2013 art recommendations(4)

Theater

Up next is drama. One must-see work is Stan Lai's eight-hour play A Dream Like a Dream, which will tour China this year. Lai first put on this epic in Taiwan in 2000, then revived it in 2005 for a Cantonese edition that played in Hong Kong in 2002.

Inspired by India, the drama weaves several characters' dreams and realities into a seamless structure that echoes Buddhist beliefs about life, death and reincarnation.

Like Wagner's Ring Cycle or Tang Xianzu's Kunqu Opera Peony Pavilion, both of which take days and nights to watch, this drama will see the audience sit from afternoon to midnight, with a short supper break. For the event, the theater will be rebuilt to create a custom-designed space for the audience to sit in the center, while actors perform around them.

Leading names on the theater scene - including Lin Zhaohua, Meng Jinghui and Tian Qinxin - will all present new productions this year.

Lin is working on Shakespeare's Coriolanus, the award-winning novel White Deer Plain by Chen Zhongshi, and a drama portraying the life of the late actress Ruan Lingyu (1910-35).

Tian's new play, Green Snake, adapted from the work by Hong Kong writer Lillian Lee, explores the love between mankind and a snake spirit. Another Lee novel adapted into a movie, Farewell My Concubine, by director Chen Kaige, won the Cannes Palme d'Or in 1993.

Meng will continue with his China Fringe Festival, organized by him since 2008, and will take it on a tour, from Beijing to Hangzhou and Shenzhen. What's more, in May, he and Lai and actor Huang Lei will start a new drama festival in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province. Young drama lovers will gather here to enjoy the unique water village scenes and passionate drama.