Description

Everyone has a dream

Bubbling away, churning up great anxiety

In the past century

Women on stage and women off stage are one and the same

The performance is conceived from two radical acts of reimagination: Xu Fen's chuanju (Sichuan opera) Lady Macbeth, created and performed by Tian Mansha, and three poems by Zhai Yongming — Lady Macbeth — To Tian Mansha, The Three Witches, and Who Knocks at the Door.

Reincarnated from Shakespeare's classic tragedy Macbeth, this Lady Macbeth belongs to no one but herself. Tian Mansha's chuanju portrayal inspires poet Zhai Yongming to reclaim the story through verse and a woman's unblinking gaze — ambition and desire, struggle and dread — peeling back the seduction of power to expose the abyss of human nature beneath. Wu Na summons the percussive heartbeat of traditional opera through the ancient instrument guqin, improvising a living score across the entire performance — breathing in tandem with Lady Macbeth's dramatic presence and the shifting depths of the poetry. Tian Mansha inhabits a threefold identity — a figure caught within a play-within-a-play, creator, and performer — sculpting anew the labyrinthine psychology of Lady Macbeth.

At the opening and close, the three artists shed their roles and become the Three Witches — forging a new historical narrative that prophesies and mirrors the human condition of our time.

Mathias Woo responds to these themes through stage installation, sound, and image. In the art-and-technology theatre he constructs, the boundary between good and evil shimmers like the border of light and shadow upon human nature itself — where brightness and darkness interweave, as fleeting as the instant between life and death.

Poem / Text Composition: Zhai Yongming

Librettist of the chuanju (Sichuan Opera) Lady Macbeth: Xu Fen

Co-Director (Performance Dramaturg / Stage Directing and Blocking): Tian Mansha

Co-Director (Stage Design / Arts Tech): Mathias Woo

Guqin Music Composition: Wu Na

Music Director: Cedric Chan

Starring: Zhai Yongming, Wu Na, Tian Mansha