Director: Lam Ying-kit
Playwright: Deng Feier
Institution: The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, China
Venue: North Theatre
Time: 16:30-17:30, May 20, 2014
Event: The 1st World Theatre Education Convention with 3rd Asian Theatre Schools Festival
Director’s Notes
As an MFA in Drama (Directing major) student it is my great honor that The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (School of Drama) has appointed me as a director of Ms Deng Feier’s The Wild Party of Yu Xuanji. Yu Xuanji was an amazing woman in Tang Dynasty. She was well-educated and well-known in Chang’an even by the time she was only 13 years old. Although she has been called “one of the Four Female Poet in Tang Dynasty”, it is not easy to find her achievements in official history. Maybe her life style was too wild! This is my starting point as director and my way in to explore and reveal her life through this project. Let’s enjoy how WILD she really was…
Synopsis
Yu Xuanji (844-868), also known as Youwei, a lady poet and a well-known courtesan of the late Tang Dynasty. Having been a concubine to Li Yi, a government official, and was not tolerated by his wife, she moved into a Taoist Temple and became a Taoist nun. Later on she was accused of murdering a maid and was sentenced to death. This story takes place in a lock room where she was waiting for the final judgment. This might be the last night of her whole life. At such moment we wonder what she was thinking of and what words she wanted to leave behind for people in the future to understand. Her image in history is open for interpretation. This play, written from a contemporary point of view, is to revisit the scene in which Yu Xuanji was to bid farewell to the world, and it is to begin with a wild party at a Taoist temple….
Running Time: about 45 minutes