INTERRUPTED DREAM (Bangkok Edition) is a riveting process of Zuni’s Co-Artistic Director Danny Yung’s experimentations in the past five years, and a tribute to the dramatist Tang Xianzu.
INTERRUPTED DREAM experimental theatre performance staged in Bangkok with the collaboration of Chulalongkorn University and Bangkok Theatre Festival is directed and designed by Yung, this latest edition of INTERRUPTED DREAM is an uninterrupted effort in de-/re-constructing traditional Chinese theatre and classic literature.
In the past five years, inspired by the classic Interrupted Dream, Yung made several rounds of experimentations and interpretations on dreams in theatre. Yung is keen on adapting the omnipresent “one table two chairs” setup in traditional Chinese theatres into a platform for engaging various cross-generation, cross-consciousness and cross-culture dialogues and practices.
About the classic Interrupted Dream
The dramatist Tang Xianzu (1550-1616) was a dejected government official yet successful on the creative side. However, his theatre plays were banned by the emperor several times. Tang has a collection of four plays on dreams included Peony Pavilion (1598) in which Interrupted Dream is the tenth act of a total fifty five. The tenth act depicts a restrained teen girl in a feudal society breaking the rule by visiting the forbidden back garden to experience the splendour of spring bodily under her maid’s influence. After the visit, the teen girl meeting up with a handsome stranger in her dream. They made love. She woke up lovesick, painted a self portrait, asked to bury it in the back garden in her will. She died and was buried in the back garden under the peony pavilion.
Interrupted Dream is an official programme of the 20th Bangkok Theatre Festival
Danny Yung
Cedric Chan
Liu Xiaoyi
Martin ChoyChuk Yin ManEllen KongHelen KwokDan Tse
Xiao Xiangping
Steve Hui (aka Nerve)
John Wong Chi Wai
Benny WooThomas Ng Cho Yin
Twinny ChengSing Lo
Mak Kwok Fai
Chow Pak Shing
The Return of Soul at the Peony Pavilion, written by dramatist Tang Xianzu in 1598, included Scene 10 – Interrupted Dream. The scene provided us significant rooms for imagination and the vicissitudes of life presented in and outside the theatre. Among the variety of symbols and narratives, we went with the flow to look for individual and collective imaginative space.
Peony Pavilion was banned several times 450 years back. Every time it was restaged, it turned into even more indulged and plaintively showy. Now, all of us, please look at this theatre, look at its confines and taboos, and attend to the way we see and be seen in Interrupted Dream.
I constantly feel that the forward-thinking theatre arts embodies the potential of discovering and challenging the boundaries of theatre arts, and the world that lay beyond such boundaries; at the same time, understanding and managing the way of thinking and guidelines beyond theatre arts. Those who are concerned about culture would have the same sentiment, creating is about triggering development of culture, including that of the greater cultural environment and policies. The ‘Culture’ we discuss here has evolved beyond arts and culture to the capital ‘C’ – Culture at large. The ‘culture’ is a classification of the arts with quantifiable measures, such as you are a Kunqu artist and she is a Javanese dancer; you are a performer and he is a stagehand; how many performances he needs to do this year and how many audience members she needs to draw this year…… ‘culture’ has become part of the economic consumption, promoted as part of education, seen as a service to society or touted as a national branding. These are all distinctly quantifiable features that can be clearly managed by policy makers. I constantly feel that a forward-thinking Interrupted Dream in the Year of Gengzi embodies the potential of discovering and challenging the boundaries of the stage, and the world that lay beyond such boundaries; at the same time, understanding and managing the way of thinking and guidelines beyond the stage itself.
Producer: Wong Yuewai
Stage Manager: Carmen Cheng
Thai Translation: Pawit Mahasarinand
Assistant Stage Manager: Vienna Choi
Production Coordinator: Ricky Cheng
Tour Coordinator: Stephy Yeung
