Forgiveness, a contemporary theatre work inspired by a classic Chinese ghost opera about revenge, gives voice to the complex collective memory and emotions of a post-war generation of Koreans, Japanese and Chinese. Forgiveness is conceived and directed by Chen Shi-Zheng and developed in collaboration with composer Eve Beglarian and noh master Akira Matsui. Using movement, text, slide projections, and live and computerized music, the work also draws upon theatre traditions of Japan, China and Korea. Forgiveness is co-commissioned by Asia Society, Festival d'Automne à Paris, Flynn Theatre for Performing Arts, Hebbel Theatre Berlin, Walker Arts Center, and University Musical Society of the University of Michigan.

According to Rachel Cooper, Associate Director of Performing Arts at the Asia Society, "Forgiveness is a visually haunting, theatrically innovative new work for the stage. I think of it as a visual theater poem, creating dream images that stretch from ancient history to the recent past. It is tied to an urgent need to bear witness to history in the past century. An integral part of the piece is the music, which is like a mosaic that journeys from the pristine clarity of Korean vocals and Japanese shakuhachi, to the driving rage in the hip hop rant."

Kang Kwon Soon, chungak singer (traditional Korean music); Zhou Long, jingju performer (Peking Opera); Song Hee Lee, traditional and contemporary Korean dancer; Kenny Endo, taiko drummer (Japanese drum); Wu Man, pipa player (Chinese lute); and Zhou Ming, dizi player (Chinese flute) complete the team of artists. Costumes are by Anita Yavich. The set, "an archaeological construction site," is by Scott Pask. Projections are by Elaine McCarthy. The lighting is designed by Clyfton Taylor.

The ghost story that inspired Forgiveness is The Punishment of Zi Du, about a warrior who, in search of glory and out of jealousy, betrays and kills his best friend. To save himself, he deceives his king and the dead man's family. His friend's angry ghost relentlessly pursues him until finally he is driven to suicide in order to free himself from the haunting. In the new work, the ghosts are a metaphor for the turbulent, intertwining histories of China, Korea and Japan. The younger generation, who may not have directly experienced the horrors that have occurred between these nations, are nonetheless burdened by history and they struggle with the need for reconciliation.

Chen Shi-Zheng said, "Forgiveness seeks to break through the passed-down, even unconscious hatred and suspicion that is prevalent among Chinese, Koreans and Japanese and find ways to acknowledge the brutal past in order to move more positively into the next century. In making Forgiveness, our group has initiated new friendships on a personal level that we hope will resonate into something much larger."

Regional historical realities are evoked in Forgiveness, which uses formal
aesthetics inherent in Chinese, Korean and Japanese performance traditions, namely noh (Japanese masked dance), and salpuri (Korean dance form), to create tangible emotional connections and tensions.

About these traditions, Chen Shi-Zheng said, " What I love about Japanese noh, which evolved over the 16th and 17th centuries, is its sonorous singing style and restrained movements. Small gestures and even silence and stillness have great significance and express a wide range of emotion. Motion is angular with actors moving across the stage in straight lines. In contrast, Chinese jingju is more flamboyant, elaborate and acrobatic, with an emphasis on a free flowing, circluar movement, with gestures and even singing creating circular patterns. Then, in Korean salpuri, a dance rooted in traditional shaman ritual, you find a focus on up and down movement. The dancer's heel is firmly grounded with the toes up, and the motion is carried through the body to the shoulders that rise and fall with the breath. There is a connection of air and earth, of moving vertically. It's these concepts of linear, circular, and vertical structures that we work with in Forgiveness, and hope that the audience can see not only these contradictions but also how each supports the other as they co-exist in the same space."

The music of Forgiveness brings together a soundscape of traditional instrumentation with contemporary nuances, allowing the audience to understand the interplay between historical and present time. Composer Eve Beglarian has paid close attention to the qualities inherent in each traditional style in order to draw out a new interaction, a different aesthetic. In addition to the music of noh and jingju, the work features distinct singing styles as diverse as chungak (a Korean form derived from Confucian court poets of the 17th and18th centuries) and hip hop.

Forgiveness opens at the Walker Art Center, with performances March 9 - 11. The tour continues to Burlington, Vermont, March 18; Ann Arbor, Michigan, March 24 - 25; and Seattle, Washington, March 30 - April 1. It will be presented in Paris and Berlin in October 2000 and in New York City in July 2001.

