Recently, the four-part documentary, titled China on Stage, produced by a creative team consisting of members from China and the United Kingdom, premiered on Bilibili, a popular Chinese video platform, attracting over one million viewers in its first day.
Through its four episodes—The Songs of China, The Sound of China, How China Moves, and The Theater of China—the documentary features a variety of performing arts, from the 600-year-old Kunqu Opera to the latest virtual pop star Luo Tianyi, as well as introducing Chinese artists and their backstage stories.
The last episode, The Theater of China, was aired yesterday, which presented Six Records of a Floating Life (or Fusheng Liuji, 浮生六记), an immersive Kunqu Opera performance in Suzhou. Six Records of a Floating Life, originally an autobiography by Shen Fu in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), tells the love story between Shen and Lady Yun. The performance, staged at the world cultural heritage site Canglang Pavilion, provides the audience with the opportunity to follow the performers, walk freely in the garden and feel the charm of Kunqu Opera in an immersive manner.
One of the most challenging aspects of putting on a promenade performance using the arcane language of Kunqu Opera is creating subtitles so that they enhance the experience rather than intrude.
Dr. Kim Hunter Gordon is an expert in Kunqu Opera and translated this special adaptation. “There’s a number of challenges in translating Kunqu. It’s written in very dense verse, any one line might have several meanings and sub meanings. We actually have to pick a meaning and my approach is normally to try and pick a meaning that fits the performance.”
The experience is also quite different for performers, like renowned Kunqu artist Zhang Zhengyao, who plays the lead, said “In the theatre, there isn’t much interaction with our audience because they are in auditorium. But here, we are face to face just as we’re talking.”
It is worth noting that among the audience there are a great many young people. “It combines the novel and the theatre and it feels like you’re in the story. If you see it on a stage it might be hard to imagine some of the plot. But in this garden with the atmosphere they create, you feel so close to them,” one of the audiences said.
The documentary is scheduled to be broadcast on BBC World News and other major media around the globe.