Cultural exchange between China and Germany has been vibrant recently. Reflecting the Frankfurt Book Fair, other Sino-German cultural exchange activities are being held in China. Among those activities, translations of four German dramas are being shown in an art theater in downtown Beijing from last Friday till this Monday.
The German plays are being presented to the Beijing audience in the form of a staged reading, where actors perform their parts with script in hand and production elements are kept at a minimum.
This German play is called "Unusual Miss", and tells the story of a girl who is abducted and held captive for eight years, and how after escaping from the home-made prison, she becomes the focus of the media. But too much media attention makes the girl self-inflated. Ultimately, she grows so accustomed to the camera, she becomes a TV hostess.
Based on a real event, the play depicts the violence that can be inflicted by the media, and reflects some philosophical thoughts on what is "usual" and "unusual."
The play is penned by Austrian writer Kathrin Roggla, but the version on the Beijing stage is an adaptation by Li Yinan, a teacher at the Central Academy of Drama. The adaptation embodies the idea of "Dramaturgie", a theatrical experience which is popular in Germany, which emphasizes the modernization of an ancient play, or the localization of a foreign play.
Li Yinan, adaptor of “Unusual Miss”, said, "What is being shown now on the stage is a German play created last year. The content is quite removed from the Chinese audience, so what we've done is to localize the play into one that is accessible to them. This is a popular theatrical experience for German playwrights nowadays."
The drama exchange activity is organized by Goethe Institute in China. It is the Chinese part of a coordinated activity where the German part was held in Dusseldorf back in March. At that time, actors produced staged readings of six Chinese plays translated into German.
Christoph Lepschy, dramaturg of Dusseldorf Playhouse, said, "So what we're doing is we try to have a meeting between Chinese and German playwrights, and exchange opinions, exchange race of writing, exchange ideas, and just meeting and look what are you doing and what are we doing, and how can we develop project together. That's the basic idea of this exchange."
The four-day script reading of German plays was held at a newly built theater near the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing.
Editor: Feng Hui
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