The encounter between Miller and the members of Beijing Renyi is the subject of a new play at the Connelly Theatre, in the East Village, “Salesman之死,” by Jeremy Tiang. Miller, who did not speak any Chinese, would be entirely reliant on an interpreter as he directed, and he worried, too, about what else might be lost in translation: could a society long removed from commercial life make sense of a man like Willy Loman, whose dreams and crises were so bound up in nineteen-forties American materialism? Beijing Renyi, as the People’s Theatre was popularly known, was the country’s most prestigious modern-drama institution, but, all the same, sound effects and music had to be produced with a decades-old East German tape recorder, the set designer was obliged to make a cardboard box stand in for a refrigerator, and the lights would go dim during daytime rehearsals, because the whole city’s voltage dropped when factories were in operation. Opening night was six weeks away and his thoughts were crowded with technical and ideological uncertainties. In March, 1983, Arthur Miller arrived in Beijing to direct a Chinese staging of “Death of a Salesman” at the Beijing People’s Art Theatre.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |