Film critic Raymond Zhou presents a stage drama about power as his playwright debut. Zhang Kun reports.

Chinese critics sometimes are challenged by artists, authors or filmmakers who receive negative reviews and who respond by saying: "You can you up."

The Chinglish phrase can be translated in English to mean: "Why don't you do it yourself?"

Raymond Zhou, arguably the country's most famous film critic and a China Daily columnist, replied to this challenge with a play he wrote and directed.

The Ring Road is Zhou's debut as a playwright. He wrote the play in English in 2007. It was staged at a theater festival in California in 2010.

It was Stan Lai who suggested that his production partner, Beijing Magnificent Culture Co Ltd, present the play in Chinese.

"I agreed on the premise that I myself direct the production," Zhou says.

Within China's present TV and filmmaking mechanism, writers rarely become involved in shooting and editing. Zhou believes that's a serious problem that undermines quality.

The writer should be able to work alongside with the cast through the creative process, sometimes to argue with the director about his intentions and to achieve the best results, he believes.

"Fortunately for me, as both the playwright and director, the argument happens mostly in my head," Zhou says.

A first-time play director, Zhou is bold to experiment with new ideas, borrowing from opera quartet and sprinkling in references to Shakespeare. While he's confident about the story and narrative, he's not sure about the rhythm and tone onstage.

"Mr Lai agreed to be my artistic director, and helped me to work out some key parts," Zhou says.

Lai and his Performance Workshop have been an important force in contemporary Chinese theater in Taiwan since the 1980s. Magnificent is his mainland production partner that has produced all his plays since 2007.

The play's June premiere sold out in Beijing and has since started its China tour.

Four actors play eight roles onstage: man and wife, the actress and director, the housemaid and the bartender, and the student in the United States and his girlfriend in China. They chase, seduce, blackmail and love one another, forming a full circle of interpersonal relations.

Sex parties, blackmail with nude photographs and celebrities seeking spiritual guidance from the so-called guru - Zhou wrote the play about phenomena that he observed during decades of living in the US and later found the same things happening in China.

Zhou presents his observations of Chinese society but avoids moral judgments.

Even small towns are building ring roads with the country's breakneck urbanization. Most people aspire to get closer to the central ring, where power and resources are concentrated.

"But you may not be happy when you are in the central ring. Sometimes you need to jump outside to know what it is you truly want," the playwright says.

The Ring Road was partly inspired by Austrian dramatist Arthur Schitzler's (1862-1931) play Reigen (1897). The German original was about sex breaking through the boundaries of social status. Zhou borrowed the structure of a full circle of interpersonal relations.

In his play, sex is not the sole driver that keeps the circle going. Rather, everybody has his or her own motivation, Zhou says. The ring road, and the core of power it signifies, is the central theme.

The Ring Road has started a national tour from Hangzhou in June. Shanghai is the third city after Yunnan province's capital Kunming. It will go to Guangdong province's Guangzhou (July 19-20) and Shenzhen (Aug 1-2), Jiangsu's Nanjing (Aug 8-9), Liaoning's Shenyang (Aug 16-17), Shaanxi's Xi'an (Aug 24-26) and Sichuan's Chengdu (Aug 28-31).

Contact the writer at zhangkun@chinadaily.com.cn

IF YOU GO

The Ring Road

7:30 pm, July 11-12.

Lyceum Theater Shanghai, 57 South Maoming Lu (Road), Huangpu district, Shanghai.

021-6217-2426.

100-280 yuan ($16-45).

The maid (played by Jian Renzi) alerts her employer (played by Sun Xiaolele), a new arrival from the US who has just started his high-tech company in Shanghai, to the hidden dangers of the city's glitter.Photos by Li Yan / For China Daily

The high-tech entrepreneur, who's quickly rising to fame and fortune, and a movie star (played by Yang Xue), whose career is in decline, court each other for different reasons.

(China Daily 07/06/2014 page9)