Behind the Scenes in Beijing; A Bi-lingual Midsummer Night's Dream

Students and faculty from UMD’s School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies (TDPS) blog for the College Park Patch this summer from far-off Beijing.  The group traveled to China to begin rehearsals of their bi-lingual, joint production of A Midsummer Night's Dream with students from the National Academy of Chinese Theater Arts.

The project's goal is to communicate the message, "We're really just not that different," delivered uniquely through mixed casts of Chinese students speaking their lines in Chinese, and American students speaking their lines in English - to each other.  Imagine a pair of lovers on-stage, one Chinese and one American, gazing into each other's eyes and speaking their lines in their native language. 

Overhead subtitles enable patrons to follow it all closely.  Under the direction of TDPS faculty Helen Huang and Mitchell Hebert, the performances will be presented in Beijing and College Park in October, 2011.  

Our third full day in China was a big day full of big challenges. Today was our first day of meetings for our collaborative “Midsummer” venture with the National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts. After two days of sight-seeing the group was ready and anxious to get down to work.

We hopped on a bus sent specially for us at 8:15 and were greeted at the university by the head of opera design, Li Wei. Professor Li showed us the Academy's stage and backstage areas, and we were even given the opportunity to peak into their costume storage and look at some of their collection of elaborate Peking Opera head gear, costumes, and beards. With a little prodding from Helen, Dan even tried on one of the beards and practiced a few Peking Opera gestures for the group

The National Academy went out of their way to make us feel welcome. Professor Yu Finlan, who had met our team during his visit to Maryland in March, greeted Mitch with a big hug, and, when we came into the conference room, Helen translated a huge red banner that had been hung in honor of our contingent's visit and the collaboration we were undertaking.

The Academy's President gave us a formal greeting that reminded everyone involved of the significance of this endeavor and the relationships we were forging together.

After introductions, it was time to get down to business, and there was a lot of business to get to. We wasted no time in getting to tricky questions like changes to the script and casting. As the person responsible for our script cuts, I was relieved that Yu received our proposed changes and Mitch's ideas on casting graciously and agreed.

When it came time to discuss the production's designs, Drew and Laree impressed Yu with their presentations. He was particularly interested in Drew's forest of hanging fabrics and Drew's vision for creating a dreamscape, and he felt that Laree had captured the essence of Peking Opera in her renderings of Oberon and Titania.

We had a generous lunch, provided by the Academy's President. The food was fantastic, although we've practically come to expect that since every meal we've had has been better than the last since we've been here. Three of group (and I can't say I count myself among them) were so impressed by the spread that they tried the fried duck feet.

Back at the Academy, negotiations resumed on the designs. The Academy's design students presented a bevy of options that could serve as a compliment to Drew's offering, and, in the end, Professor Yu identified the one that stood out and suited our purposes best.

The effort to come to this decision was intense, but, through their negotiations over the scenic design, Mitch and Yu came to a fundamental agreement on the nature of the story and the world of the play that we're creating together and forged a plan for the production that we are all very happy with. Having decided to put final decisions on costumes off until tomorrow and resolved the dates for the performances in America and China, we headed off for a quiet dinner of dumplings and vegetables before carrying on to an evening of Peking Opera.

For a group of English-speaking, still jet-lagged Terps the Opera was a challenge. Especially since the theater seemed to get warmer the longer we were there and intermission never came. But the sense of accomplishment at having seen what was (according to the applause of the Chinese audience around us) a stellar performance by an excellent female vocalist and very funny male comic actor proved to be worth the effort to engage with this very unfamiliar but also very beautiful genre of performance.

Frank, a veteran of theater in countless languages, suggested that the fun of seeing a show in a language you don't speak is making up your own story. I enjoyed piecing the story together over and over until I had something that made sense to me and listening to the audience to try to experience the performance through their eyes and ears.

Ours is a very experienced group. We all have years of experience making theatre. I have been in academic theatre and running my own touring independent company for five years, and that experience pales in comparison to the decades of work in notable and prestigious venues accomplished by the faculty on the trip. But no matter how much experience we've collectively brought to this collaboration, we are all growing and learning in ways we couldn't have imagined before embarking on our trip.

Experience is often difficult to acquire, but, once you have it, it's almost always something you're glad to have. And I think I speak for all of us when I say we are glad of the experiences that we had today.
--
Rob C. Thompson
PhD Candidate, University of Maryland
Artistic Director, Odd Act Theatre Group
www.oddact.com