It is the first time for Mathias Woo, Zuni’s Co-Artistic Director to cooperate with the well-known stage actress Perry Chiu to re-interpret Read Sing Eileen Chang. The piece features texts selected from Eileen Chang’s novels and essays in the form of storytelling and singing, which are then integrated with creative stage technology by Zuni Innovation Lab led by Mathias Woo. The writings of Eileen Chang become three-dimensional as a Hong Kong cum cross-strait team of musicians and performers engage in a creative experiment on sound, acting and technology. The show combines technology and live performance, blending a variety of traditional and modern forms of storytelling and singing, which are then juxtaposed with sounds and images from Zuni’s past works on Eileen Chang to create a new piece of work.

Zuni has reinterpreted various works by Eileen Chang, one of the most influential Chinese female writers in modern history. The year 2020 marked the 100th Anniversary of the birth of Eileen Chang. In a tribute to this legendary writer, Zuni launched the Eileen Chang 100 – Read Sing Eileen Chang. The different versions of the play launched over the past few years have been highly praised, including the live-stream at the Studio Theatre in June 2020, the live performance at the Grand Theatre in November of the same year, the screening in Huayi Chinese Festival of Arts and MOViE MOViE Life is Art Film Festival in 2021. It is finally possible to meet audiences in mainland China at the Aranya Theater Festival 2023, to show the sensory and spiritual shock brought by the combination of Eileen Chang and stage art technology.

“It is rare that although there were only one actor and one actress on the stage talking, it can still be so intriguing and inviting.”

– Yonfan, Director

“The enlarged photos and words of Eileen Chang have a swirling, enticing and gravitating power. Many paragraphs from Dui Zhao Ji have been selected and performed, which is not very often, being translated onto the stage also has brought a sense of immersive and present.”
– Carole Hoyan, Associate Professor of the Department of Chinese Language and Literature, the Chinese University of Hong Kong

“Using the words of Eileen Chang to create her sentimental chronicle is very interesting. It is also crucial to get the young to meet and know about Eileen’s literary legacy.”
– So Kowk-wan, Associated Program Director, Hong Kong Arts Festival

Texts, photos, illustrations from Eileen Chang’s works

© Roland Soong and Elaine Soong through Crown Culture Corporation

The programme is under the exclusive sponsorship of The Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC), as one of the many initiatives supported by the HKJC to mark the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the HKSAR.