Hong Kong theater director Edward Lam (林奕華) has gained a reputation for his hard-hitting plays adapted from classical literature, which tackle contemporary themes while pushing performers to the limits of their acting ability.
At a rehearsal earlier this week for his upcoming production What is Fantasy?, which begins tomorrow at the National Theater, a male and female performer sing, or more precisely scream, through a duet that is surreal in its emotional intensity. Ten minutes after rehearsing the scene, one of the two actors is still crying in the corner.
"This couple is suffering ... [because] the lives the two are living are not exactly what they expect or what they are looking for," he said.
The screaming duet occurs at the beginning of the play, which runs for three hours, and sets the scene for what follows by raising questions about why relationships fail.
Loosely adapted from the Chinese classic Journey to the West (西遊記), Lam calls the play "a journey in search of soul."
"The whole voyage is about finding the answer to the question: What is eternal happiness?" he said.
Lam infuses the play with his interpretations of ideas found in the original work.
"We have picked out some motifs from the book and transformed them into a modern situation or a different way of looking at the old stories," he said. He does this by having his characters - who are not the same as those in the book - set out on a journey of self-discovery, which can lead to usually-negative realizations about themselves and their conflicts with those around them.
Similar to his previous two works, Madam Bovary is Me, based on the French classic by Gustav Flaubert, and What is Man?, inspired by the Chinese classic The Water Margin (水滸傳); What is Fantasy? investigates the disparity between fantasy and reality and the reason why humans cannot find joy in themselves or others. Also like his other productions, Lam takes aim at consumer culture and obsessions with fame - both hallmarks of contemporary society, East and West.
Set in three different locations - an airport, a television studio and a museum - the dialogue-heavy play features well-known Taiwanese actors Joseph Chang (張孝全) and Wei Yi-cheng (韋以承).
"This piece is very much about how people get confused, are made anxious by modern life and how unhappy we have become and how desperate we are when we want to consume something or when we want to possess something," he said.
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