Danny yung in search of hybrid matter and mind: His experimental xiqu for zuni icosahedron

It is still the story of Peony Pavilion, 1 and still the melodious kunqu2 music resonating with the crispy, delicate sound of the instrument, the sheng.3 The renowned actress Shi Xiaomei, specializing in young male roles, exudes great charm as s=he moves onstage in a full traditional costume. Her character, the jovial young scholar Liu Mengmei, finds the painting of a beautiful woman under a willow tree in the deserted garden of the former residence of the prime minister’s family. Affected by the boredom of solitude, he becomes infatuated with the woman in the picture. The romantic scholar starts making a pass at her, as he might to a real person. At this point the situation turns uncanny. As he examines the painting in close detail the woman looks increasingly familiar. He suddenly recognizes her as the same woman that he had met some years ago in a dream, in which the pair consummated their mutual passion. Soon it is the audience’s turn to feel because, shortly after the above scene, the whole sequence is repeated by the same performer, but this time in her own modern clothing, revealing her off-stage woman’s identity. This time she is not alone. Upstage right a male performer in a black suit shadows her movements in silence. Now their act is not accompanied by the pre-recorded kunqu music, but by modern digital music which becomes increasingly loud. The recording of the previous enactment of the same scene in the comparatively conventional way described above is now projected on the backdrop, not as a faithful replay of the scene but edited with digital technology to create a surreal effect that is almost nightmarish. The stage is suffused with glaring, bright light as the performer’s singing is treated with a faintly echoing quality. The well-known story and well-worn scenario now assume an exceedingly strange and disturbing aspect. The audience feels the uncanny atmosphere, as now what they see onstage strikes a strange chord in their hearts. It is neither rapport nor sympathy: it is something that feels familiar but is not entirely recognizable. What actually happens onstage is that a performer is trying to play kunqu at its traditional pace and tempo without submitting to the overwhelming external intervention of modern music and digital images. The Chinese routine somehow maintains its tempo and rhythm, albeit just about achieving the piece in spite of the persistent bombardment of alien sounds and lights. These sounds and lights construe the texture of a reality that is created by modern technology and is unmistakably postmodern and global. Such stunning theatrical imagery serves as an allegory of the contemporary urban Chinese audience’s identity: that is, just about Chinese in the middle of a cacophony of other technological and cultural phenomena. The image functions as a figuration of their psychological order. This is a most memorable sequence in the critically acclaimed experimental xiqu production Sigmund Freud in Search of Chinese Matter and Mind, directed by the avant-garde theatrical entrepreneur Danny Yung. The production is one from his experimental xiqu series, started in 2002. This series consists of more than ten productions (still growing) of hybrid theatrical works in which the creative methods of postmodernist theater are applied to xiqu. In all the works of this series the important issue of the impacts and functions of Chineseness in contemporary Chinese people’s societies and lives is explored. Before Yung started experimenting with xiqu he was known exclusively as an avant-garde postmodern theatrical director. But even then Chineseness was always a recurrent theme in his works. He has explored from different angles the role of Chinese culture and the function of the Chinese identity in contemporary Chinese people’s societies and lives. For example, Opium War-Four Letters to Deng Xiaoping [1984] expresses the confusion and frustration felt by the present Hong Kong generations in their adaptation to the city’s impending change of sovereignty from a British to a Chinese territory. It examines Chinese history’s presence in the contemporary situation.