Lone-woman play Emily of Emerald Hill in town this week

The lone-woman play Emily of Emerald Hill will return to Beijing this Wednesday to Sunday, after its first round of performances in April.

Led by Malaysian director Deric Gan, it stars Chinese actress Ren Mingsong and is set in Singapore between the 1930s and '60s.

The play tells the story of Emily, a Straits-born Chinese woman, or Nyonya, who married a rich man from a similar background at age 14, and later became a powerful family matriarch.

Along the way, she found her compulsive efforts to succeed and her control over the family led to her son's suicide and her husband's estrangement from her.

In the end, from dealing with her daughter, she learns that love is about setting people free.

The Chinese emigrants to olden-day Malaya and Singapore have kept their traditions alive while embracing local lifestyles, mainly Malay. They have a culture of their own, with language, cuisine and fashion thrown in.

Since its debut in 1985, Emily of Emerald Hill, which was written by award-winning Singaporean playwright Stella Kon, has become iconic on stages in Singapore and Malaysia.

In 1999, when Gan watched the play for the first time, he was fascinated by male actors' portrayal of the only role in it - that of a woman. The play also reminded him of his grandmother.

"I read many reviews of the play and the audiences saw the show and said, 'That's my mother,' or 'That's my grandmother'. Though Emily belongs to a particular time, it's in a way the story of every Nyonya - clever, beautiful and hard-working," he says.

Since then, Gan, who studied medicine in college, decided to leave all that behind and turn to theater. In 2003, he came from Melaka to study at Central Academy of Drama in Beijing with a full scholarship and devoted his time to researching monodrama.

The reason he came to Beijing was because his idols - drama director Meng Jinghui and Chinese movie actress Gong Li - were both earlier graduates of CAD.

The Chinese capital's long tradition of drama also kept Gan from leaving the city.

In 2006, he translated the script of Emily of Emerald Hill and staged the monodrama for the first time at CAD as his main degree project.

"Besides introducing the culture of Nyonya, I also wanted more audiences to enjoy monodrama, which is not so popular in China," says Gan, who has been associated with more than 40 theatrical works, such as musicals, operas and dramas since he graduated in 2006.

In 2010, he obtained his doctoral degree in theater and Chinese traditional opera.

In the latest stage version, Ren, 35, plays Emily of different ages - between 14 and 80. The actress, who has already worked with Gan on some 10 plays since 2008, says that Emily has so far been the most challenging role for her.

"I didn't feel nervous when I took the job since I trusted Gan. But when I stood on the stage (during a rehearsal), facing 500 empty seats alone, I was scared, ... the questions in my head was, 'How would I manage to make people sit there and watch the play for two hours all by myself?'" Ren says.

When she finished the first performance, she felt like she was dying, Ren says. But it's also one of the most rewarding roles she has played.

"One great thing is that I learned to appreciate my mother. I want to know more about her as a bride, as a wife and what she went through," Ren says.

"Although this is a one-person play, there's always some interaction with the audiences. They are Emily's friends, who listen to her life story."