Raising the curtain

A Beijing theater festival functions as a platform to explore new avenues for international collaboration in global dramatic arts, Chen Nan reports.

French theater director Eric Lacascade arrived in Beijing on a chilly Wednesday morning. On his first trip to China, he plans to stay in the capital for four months to direct an adaptation of a classic Chinese drama by master playwright Cao Yu-Thunderstorm.

"It will be an adventure for me as well as for my Chinese colleagues. I've read the tragic story and was intrigued by the conflicts that are told in it. But since it's so well-known to Chinese audiences, it will be a big challenge for me," says Lacascade, in a speech in Beijing during the World Class Theater for the Chinese Audiences festival. The premiere of Lacascade's take on Thunderstorm is due to be premiered in the capital in 2020.

Published in 1934, the play revolves around two families whose complex relationships lead to inevitable tragic consequences unfolding against the backdrop of China in the 1930s.

Playwright Wan Fang is the consultant for the new adaptation. As the daughter of Cao Yu, whose real name was Wan Jiabao, Wan Fang will also see her latest work, Thunderstorm II, premiere in 2020.

As a sequel to her father's classic work, Thunderstorm II will focus on how the characters' choices made at the end of Thunderstorm formed the people they would later become.

"I watched my father's Thunderstorm many times at the Beijing People's Art Theater, where my father was one of the theater's founding members and its first president. I was so scared that I started to cry when I first heard the noise of the thunderstorm emanating from the stage," recalls Wan Fang, 67.

She says the characters in Thunderstorm are memorable and had distinctive personalities. She wondered what future lay in store for the characters after that fateful night where some of them uncover bitter truths, some die and others lose their minds.

The cast has not been determined for the two plays as yet, and Lacascade will also direct Wan Fang's work, Thunderstorm II.

After premiering in Beijing in 2020, the two Chinese plays, Thunderstorm and Thunderstorm II, will be staged at the French theater festival, Printemps des Comediens, (Actors' Spring), in 2021.

The news was announced at the World Class Theater for the Chinese Audiences, a theater festival presenting a series of forums in Beijing which was jointly organized by the Beijing-based drama company Magnificent Culture Co, Beijing Normal University and the French theater festival, Printemps des Comedians, from Wednesday to Friday.

The event gathered together theater veterans from France, Spain, Israel, Lithuania and China, to discuss such topics as the future of theater arts, theater education for audiences and the development of young theater talent.

French actor-director Jean Varela, who attended the festival, recalls his earliest memories of performing on-stage in his home country.

He was asked by his mother to join a student drama troupe during high school, at a time when he had very little understanding of what theater was about. He stood on the stage and felt reluctant to read his lines from the script.

"Because of my obesity, I had low self-esteem. My mother, who didn't know much about theater either, thought it would be a good way to solve my problems. She wanted me to become more confident and communicative," says the 65-year-old Varela.

However, he soon overcame stage fright and fell in love with theater after he was encouraged by his teacher to take up one of the lead roles.

"It was fun, and an enjoyable experience. Although it was an amateur student drama troupe, it really was the foundation of my career as a professional actor," he says.