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SHOWBIZ> Theater & Arts
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Stuff of blockbusters
By Chen Jie (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-03-31 09:39
Last December, after a dress rehearsal of the Peking Opera production Red Cliff, at the National Center for the Performing Arts (NCPA), director Zhang Jigang was a bundle of nerves. He told his team he would not take the curtain call on stage after the debut the following night. It was his wife Zhang Lamei's comment that changed his mind. After watching the rehearsal that night, she told Zhang: "I enjoyed it. It actually felt like watching a blockbuster movie. I think audiences will love it." The next night, the director showed up on stage after the premiere and took the packed audience's applause that rang on for more than 15 minutes.
Tickets for the 10 shows of the first run were all sold out and drew more than 20,000 people to watch the show. Both ordinary viewers and critics gave it two thumbs-up. And on March 16, a 45-minute highlight of the show was shown on the eight screens at the south end of New York's Times Square. The epic play based on a famous battle set in the Three Kingdoms (AD 220-280) will have a second run at the NCPA from today to April 7. Zhang was commissioned to direct the show to celebrate the first anniversary of NCPA last September when he was busy directing the Opening and Closing ceremonies of the Paralympic Games. A month earlier, he had co-directed the highly-acclaimed Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympics with Zhang Yimou. Chen Ping, the sharp-eyed chairman of the NCPA, immediately decided to invite Zhang to revive the popular staple of the Peking Opera repertoire. At first, Zhang was not very sure he was up to it. |
