A renowned local theater group has been invited to perform at the Edinburgh International Festival, where it will present a version of Shakespeare’s King Lear that has been described by the festival’s director as “never seen before.”
The festival, established in 1947 and which runs from Aug. 12 through Sept. 4 this year, will focus on Asia for the first time in 64 years with the schedule packed with productions from Taiwan, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea and Vietnam.
Taiwan’s Contemporary Legend Theater, established by Wu Hsing-kuo (吳興國) in 1986, is scheduled to perform its 2001 production of King Lear — a one-man show in which Wu plays 10 characters — from Aug. 13 through Aug. 16. It will be the first time for a Taiwanese group to perform at the festival.
“For those of us who have seen maestro Wu’s King Lear — for [us] whom King Lear is a central part of our culture — we have not seen a King Lear like Wu’s,” the festival’s artistic director, Jonathan Mills, said in Taipei.
“The way in which Wu not only plays all of the roles, but transforms his own body and his physical presence, and ultimately plays himself as a human being in this performance, is extraordinary,” Mills said.
Mills said that a decade ago, the lineup of this year’s festival would have been described by many Europeans as being from the East or the Far East.
“But we prefer, partly in recognition of the extraordinary expansion — the economic, social and cultural expansion of this region of the world — to say that the inspiration of your artists and your cultures will teach us so much in the far West,” said Mills, who is leading his team on a promotion tour for the festival through Asia.
In response to Mills’ praise, Wu said he was lucky to have been picked by the renowned festival and performed a few passages for the audience.
“The one to whom I owe most gratitude is Shakespeare,” Wu said. “Were it not for the great playwright who was born 400 years ago, I would never have been able to create my production.”
Wu’s King Lear was created two years after he was forced to suspend the operations of his troupe because of financial problems in the late 1990s.
“I guess I have found some outlet in interpreting King Lear’s outrage,” he said.
His production combines the gestures, movements and stagecraft of traditional Chinese opera with the themes and relationships in Shakespeare’s monumental tragedy of power and deception, Wu said.
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