I put that back to both of you?

Lancaster: These plays are taken from Chinese opera from specifically zaju Yuan Dynasty dramas – a very specific music-variety show form. There’s fantastic Chinese opera companies in Canada who are doing the genuine article. Some of my company spent their childhoods going to Chinese opera with their parents. Some of my company hasn’t but have been training closely in martial arts for many years, which has some of the same poses for example. And for some of them, like myself, it’s a new discovery and a research.

Aquino: When I was taking my MA in theatre, those studies were pretty much at the forefront. But with Snow in Midsummer, everything is in there, the influences that Francis had are all in the text. I’ve just been given a playground; I’ve been given the interpretation glasses.

Lancaster: We’re not doing Chinese opera – which takes a lifetime to learn – but we can reclaim some of it. It is part of our lineage.

Aquino: When we’re talking about the global canon of theatrical form, we should be thinking: Why commedia dell’arte and not Chinese opera?

Lancaster: I’ll give props to Nina Lee Aquino – shoulders of giants – bringing forth Asian Canadian theatre through your whole career. I’ve been able to access a pretty much entirely Asian creative team of people who’ve been able to come up and work as a result of the community you’ve built, Nina.

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Nina, you co-founded fu-Gen Asian Canadian Theatre Company in 2002 with Richard Lee, David Yee and Leon Aureus at a time when there was little work by or starring Asian-Canadian theatre artists in Canada. Does it feel like some sort of moment for that artistic movement?

Aquino: Two plays here at Shaw, one massive one at Stratford. Can I retire tomorrow? My hope is that it’s not one and done, but this is just the beginning.

This interview has been condensed and edited.