China's Experimental Theater
Meng Jinghui (prominent stage & film director) and Liao Yimei (playwrite & screen writer)
Wednesday, November 27, 2002
12:00 PM - 2:00 PM
243 Royce Hall
UCLA
Meng Jinghui is China's most acclaimed young director of theater. His productions have revived the theater scene in Beijing since the mid-1990s and have traveled to international festivals in Europe and Japan. His playful, entertaining, and highly improvisational productions have earned him international recognition as he captures his country's thirtysomething generation caught between communist ideals and the rising tide of capitalism. Heavily inspired by Meyerhold's theories of acting technique and theater as revolution, Meng has staged several experimental adaptations of foreign works, such as Beckett's Waiting for Godot, Genet's The Balcony, Fo's The Accidental Death of an Anarchist, and Mayakovsky's The Bedbug, and has also directed several plays written by his wife Liao Yimei. Liao's literary career includes several plays and films, and more than 50 television screenplays. Recently, they collaborated on their first film, "Chicken Poets" (Xiang jimao yiyang fei or "Flying Like a Chicken Feather") which is currently screening at international film festivals (most recently Locarno and Toronto).
The talk is sponsored by the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies. The film will be shown at UCLA on December 7th at UCLA's James Bridges Theatre at 7:30 pm. For further information on the screening, go to <www.international.ucla.edu/showevent.asp?eventid=416>
Special Instructions
Meng and Liao will speak in Chinese. No translation will be available.
For more information please contact
Richard Gunde
Tel: 310 825-8683
www.international.ucla.edu/ccs
Sponsor(s): Center for Chinese Studies, Asian Languages and Cultures
