Production in Mandarin sure to spark dialogue
New play is a contemporary creation with references to the past and alludes to traditions like the Peking opera representation on stage
The Tony Award-winning play, M Butterfly, which tells the love story of a French diplomat and a Peking opera star, is nearly 30 years old. It inspired the 1993 film by David Cronenberg of the same name and just last fall, a Chinese-language musical drama.
That new musical work, Mr. Shi and his Lover, comes to the National Arts Centre Jan. 3 to 13. It is performed in Mandarin, with English surtitles.
Njo Kong Kie is the musical force behind the piece. Born in Indonesia and raised in Macau, Njo himself straddled the confluence of Asian and Western cultures as a youngster. After immigrating to Canada, he stepped away briefly from his musical upbringing, studying computer science and beginning work in the finance sector.
Music was never out of Njo’s reach, but it wasn’t until 1996 that he dedicated his life to the performing arts. He embarked on a tour with a Montreal-based dance troupe as its in-house pianist, and then plunged into music theatre after participating in the Composer-Librettist Laboratory, a music theatre intensive currently run by Tapestry Opera.
Below, Njo discusses the NACbound work.
Q: How did you and stage director Tam Chi Chun conceive Mr. Shi and his Lover to be?
A: We drew on a lot of musical sources to communicate the lovers’ Chinese and French backgrounds. There are references to traditional Peking opera and the particular style of performance art created during the Cultural Revolution known as the Revolutionary model play. There are also references to traditional classical music because of the French diplomat’s background. Those are the popular styles that would have been heard from the ’60s to the ’80s.
All of these are filtered through my own lens as a composer. We are not trying to duplicate in an authentic fashion any of these styles musically or in terms of the staging. It’s really a contemporary creation, but with a lot of references to the past. When people come, they’re not going to see a Peking opera representation on stage, but they will see that we are alluding to that tradition.
Q: By filtering the music through your own lens, how much of a contemporary element does that add?
A: The process is more, “We’re going to make a contemporary piece, but we’re going to reference some things from the past,” rather than “We’re going to try to write a traditional piece, but fuse new elements into it.” If we had started with an esthetic then added elements to it, I think there’d be a subtle difference in the outcome.
Q: Have you adapted the production for different audiences in the world?
A: We workshopped it in Macau and Taiwan. It was first staged in a full theatre setting last year at SummerWorks. Now, we’re coming to Ottawa.
For the North American production, we did a lot more work on English surtitles. When we started, we were very faithful to the divisions of the Chinese text on screen, but we realized there was a lot of text for a non-Chinese reading audience to take in. It was about streamlining and simplifying so that there are not as many slides — we went from 700-plus to 500. Otherwise, the actors from SummerWorks have returned to reprise their roles, and the production is the same.
In Macau and Taiwan, the staging was different because of the venue and the workshopped nature. In a dedicated venue like Tarragon or the NAC Studio we will be able to create the lighting according to our own needs, and not having to worry about other productions.
Q: Toronto theatre critics have called Mr. Shi “provocative.” Do you agree?
A: It’s provocative in a positive way: it doesn’t tell a linear story, but the story is just the starting point of the discussion that is generated through the show.
In a way, it is more about ourselves also, in terms of how these two people think of the world and interact with each other. And each person is going to come up with their own answers as to what these questions may bring about. It’s not a story that we’re feeding the audience. But rather, “This is the story, but we have these questions. What do you think about it?”
There are certainly discussions around nations — race, identity, gender or professional identity, and obviously the questions of love. There are a lot of questions being asked — you get the story, but the story is also, in a way, not the main point of the show.