CHEN SHI-ZHENG, Director

Chen Shi-Zheng is a director, choreographer, singer, and actor. He was born in Changsha, Hunan, China in 1963. As a teenager, he studied with some of the great masters of Chinese opera and became a leading traditional opera actor, performing in many productions throughout China. Mr. Chen emigrated to the United States in 1987 and has worked to create a new expression that crosses the boundaries between music, opera, theatre, and dance, and between nationalities. In 2000 he received the title of Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters from the French Government.

Recently Mr. Chen is developed the last piece of a trilogy of Chinese theater works: Peach Blossom Fan for the Center for New Theatre at the California Institute of the Arts, presented at REDCAT, the theatre in the new facility designed by Frank Gehry in downtown Los Angeles, in April 2004. The other two pieces are Orphan of Zhao (Lincoln Center Theater & Lincoln Center Festival, July 2003), and Snow in June (American Repertory Theatre, November-December 2003). Also in this past year, he mounted the last presentation of Peony Pavilion at this year's Spoleto Festival USA. Future projects include a modern opera Light World of Mercury for the Berlin Festival. He is currently working on a commission to create a new theater work titled My life as a fairy tale for the Hans Christian Andersen bicentennial celebrations in Denmark, 2005. Mr. Chen will begin shooting his first feature film, Dark Matter, based on a true story of a brilliant Chinese graduate student in physics who was denied an academic honor and went berserk, killing his professor and others as well as himself at a university in Iowa during the 1990s.

Among Mr. Chen's other recent directing projects were Monteverdi's Vespers with Handel & Hayden Society in Boston; Wagner's The Flying Dutchman for the Spoleto Festival USA; Night Banquet, a chamber opera by Guo Wenjing co-commissioned by the Festival d'Automne à Paris, Kunstenfestival des Arts in Brussels, Hebbel-Theater in Berlin, and the Ensemble Modern in Frankfurt, at the Lincoln Center Festival in summer 2003; and a documentary film Cultural Warriers of the revolution for TV France 3.

The year 1999 marked the premiere of his 19 hour staging of Tang Xianzu's complete Peony Pavilion as part of the Lincoln Center Festival. This production has subsequently been presented at the Festival d'Automne in Paris, at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, at the Perth International Arts Festival, at the Aarhus Festival in Denmark, at Berlin Festival, Vienna Festival and at the Esplanade Centre in Singapore. It has been filmed for home video distribution by RM Associates.

Other credits as director and/or choreographer include Mozart's Cosi fan tutte at the Aix-en Provence Festival and at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées in Paris; Dido and Aeneas for the Spoleto USA Festival; New York City Opera's production of Turandot (1991-97); A Small Delegation at the Philadelphia Festival Theatre for New Plays; Kindness with Richard Tuttle at the Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe; The Child God by Bun Ching Lam for Bang on a Can Festival, New York; and Chinoiserie by Ping Chong for the Next Wave Festival at Brooklyn Academy of Music. His 1996 production of Euripides' tragedy The Bacchae, performed by China National Beijing Opera Company, attracted wide acclaim and toured to the Hong Kong International Festival of the Arts in February 1998 and the Athens Festival in the summer of 1998. That same year, he directed Alley, a new opera by Jack Body for the New Zealand International Festival for the Arts.

As a performer, Mr. Chen appeared as a principal in Meredith Monk's Atlas (ECM) for Houston Grand Opera, which toured widely throughout the world. Other performances include leading roles in the ritual opera Nine Songs (CRI), and in Marco Polo (Sony) by Tan Dun, which premiered in Munich Biennale International Festival and toured to the Holland Festival, Hong Kong Arts Festival, and New York City Opera. He has performed as solo vocalist at Avery Fisher Hall and Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, New York, Théâtre Odeon in Paris, Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, and other major venues throughout Europe, Asia, and the United States.

Chen Shi-Zheng earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Hunan Arts School in Changsha, China with Honors in 1981. He has a Master of Fine Arts degree in Performance Studies from New York University / Tisch School of the Arts. Mr. Chen resides in New York City.