Winter Institute, Performing Shanghai

The four TDR consortium institutions and Yale University jointly sponsored a Winter Institute,  Performing Shanghai, on January 5th through 20th, 2012. It was hosted by the Shanghai Theatre Academy (STA) and co-sponsored by Brown, NYU, Princeton & Yale Universities. TDR editor Richard Schechner, consortium editors Rebecca Schneider, Jill Dolan, Stacy Wolf, and William Huizhu Sun, and over eighty other scholars, practitioners, and students from the US and China, such as James Bundy, dean of Yale School of Drama, Wu Zhiqiang, chief planner of the 2010 World Expo and vice president of Tongji University, Lou Wei, chairman of STA, and Gong Baorong, vice president of STA, gathered in Shanghai to explore the physical, theoretical, and theatrical geographies of contemporary performance, sharing experiences from other metropolises and other traditions. Topics of lectures, seminars, and workshops covered the creative process in the theatre, community culture, urban planning and event planning, and intercultural performance.

The WI participants visited two rural towns near Shanghai to see a traditional ritualistic Nuo dance performance and a performance art piece, "Water Music," composed, designed and directed by the world-renowned composer/conductor/director Tan Dun, and engaged in a discussion with him. They also saw Beijing opera, Mirror of Fortune, a traditional piece, and two Chinese opera versions of Western classics written by William H. Sun and Faye C. Fei, Yue opera Hedda Gabler, with an all-female cast, and Beijing opera Miss Julie. Dance theatre, Red, ends the theatre-going list.

Faculty and administrators from the five school agree that this successful WI shall be continued as an annual event, with adjusted dates and length to accommodate most professors and students’ winter schedules better.

Selected lectures and presentations from this WI will be published in the STA issue of TDR, to be edited by TDR consortium editor William Huizhu Sun.