Wu Hsing-kuo (1953—) is the artistic director, co-founder and lead performer of the Contemporary Legend Theatre in Taipei (1986—), and is known in theatre circles for adapting western literature into the jingju (Peking Opera) tradition (in addition to film and television roles, for which he has received awards and nominations). However, due to a personal-political fallout with a Chinese theatre master and former mentor, he has not been formally recognized as a qualified performer in jingju by traditional Chinese opera practitioners (tensions between China and Taiwan may have further exacerbated this). His cross-cultural adaptations are contemporary takes on fusing disparate traditional Western and East Asian theatre practices — an adaptation of Macbeth, for example, was named “Sex and the City” (or similar in translation). The Contemporary Legend Theatre’s production (a recorded performance at The Metropolitan Hall in Taipei, Oct 10, 2006), of “Li Er Zaici” (“Lear is Here”), is cited as being catalytic of Wu’s own personal-professional crisis at the time. In the play, Wu performs nine characters from King Lear (King Lear, the three …

Suzuki Tadashi (1939) is an avant-garde theatre director, initially of “Waseda Little Theatre” (Waseda Shogekijo), and later co-founder of the Saratoga International Theatre Institute (amongst other things), before occupying high profile theatre roles (across olympic committees, various national theatre arts centres and foundations, board-level chair for the Japan Performing Arts Foundation, etc). He is acclaimed internationally for the powerful performance and aesthetic of his theatrical productions, in addition to pioneering an actor-training program which has gained resonance with theatre practitioners around the world. His belief was that the performer should be the core of theatrical expression, rather than an instrument/ element of the play — as he feels they are the ones who create the stage language. Suzuki focused on both integrating traditional Japanese theatrical expressions and integrating actors associated with particular theatre traditions (Noh, Kabuki and Shingeki) into Western plays, as a means of reflecting contemporary socio-cultural conditions — the first of his experimentations was the 1974 adaptation of Euripides’ “The Trojan Women,” staged multiple times in the decades since (his first production to …

Tadeusz Kantor (1915-1990) was an avant-garde theater director, author and painter, known for his inventive theatre work interweaving historical and personal themes. Kantor’s “The Dead Class” premiered on November 15, 1975 at the Krzytofory Gallery in Kraków, and went on to be performed internationally over 1500 times, attaining critical acclaim and commercial success. Sometimes described as a dramatic séance, (the film of the theatre work shot by Andrzej Wajda in 1976), explores Kantor’s obsessions — the World Wars, Poland’s history as a site of invasion and oppression, and Kantor’s memories of this history (Culture.pl). “The Dead Class” is set in a stone cellar (common in Kraków), with ancient walls, ceilings and curved doorway to one side of the space; the audience sits in front, with the stage area simply cordoned-off. The play opens with the cast seated in rows facing the audience (in what resembles wooden pews, school room desks or a combination of the two, which occupies most of the space). The cast is older, mostly elderly, wearing black suits, white shirts, black ties …

The theatre play “1789” was the sixth production that emerged from the Ariane Mnouchkine’s theatre company, “Theatre du Soleil,” filmed in 1973, receiving international critical acclaim the following year. This theatrical production was the first major success the organization achieved. “1789” was described as a collective creation, whereby the audience is as much a part of the spectacle in reinterpreting the atmosphere of the French Revolution from the perspective of the revolution’s (perhaps seedy) underbelly — and the proletariate. The play received critical acclaim when performed at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan (1970-71) when it was first staged outside France, and subsequently filmed in 1973 during the last 13 performances at its home base, the Cartoucherie, a former munitions factory in the Bois de Vincennes area of Paris. “Theatre du Soleil” was founded in 1964, as a theatre collective using physical theatrical approaches and improvisation, borne out of the political-turmoil in France at the time. Their works oscillate between politics to ethics in an attempt to illuminate the social mechanisms of class divide, to raise …

“Brace Up!” (1989-2003) was a theatre production based on a contemporary translation of Anton Chekhov’s play, “Three Sisters” (written in 1901), produced by The Wooster Group (1976—) and directed by Elizabeth LeCompte (1944—), one of the groups founding members. The Wooster Group is a NY-based performance company known for redefining the position of several theatrical elements — “performer,” “role,” and function of play scripts, which they used as a basis for the group’s explorations, with an intention to deliberately challenge audience expectations through a fragmentary/ deconstructive approach (LeCompte 294-95). The Wooster Group arguably viewed Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” text as a distant second to their exploration of other theatrical elements. In the development of “Brace Up!”, the group fused and layered various borrowed elements (ie. Japanese Noh and Kyōgen theatre, Benshi performers, Pacific Island dancers, etc), allowing these elements to “transmutate” in their experimentation over time. LeCompte says they landed on the text later, stating Paul Schmidt’s translation fit well with what they wanted to do. As a “theatrical family,” their method is to work on …

Susanne Kennedy’s “Three Sisters,” posted online by (and housed at) The Chamber Theatre (Kammerspiele) in Munich throughout the pandemic, was a theatre production developed in 2019/2020. Susanne Kennedy is a German theatre director, known for exploring the relationship between human bodies and technology, using experimental approaches to book adaptations, although she seems to be deviating from this in her more recent work (book adaptations that is). She pushes the boundaries of what theatre can be (mostly in a technological direction), elevating the intensity (as boundary-pushing is already an uncomfortable proposition for the audience). Masks, repetitive playback, multimedia and dramaturgy of the internet, are used to create an alien ambience with the abstract tech-infused environments she creates. In many of her other theatre works, she blurs the boundary between installation, theatre and immersion in increasingly virtual worlds. “Three Sisters” appears to be a more accessible, somewhat linearly translated work, relative to her later theatre-installation works. The loop is the central mechanism through which meaning is made in this play, and can be connected to philosophical ideas …