Ping Chong and Company : Cathay

PING CHONG & COMPANY: CATHAY: THREE TALES OF CHINA, 2005
OVERVIEW In the fall of 2003, internationally renowned theatre director Ping Chong was invited by the Kennedy Center to travel to Xian China and met the extraordinary artists from the Shaanxi Folk Art Theatre. Out of this meeting was born Cathay: Three Tales of China, an original puppet theatre work encircling China's ancient past, its tumultuous recent history, and its 21st century reemergence as a global economic force. Cathay is commissioned by the Kennedy Center and will be presented in October 2005 as part of the center's Festival of China, the largest presentation of performing arts from China ever in the U.S. It will be developed in collaboration with the Seattle Repertory Theatre, where it will premiere for a four-week run of more than 40 performances. The work will also receive at three-week presentation at New York City's New Victory. Touring to Asia is in the planning stages for 2006. This full-length work will combine Ping Chong's exquisite contemporary multidisciplinary approach to puppet theatre with the virtuosic traditional rod and shadow puppetry of the Shaanxi Folk Art Theatre, one of China's premiere puppet theatre companies. Ping Chong has long been acknowledged as a master of visual storytelling and a leading theatrical innovator. Fascinated by the limitless potential of puppetry and its ability to effortlessly shift time, place and scale, Ping Chong has created two acclaimed evenings of puppet theatre, Kwaidan and Obon: Tales of Rain and Moonlight, which have transported audiences in the US and Japan to a realm of mystery and savage beauty, a place where dark humor and ancient truths converge. The Shaanxi Folk Art Theatre has performed to acclaim throughout China and around the world. The company is based in Xian, and employs over 100 puppeteers, performers and crafts people. The company includes a rod puppet troupe, a children's troupe, and a shadow puppet troupe, for which the company is best known. Their performances combine mesmerizing puppetry, dazzling acrobatics, and superb music. Cathay will be composed of three separate tales with characters and storylines crossing centuries and distances to converge in the final story. THE STORIES The Lady and the Emperor. Set in the sumptuous palaces of the Tang Dynasty some 1,100 years ago when Xian was an international capital and the start of the Silk Road that linked East and West, the legend of the Emperor Ming Huang and the Lady Yang Fei is one of China's classic love stories. Lady Yang (one of three legendary beauties) is taken by the Emperor as his consort. Overwhelmed by her charms, he retreats from the world with her and turns over the affairs of state to the hands of Lady Yang's brother, whom he names Prime Minister. As barbarians from the North make a surprise attack, the court is forced to flee. When the Emperor calls upon the people to fight the invaders they refuse unless Lady Yang is killed and he rids the court of her corrupt relatives. The Emperor, besieged on all sides, must choose between his beloved and his people. Exquisitely designed rod puppets play out this story within an opulently decorated three-dimensional environment. Little Worm. Set during the Second World War, Cathay's second tale stands in stark contrast to the opulence of the first. Seen through the eyes of Little Worm, a young boy who struggles to survive alone during the Japanese occupation, this section is a hallucinogenic journey through the brutality of war, an existential fable of the Chinese people's capacity for endurance in the face of suffering. Inspired in part by the first-person experiences of Chong's sister and uncle during World War II, the story will be told principally with shadow play integrated with video projections and special effects. New. Set in and about a luxurious modern hotel, this cinematic tale moves back and forth in time, seeking out the links and severances that feed and surround China's march to modernity today. Life-size puppet figures inhabit this new "Grand Hotel," where a Chinese rap star, international tourists and business people meet, and characters and plotlines from the first two stories converge. Cathay: Three Tales of China brings together Chinese and American artists in a work that will integrate traditional Chinese rod and shadow techniques with those of other forms within a contemporary multidisciplinary framework. Shaanxi Folk Art Theatre's Director Liang Jun will collaborate with Ping Chong and Michael Rohd on the scenario. American performers will join members of the Shaanxi company, who will provide the core of the puppeteers and crafts people. Cathay reunites Chong with Randy Ward, who has designed sets and lights for many Ping Chong projects including Obon, Stephen Kaplin, who designed puppets for Chong's recent Blind Ness, and Stefani Mar, who has designed costumes for many Ping Chong productions. Chong collaborates for the first time here with Ruppert Bohle, whose projection design credits include the National Actor's Theater production of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui and Complicite of London's The Elephant Vanishes (Lincoln Center Festival 2004), and Seattle-based Sound Designer Christopher Walker. cathay home • production credits • the stories • touring • what the critics say
For additional information about the project, contact:
Bruce Allardice Managing Director Ping Chong & Company pingchong@earthlink.net Tel (212) 529-1557 www.pingchong.org	Deirdre Valente Vice President Lisa Booth Management, Inc. artslbmi@msn.com Tel (212) 921-2114
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