Romeo and Juliet

The director of the play was Prof. Chen Lincang from NACTA, Players in the production were students of Binghamton University. In this play there applied with lots of elements of Chinese Opera, including music, costume, dance, acting, and stage design. When characters of classic Shakespeare’s play put on Chinese costumes, walked and behaved like ancient Chinese men and women on the stage, with the atmosphere created by music and stage setting, it seemed that the story took place in the ancient oriental. The theme of “Love” and “Hatred” is a classic and universal subject in any culture. However people express their emotion in different behavior pattern. The performance in Chinese Opera “Romeo and Juliet” expressed Chinese value for love and hatred. In the end of the play, the dead Romeo and Juliet held their wedding in the heaven. This was a typical Chinese ending of theatre plays.

Bankruptcy

In the production there were more than 10 characters played only by 4 actors. It showed Chinese audience the traditional Italian theatre of commedia dell’arte. Some characters in the production were played by an actor who was used to be a clown role of Chinese Opera. From his performance, the combined skills of Chinese Opera and commedia dell’arte were obviously recognized.

The Nightingale

The Beijing Opera version of “The Nightingale” was adapted from Hans Christian Anderson’s fairytale. Expect the story is West, all others were presented in Beijing Opera, including music, reciting, singing, acting, costumes and stage setting. The idea of adapting the story into a Beijing Opera was initiated by a German composer Mr. Karsten Gundermann, who studied Beijing Opera music in China. The play was tour performed four times in Europe. It is worth mentioning that “The Nightingale” was the only theater play among all other plays we produced who had opportunity to be performed commercially in Europe theatres. The tour performance was planned, advertised and operated by a German performing company. In 2008 and 2010, the play was performed in German and Swiss theaters for 7 times, there were more than 4,000 people watched the performance.

Harlequins’ Journey in China

Another play applied with lots of physical performance was “Harlequins’ Journey in China”. The play was cooperated with The Theatre of Asphodeles in France. 8 actors were from China, France and Italy. The dramatic costumes of French comedy, masks of commedia dell’arte, watersleeves and martial arts of Chinese opera were all blending together. Harlequins of three styles of theater arts performed on the same stage. The audience appreciated the highlights of the three styles of physical theaters in one play.

A Midsummer Night Dream

The production was cooperated with Maryland University in the US. This production was a bold experiment. The main feature of this production was the application of actors’ native language besides the blending of music, dance, costume, and acting of Chinese Opera. The Chinese students spoke in Rhyme(raim) of Beijing Opera, students from Maryland spoke in American slang. With the help of translated subtitle displayed on screen on both side of the stage, audience understood the dialogues more easily. The play beautifully and naturally embedded in the classic Beijing Opera segments of “Fights in the Dark” and “The heavenly maids scatter blossoms” to present the beautiful body skills and symbolic performance of Beijing Opera.

Anatomie Titus Fall of Rome

It is an art film adapted from Shakespeare’s work Andronikus Titus. This was ILSSA’s  first cross-field international cooperation. It was a new attempt for Chinese Opera to shape a character in a film production besides theatre stage. A student learning Chinese Opera Mr. Zhao Jia played the king of Rome in the film.

New Voice

The film was cooperated with Israeli director Mr. Dan Wolman. Mr. Dan Wolman wrote the story and directed the film. In the filming and post producing of the film, he was the only foreigner in the crew.  All characters in the film were played by teachers and students. Mr. Wolman expressed his perspective to the Chinese opera and Chinese culture in the film. He believed that women were stronger in heart than men sometimes. In Chinese Opera, there is a story about a female hero General Mu Guiying led the army to fight with enemies in about 1000 years ago. Women played important role in Chinese history, so does women in present family and society.

In 2008, Chinese Opera was official introduced to the Concordia University’s classroom. A Chinese Opera professor in directing whose name is Lv Suosen was invited to teach Chinese Opera classes as a visiting professor. He taught basic acting skills and movement of Chinese opera to theatre students at Concordia Universities. He also gave lectures in history, costumes, make-ups, characters introduction of Chinese opera. 4 students, 2 acted as language assistants, 2 acted as performing assistants went along with him to Canada. With the help of language assistant, the professor was able to teach and communicate with others without language obstacle. The performing assistants help the professor to demonstrate body movement and to perform with the professor. Professor Lv was able to give 10 lectures and 5 performances with the cooperation of his assistants. After study of one semester, his Concordia acting students learnt some basic acting skills and some of the students developed interests to go to Beijing to take the intensive summer Chinese opera program in the next year. The exchange program then went to the next stage.

   
In 2009, 11 Concordia students came to NACTA to join the 2-month advanced Chinese Opera program. The program was rather intensive. Each student chose a role and a segment from a classic repertoire to practice. To play the role and the segment, the student had to reinforce the basic skills, movement, stage fighting, and comprehensive acting skills. By the end of the study, everyone was able to perform on the stage with full costumes. From 2008 to 2015, there have been 3 groups of Concordia students, that’s 25 students, furthered their study in Beijing.

Common Stage Project

The project was cooperated by the National Academy of Chinese Theater Arts and Zurich University of the Arts (ZHDK) in Switzerland from 2009. The cooperation is a long term commitment between the two universities. Common Stage project involves teachers and students of wide range of art disciplines of Chinese opera and west arts at the two universities. The project is trans-cultural, cross-disciplinary, cross-time that makes it a unique project for artists in both universities. Chinese opera represents Chinese traditional art in music, dance, acting, costume, martial arts and many other aspects, what happens if all these disciplines were mixed together with western modern arts. Is tradition outdated? How traditional Chinese arts accommodate with western modern arts? What are the values of traditional arts in this modernized and globalized society? There were so many questions arisen from the beginning of the cooperation.

During the workshops, students of two universities from the fields of design, music, theatre, fine arts, art education and culture studies were divided into mixed groups. They worked together for four weeks to develop performances, interventions, installations and other possible form of presentations. The project provided a simulated working environment to young artists to work with people from different cultural background and art fields. Within the four weeks, students had to handle with stress from various aspects. They dealt with difficulties in languages, cultural conflicts, meeting the deadlines, or the understanding to arts. By the end of the workshops, the final production of each group would be presented to the public.

From 2009 to 2013, there were 25 teachers and 79 students from 17 different art disciplines of Zurich University of Arts involved in the projects. From NACTA, there were about 100 teachers and students from 12 art disciplines took part in the project.

Confucius Institute of Chinese Opera was co-established by Binghamton University and NACTA in 2009. It is, firstly, an education institute where people learn Chinese language, Chinese literatures and Chinese culture and arts. Besides teaching and cultural activities, the Chinese Opera Ensemble of CICO presents professional Chinese performing arts to people in North America. This organization runs various kinds of cooperation programs, such as teaching exchange, student exchange, theatre plays, tour performance. From 2009 to 2014, CICO provided about 25 different Chinese Opera courses to Binghamton students. In five years, there were more than 450 students enrolled in these courses. The cultural activities, lecturers, exhibitions and performances presented by CICO reached more than 56,000 American people.