When East meets West on the stage: Shakespeare and Tang Xianzu

A Midsummer Night's DREAMING Under the Southern Bough made a splash in Beijing Tuesday. Students from the University of Leeds performed a contemporary adaptation based on the Chinese ancient play Nanke Ji. [Photo by Zhu Xingxin/ China Daily]

The performance, consisting of two plays performed by student groups from two universities, is inspired by the common element of the two original texts -- "dream". In the adaptation, the UIBE team has changed the location of Shakespeare's A Midsummer from woods near Athens to a Chinese milieu, with new modern plots that reflect Chinese young people's lives and that question the nature of love. Meanwhile, the production team from the University of Leeds has redesigned the original plots of Tang Xianzu's Nanke Ji opera without damaging its story flame and theme, creating a contemporary response to the Chinese classic play.

"We've made many changes during the production of the new play," said Li Ruru, curator and producer of the project and professor of Chinese Theatre Studies at the University of Leeds , "and the hardest part is to tell a complete story within just one hour". That’s despite complexity in the original drama and huge cultural differences.

Amazingly, this new version just made it all happen, by making the play easily understandable to people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, yet still preserving the original philosophical theme and depth.