Mandarin makeover for Henry V

Henry V, one of William Shakespeare's best-known historical plays, is being translated into Mandarin for a stage production scheduled to open late next year.

The performance is part of the King and Country Tour announced in September by the Royal Shakespeare Company, which is based in the Bard's birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon.

Stopping in Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong, the tour will begin in February and include English-language versions of Henry IV parts one and two. The Mandarin version of Henry V will be performed only at Shanghai's Grand Theatre in October.

"It will be interesting to see how the Chinese version works," Owen Horsley, associate director of the tour, said at a media event in London in October.

Auditions for Henry V will be held in May, with rehearsals due to start in September. Before that, the RSC will also hold an actors' workshop in Shanghai in February.

"I'm intrigued to see what the training is like, what the (Chinese) theater heritage is like, and what they (the actors) think about British heritage," he says. "We'll work on some speeches from the play and do some movement exercises."

Chinese translator Zhang Chong and playwright Nick Rongju Yu are working on the script, which will be based on RSC Artistic Director Gregory Doran's rehearsal text.

Doran believes adapting a classic play for foreign audiences can add fresh perspective.

"I can't think of a more collaborative, more deeply rooted experiment," he says. "We began a discussion with theater practitioners in China about how they do Shakespeare, the quality of the translation, and we found there are already many fine translations.

"We hope this project will provide a template for us to work through the entire folio of plays. We believe this is the way to get people excited by Shakespeare."

Next year is 400th anniversary of the Bard's death, as well as that of Chinese playwright Tang Xianzu.

The RSC said it is currently choosing one of Tang's works to translate into English and perform on stage, part of cultural exchanges between China and the United Kingdom.

In 2012, the company staged The Orphan of Zhao, a Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) piece by dramatist Ji Junxiang that is often referred to as "China's Hamlet".

Horsley is a big fan of Tang's The Peony Pavilion, which he describes as "epic".

"I love the way Chinese writers write in an abstract and symbolic way, which is how I feel about the theater," he says. "To me, the stage is an abstract, a dream place, so I'm happy to find lots of Chinese write stories the same way."

Playwright Yu, who is also director of the Shanghai International Contemporary Theater, says a festival called When Tang Met Shakespeare will also be staged next year.

"Shanghai has traditional theaters that frequently perform Shakespeare, so the collaboration with the RSC is a chance to further China-Western cultural exchange," he says. "Chinese audiences are not familiar with many Shakespeare plays. A few, such as his comedies and tragedies, are fairly well-known, but not his history plays. This is a great way to help more people see a wider variety of his plays."

During his visit to the UK in October, President Xi Jinping's said he had been influenced by British literature, especially the works of Shakespeare.

"He (the president) is very keen to see collaboration in research on Shakespeare's contemporaries in China, including Tang Xianzu," says Zhao Xu, secretary of the Chinese embassy in London.

(China Daily European Weekly 11/27/2015 page23)