Written and Directed by Stan Lai
Produced by Magnificent Culture, China, Performance Workshop, Taiwan, and Esplanade-Theatres on the Bay, Singapore
"A Dream Like a Dream is a major milestone in Chinese theater, possibly the greatest Chinese-language play since time immemorial...The transcendent wisdom and innovation have combined to create a cultural event, as well as a viewing experience that is at once singularly challenging and endlessly rewarding...
The play is built on a massive and intricate plot structure, but is seamlessly commensurate with its themes and staging. While the clockwise circumambulation is a constant visual motif, the story within another story (within a third story actually) goes backwards, each one more elaborate...
A Dream Like a Dream may be the most cosmic piece of theater in the Chinese-language canon...Such richness is rare except in a work of great scope and depth and crafted by someone who has reached an artistic height that may baffle many an ordinary viewer. Future generations may have a field day dissecting the minutiae of this piece, but some of us can proudly say we were there and we saw how the master worked his miracle...
For theatergoers the work is so dense in texture, so exalted in wisdom, it demands absolute surrender."
-- China Daily (April 13, 2013)
“A Dream Like a Dream is not grand just because f its 8 hour performance length, and not because its story leaps through 70 years and 4 places, but because of the heights of its ambition, the depths of its profundity, the fullness of its philosophy and Zen. Never has Chinese drama been so transcendent, yet so close, close enough for the audience to hear the actors' breathing, to count the number of tears on their faces, to feel the wonder of their spiritual transformation...
This is a masterpiece from the mature period of a great artist...When you get to the last act, you will see the unprecedented heights."
-- The Beijing News (April 7, 2013)
A landmark seven and a half hour play by the preeminent playwright-director of Chinese language theatre, Stan Lai, this epic work changes the paradigm of theatre experience, not only in the richness, depth and multilayers of its story, but in the actual experience of the performance itself, which places the audience in the center of the action, with scenes unfolding all around. It is like watching 4 stages surrounding you at the same time.
"In a story, someone had a dream; in that dream, someone told a story." These are the opening lines of this watershed production and a key to the layers of story that unfold in this complex yet highly accessible epic work.
Stories within stories; dreams within dreams. A story about a doctor; a story about a patient who is facing an undiagnoseable illness, and his relationship with both a lonely waitress in Paris and an old woman living secretly in Shanghai, who when young met a French diplomat who married her and took her to France, where she lived in a chateau near a lake, learning to paint...A train wreck, a boat on the seas carrying strange passengers...Recurring patterns of violence and love; a complex web of extraordinary people, past and present, and the extraordinary way in which their lives have been intricately linked together.
About Performance Workshop >>>
Based in Taiwan, Performance Workshop has long been one of the most influential theatre groups in the Chinese-speaking world. Since 1984, Performance Workshop has created and produced over 30 original new productions, many which have become milestones of the modern Chinese-language theatre. Performance Workshop’s most famous work, Secret Love In Peach Blossom Land has toured worldwide, made into an award-winning film and has helped revitalize the theatre in China, where it is standard text for drama and film students. The New York Times says it “may be the most popular contemporary play in China…by the end, the audience is left to contemplate the burdens of memory, history, longing, love and the power of theater itself.” Performance Workshop’s epic 7 hour A Dream Like A Dream has been deemed a masterpiece of the modern Asian theatre.
Performance Workshop is led by international award-winning Stan Lai, one of the most acclaimed playwright/directors in Asia. Lai is widely regarded as one of the most important voices in contemporary Chinese-language theatre. His wife, Nai-chu Ding, is Performance Workshop’s Managing Director and one of the most respected theatre producers in Asia. Lai uses a unique method of improvisation-based rehearsals to develop his new works. The stamp of his work is its ability to draw a popular audience while keeping its experimental core.
In 1998, Performance Workshop began producing its plays in China. These historical productions have been met with enthusiastic response, with coverage by CNN, BBC and other international media. An excerpt from Lai’s Millennium Teahouse was performed at the 2002 CCTV New Year’s Special, beamed to a billion viewers throughout China. The recent play The Village (2008) is the most acclaimed Chinese work of the decade, and has been called “the pinnacle of our era of theatre” by the Beijing News. In 2009, Performance Workshop was the treative team that produced the highly acclaimed Deaflympics Opening and Closing Ceremonies in Taipei. Other large scale events include the Taipei Flora Expo Opening Ceremony and the 2011 Taiwan Lantern Festival.