The Peking Opera goes Broadway

Traditional Peking Opera isn't something most foreigners have a desire to experience. For one thing, performances last four hours (Wagner would fit right in.) For another, the high-pitched singing and percussive nature of the music is strange to our ears. But an interesting blend of east and west is happening here in Beijing, with attempts to make the Peking Opera more contemporary and accessible to visitors.

Through a friend in Seattle, I've had the great fortune to meet the artistic director of one of these shows and learn more about his company's efforts to create a Chinese form of entertainment that's akin to a Broadway show. Their current show is The Legend of Kung Fu, an opera with a Chinese story and a veteran Broadway director (complete with a rap number, I'm told.) With updated music and acrobats, the show has toured internationally. And now the production company, China Heaven Creation, is working on a new show called White Snake Lady. The story is about a snake that turns into a woman and falls in love with a man, and a monk who makes assumptions and interferes in their love story.

It's interesting to hear about the struggles within the production company to find the balance between being true to the original story, and also staying true to the artform of the Peking Opera, while finding a way to make it contemporary. How far should you go to change the nature of an artform in order to communicate something about the culture that it comes from? If an opera is sung in a forest and no one's around to hear it, does it make a sound?!