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Sino-Scottish link-up for Joyce classic
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WHEN Chinese director Yi Liming first saw a poster of a stage adaptation of “Ulysses,” directed by Andy Arnold, in Edinburgh in 2013 during the Fringe Festival, he was instantly intrigued and wondered how James Joyce’s novel, known for its literary complexity and challenge to readers, could be adapted onto the stage.
“My own team was trying to develop a stage adaptation of a novel by Chinese writer Jia Pingwa, so we were very curious to see how ‘Ulysses’ could be done on stage,” Yi tells Shanghai Daily.
“Adaptations of literary works are not often successful. It’s easy to lose the energy, the dramatic tension and the life from the original work,” he adds.
“But I was impressed by this one, how easily it made the work accessible to audience, and how fluent the story was told on the stage, and I wanted to bring it to China.”
As part of the 2015 UK-China Year of Cultural Exchange, the play is currently touring in Hangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing and Jinan in Shandong Province. After two performances in Shanghai, the play is moving to Beijing for three shows from tomorrow.
Yi saw the play on his last day in Edinburgh, and managed to meet director Arnold and discuss possible collaborations.
The meeting between the artistic director of Beijing Xinchan Theater and the creative director of the Tron Theater in Glasgow led to the China-UK Literary Theater Exchange, including two of Arnold’s productions, the stage adaptation of “Ulysses” with its original cast, and “A Journey Around James Joyce,” written and directed by Arnold, with a Chinese cast.
The poster for “Ulysses” that started these collaborations shows a scene where the protagonist’s wife Molly Bloom lies on a bed in a pose that, in Yi’s words, “is seductive but not vulgar, a very subtle and intriguing moment.”
Arnold deliberately picked this scene to be the poster because “many people are intimidated by this book, by Joyce’s writing, by how difficult it is to understand the complexity of it,” he explains. “But once you get beyond his styles, it is a book full of humor, full of sex, very dirty, very funny, and very heart-felt. And I want all that in the poster, rather than having a photo of James Joyce, which will just confirm all the assumptions that it is difficult.”
He adds the stage version, written by Dermot Bolger, was nicely adapted.
“In my opinion, all the works by James Joyce need to be spoken out aloud, which are good to be adapted to theater,” he says. “In ‘Ulysses,’ the dramatic narrative is very strong, and the relations and tension between the characters are great for stage.”
After he directed “Ulysses,” Arnold wrote and directed “A Journey Around James Joyce.” In this other writings by Joyce are used to tell the story of his years in northeastern Italian city Trieste, about his relationship with Nora Barnacle, and how he was inspired to write the books that became classics.
“A Journey Around James Joyce”
Date: April 10-11
Venue: Shanghai Grand Theater, 300 People’s Ave
Tickets: 50-200 yuan
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