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A unique opportunity to see multi-media theatre from Beijing, written by one of China's major artists. Ceremony has been seen recently at the Centre Pompidou. Celebrity is not a new phenomenon. But how did most well known historical figures imagine they would be recorded for posterity? In Ceremony Wang Jianwei looks back at the records of a much maligned scholar, Mi Heng, whose penchant for speaking his mind a thousand years ago cost him his life. How he came to be executed and the nature of his crime crop up in three major classical Chinese texts upon which Ceremony draws. Each offers a different perspective engendered by the socio-political mood of the period in which they were written. Which, if any, was factually correct is not the question Wang Jianwei sets out to answer. In the manner of a Shakespearean tragedy, Wang merely revisits the inevitable: the duplicitous facts of recorded history. In this visually stark performance, the four main actors switch between roles and time periods as they debate the merits of historical remembrance: why this person over that? Ceremony is a simple drama presented in a complex and intrinsically Chinese fashion. A quick read through the Romance of the Three Kingdoms will be of enormous help in grasping the nature of classical Chinese 'spin' upon which Ceremony pivots.

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2003 (1 listings)