The Institute for Chinese Studies presents:
Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig and Gigi Chang
Title: From Yuan Opera to Modern Murder Mystery: Adapting Guan Hanqing's "The Injustice to Dou E" for the Royal Shakespeare Company
**THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED**
Flyer:
Abstract: In 2016 the UK's Royal Shakespeare Company commissioned US based playwright Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig and China based translator Gigi Chang to collaborate on an adaptation of Guan Hangqing's Yuan opera "The Injustice to Dou E That Moved Heaven and Earth." The results of their collaboration, the contemporary play "Snow in Midsummer," had its world premiere at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2017 and its US premiere at the Oregon Shakespeare Company in 2018. In this playwright and translator talk, the collaborators will discuss their approaches to their respective work on the project and share images from productions of Guan's original play and Cowhig's adaptation.
Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig is an internationally produced playwright who has spent the past decade completing a trilogy of theatrical works [The World of Extreme Happiness, Snow in Midsummer, The King of Hell's Palace] that are set in contemporary China and explore global capitalism and intergenerational trauma. Her plays have been staged in the United Kingdom at the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, Hampstead Theatre, Trafalgar Studios 2 [West End] and the Unicorn Theatre. In the United States her work has been staged at venues that include the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Manhattan Theater Club and the Goodman Theatre. Her first full length musical, The New Planet, a collaboration with composer Michael Roth and director-choreographer Maija García, will receive a workshop production at the Guthrie Theatre this summer as part of the theatre maker training program A Guthrie Experience. She is currently developing the feature script for Gold Mountain, a Chinese immigrant drama set in 1850s San Francisco, for film and television director Alan Taylor and Starlight Entertainment. She is a 2019 United States Artist Fellow.
Gigi Chang translates Chinese theatre and fiction into English. Her translations include Jin Yong’s martial arts novel series Legends of the Condor Heroes (MacLehose Press/St Martin’s Press), classical Chinese dramas for the Royal Shakespeare Company and contemporary Chinese plays for London’s Royal Court Theatre, Hong Kong Arts Festival and Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre.
Free and Open to the Public
This event is co-sponsored by the Center for Languages, Literatures and Cultures, and the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures. The ICS Lecture Series is supported by a U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant to The Ohio State University East Asian Studies Center.
