This Director Plans To Subvert Audience Expectations, Please A Repressive Government, And Bring Some Avant Garde Theatre To Beijing

That’s the goal in Chen Shi-Zheng’s adaptation of The Orphan of Zhao, anyway. “Despite the familiarity of this 13th-century play to spectators in Mr. Chen’s homeland, they might have trouble understanding all the lines. The principal actors Mr. Chen has cast for this staging in China are almost all Americans, and they will speak in English. In fact, very little about the production will signal the story’s Chinese origins.”