Boldness be my friend

Play without words

"All the shows featured in the festival share a common characteristic: a uniqueness which can lead to a wider understanding of humanity as seen through the world of Shakespeare," Tang says.

His own directorial venture, which opened the festival on Wednesday, is King Lear, performed by an all-female cast, including two Romanian actors.

Tang sees the play - about a monarch whose lack of self-knowledge and errors of judgment set him off on a path to self-destruction - as a study in aging, both biologically and as a metaphor. "Old people struggling with holding on to their past glories" is more common than we realize, he points out. Then those who are younger may not necessarily be better at it either, he hastens to add. "We tend to blame such failures on others or, like Lear, blame it on Fate. We think that we are the ones in the right, while the wrongs are committed by others."