China and the West

Aufführung von Hamuleite, Hamuleite = Hamlet, Hamlet unter der Regie von Xiong Yuanwei mit der Sha Tin Theatre Company, Amity Theatre Company und Horizonte Theatre Company, Hong Kong. Dramaturg ist Zhang Bingquan, Bühnenbildner ist He Yingfeng.
Li Ruru : The main themes Xiong chose to explore in Hamlet were foreignness and uncertainty, as these seemed especially relevant to the current situation in Hong Kong, and his method for illustrating these concepts was to present the live ation on the stage in parallel with Laurence Olivier's film of Hamlet. The title pointed to the presence of two Hamlets before the audience : the classical image in the film speaking in English, and the live actor on stage speaking in Cantonese.
Xion, Yuanwei. Hamuleite, Hamuleite shuo ming shu. (Hong Kong 2000). [Programm Notizen zu Hamlet].
Er schreibt : Today we put on Shakespeare and no doubt we need some of our own interpretation, modern interpretation. I want our performance first of all to be perceived as Shakespeare, but at the same time the stage is full of uncertainty. Uncertainty is the defining characteristic of today's eclectic world. Value nowadays is ambiguous and uncertain. People uncertain about what to do take the simplest way and turn to 'screen worship'. Contemporary behavior and fashion are deeply influenced and controlled by the electronic media. Reality needs to be confirmed by the screen, or even worse that reality disappears in the screen. In our performance, we let our modern Hamlet on the stage see a classical Hamlet in the videotape, and the former reflects his own life and fate in the light of the latter on the screen.