Director explores Alzheimer's in drama

By adapting American playwright Nagle Jackson's Taking Leave, director Wang Xiao-ying from the National Theater of China hopes to draw attention to the country's Alzheimer's community.

Written in 1996, Taking Leave is a well-known contemporary play in the United States that tackles a serious modern problem - Alzheimer's disease.

After being afflicted with the irreversible disease, the protagonist Eliot Pryne, a devoted Shakespearean scholar, has to part with what was once a clear and sophisticated mind and constantly confuses his own identity with a character he spent years studying - King Lear.