Ping Chong's newest play, 'Cathay: Three Tales of China,' mixes Tang-dynasty folklore with wicked observations of modern life in the world's most capitalistic communist country.
It's a tough work to define: a puppet play with very adult sensibilities, created by a Chinese-American with limited spoken Chinese and performed by a Chinese troupe with equally limited English skills.
But being hard to define is Chong's stock-in-trade and one of the reasons this playwright, director, choreographer, visual artist and explorer of Asian culture always attracts a devoted audience when he visits Seattle.
"I'm kind of a hard nut to crack," Chong admitted when he was asked how he wanted to be described. "But I'm an artist first, a theater artist second and a visual artist third." He is also most definitely not an Asian Jim Henson, always writing plays for puppets. Chong has created more than 50 puppet-free theater works that have earned him numerous awards and fellowships. Puppets are, if anything, a rather late passion for this New York-born artist whose endeavors are usually labeled "experimental" by reviewers.
However, puppets rule the stage in "Cathay" (the human actors appear only briefly at the very end and are masked to look like puppets).
Chong's latest creation, a collaboration with the Shaanxi Folk Art Theater, began after he visited the troupe's home city, Xian, and its fabled terra cotta warriors. While many Westerners know about the discovery of the 8,000 terra cotta warriors, an event that placed Xian on the tourist map, fewer know the history of the city.
Xian, rather than Beijing, was the first great city of China, at a time when the Chinese defined themselves as the center of the civilized world. For a thousand years and 12 dynasties, Xian was the imperial capital, the center of Chinese politics, commerce and culture. The terra cotta warriors surround the still-unopened tomb of Qin Shi Huangdi, the emperor who built the Great Wall and whose family name (Qin or Chin, depending which phonetics system is used) became synonymous with the country.
But with the passing of the Tang dynasty in 907 A.D., Xian fell from imperial capital to provincial center and in the 20th century became simply one of many northern Chinese cities to be destroyed by the Japanese during World War II. However, as Communist China opened itself up to Western trade, the city underwent an economic boom. Today, it is home to more than 7.5 million people, with skyscrapers, Western fast-food franchises and luxury hotels. It was this clash of history with modern economics that shaped Chong's "Cathay."
"It's really about the rise and fall and rise again of China," said Chong, who was asked by the Kennedy Center to create a work with the Shaanxi troupe after the success of another of his puppet plays there ("Kwaiden" in 2002).
The first story of the trio that intertwines to make up Chong's "Cathay" comes from the Tang dynasty and chronicles the end of imperial Xian, destroyed through the love of a beautiful woman.
"The first story was the easiest" for the Shaanxi troupe, as it was one they knew and regularly perform, said Chong, and "as they could use a more classical style" of puppets for it.
Six members of the Shaanxi Folk Theater journeyed to Seattle to manipulate the puppets. Liang Jun, a director of the company, served as assistant director and dramaturge for "Cathay."
The other two tales, "Little Worm" and "New," deal with the horrors of the wartime Japanese invasion and the current prosperity as China emerges as a world economic power. For the last tale, Chong felt that he particularly needed someone to work with the Chinese puppeteers who could bring a Western sensibility to certain characters. So he called upon members of the Carter family, who run the Northwest Puppet Center.
"It is such a great advantage that you have the Carter family here," Chong said. These Seattle puppeteers were able to work with the Shaanxi troupe, suggesting ways to interpret the Europeans in the play as well as helping to translate the meaning of the English dialogue that the puppets must "speak" through the puppeteers' hand movements.
"Luckily, Dmitri [Carter, who is married to local puppeteer Xie Zeng Yang] and his wife speak Mandarin fluently," said Chong. "I only speak pidgin Mandarin, but the puppeteers [from mainland China] have been great sports about it."
Carter, his wife and Carter's sister, Heather, helped the Shaanxi troupe adapt their style and their puppets to the small stage in the Leo K. Theatre.
"It's rather constricting from what [the Shaanxi puppeteers] are used to doing," said Chong. "They are used to playing with their movement. Here, everything is micro-movement and quite restricted."
"Cathay" uses more than 140 puppets, from life-sized tomb guardians to tiny shadow puppets, and none of them were easy to direct, stated Chong.
"The excruciating part of working with puppets is that they won't always move where you want them to," he said. But this is Chong's third outing with artificial actors, and he also admits to a certain fondness for directing butterflies and pet frogs, among other creatures. "There is a magic to it. It's playing god - it's seductive," said Chong.
Another of Chong's puppet works, "Obon: Tales of Rain and Moonlight," was performed at the Rep in 2002. Fans of that play will see some similarities and many differences between it and "Cathay," said Chong.
"It's similar to 'Obon,' but it's not ghost stories like 'Obon,'" Chong said. "It's a further exploration [of the Asian experience]."
As in "Obon," Chong frequently staged the "Cathay" puppets in unexpected perspectives. In certain scenes, they appear to move from a great distance to extreme closeup, or suddenly might be viewed from above or below. These odd angles comes from one of Chong's other artistic endeavors, film directing.
"Film has always been my deepest love," said the director, who began his career by making video films of the works of Meredith Monk. Viewing the world through the camera lens led him to add an almost cinematic perspective to his puppet plays.
"Cathay" will continue at the Leo K. Theatre through Oct. 9. Chong has already started work on a new project, a play inspired by Thai scientist Dr. Krisana Kraisintu.
She was "a Thai pharmaceutical chemist who developed a generic AIDS pill," explained Chong. "It's a David-and-Goliath story. Everyone was against her at first. I guess I'm fond of David-and-Goliath stories."[[In-content Ad]]