Forgiveness is supported by grants from The Starr Foundation; Lila Wallace - Reader's Digest Fund; National Endowment for the Arts; Meet The omposer/International Creative Collaborations Program, in partnership with the Ford Foundation; The Booth Ferris Foundation; The Rockefeller Foundation's Multi-Arts Production Fund; Albert Kunstadter Family Foundation; New York State Council on the Arts; Asian Cultural Council; and the Inroads Program developed and managed by Arts International, a division of the Institute of International Education. Inroads is made possible through the Internationalizing New Work in the Performing Arts initiative of the Ford Foundation. Support for the Asia Society's Cultural Programs is provided by the Friends of Asian Arts.

THE ARTISTS

Chen Shi-Zheng (Director) most recently directed The Peony Pavilion, a 20-hour 55-act Ming dynasty opera commissioned by Lincoln Center Festival and Festival d'Autumne a Paris. His original production was banned by the Shanghai Cultural Bureau in 1998. It was resurrected in 1999 with a new cast and premiered to rave reviews in New York in July at Lincoln Center Festival, followed by a tour to Caen, Paris, Milan and Perth with a further international tour planned. Mr. Chen was a leading traditional opera actor in China and also made pop and folk records. Since moving to the U.S. in 1987, he has appeared as a principal in operas by Meredith Monk and Tan Dun, and performed solo vocals at Lincoln Center, New York; Theatre Odeon, Paris; Queen Elizabeth Hall, London; and major festivals worldwide. Directing credits include: Kindness, a musical theater piece at the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe; The Child God for Bang on a Can Festival; a new adaptation of Euripides' Greek tragedy Bacchae, premiered by China National Beijing Opera Company in Beijing in 1996, and toured to the Hong Kong Arts Festival and Athens Festival in 1998; and Alley, a contemporary opera, for New Zealand International Festival. His directorial projects in 1999 include Cosi Fan Tutte for the Aix-en-Provence Festival to open in July. He is also developing a feature film with the working title The Dark Matter Problem for production in 2000.

Eve Beglarian (Composer) has been described as "one of new music's truly free spirits" (The Village Voice). She is a composer, performer, and audio producer whose work has been performed in the most mainstream concert halls and theaters as well as in clubs and lofts. Her chamber music has been commissioned and performed by the California EAR Unit, Relâche, the Paul Dresher Ensemble, the Crosstown Ensemble, Dinosaur Annex, and the New York New Music Ensemble, among others. Her experience in music theater includes the collaboration Hildegurls' Ordo Virtutum, directed by Grethe Barrett Holby, which premiered at the Lincoln

Center Festival last summer, and the China National Beijing Opera Theater's production of The Bacchae, directed by Chen Shi-Zheng. Her performing duo, twisted tutu, with keyboard player Kathleen Supové, blends high technology with theater. Current projects include music for Mabou Mines' Animal Magnetism, directed by Lee Breuer; a music theater piece based on Stephen King's The Man in the Black Suit; and an orchestra piece commissioned as part of the Continental Harmony project for Orchestra X and DiverseWorks in Houston. Recordings of her music are available on CRI Emergency Music, OO Discs, Accurate Distortion, Atavistic, and Kill Rock Stars. In addition to her composing and performing work, she directs and produces audiobooks of authors including Stephen King and Anne Rice for Random House and Simon & Schuster.

Akira Matsui is a master actor-teacher of the Kita School of Japanese classical noh theater. He was born in 1946 in Wakayama, south of Osaka and began studying noh at the age of five. He showed such talent that, at age 12, he became a "live-in apprentice" to Kita Minoru, the 15th generation of noh masters of the Kita School (one of the five guilds of shite main role actors). He has trained student actors in noh in many foreign countries including India, Australia, Germany, England, and has offered master classes at colleges and theaters across the US and Canada. He most recently performed in the U. S. tour of the Dragon Bond Rite, commissioned by The Japan Society, as well as at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival in 1998. Also in 1998, he received Intangible Cultural Treasure status from the Government of Japan.

Kenny Endo is an internationally known taiko (Japanese drum) performing artist and leader in the field of utilizing the traditional taiko in innovative jazz/fusion settings. A native of Los Angeles, he began early training in western drums and percussion for performance with classical, jazz, and rock musicians. In 1975, he began working with the San Francisco Taiko Dojo and in 1980 embarked on a decade long odyssey in Japan studying with masters in classical, festival, and group drumming. He is the first non-Japanese national to be honored with a "natori," stage name and master's degree in classical Japanese drumming called "Hogaku Hayashi." Endo has performed with such artists as legendary jazz drummer Art Blakey, Latin percussionist Airto Moreira, taiko artist Hayashi Eitetsu, jazz musicians John Kaizan Neptune (shakuhachi, flute), Paul Jackson (bass), tsugaru shamisen artist Sato Michihiro. He leads three ensembles based in Honolulu, Los Angeles, and Tokyo. In 2000, Endo collaborates with Hawaiian Slack Key Guitarist Keola Beamer at Stanford University, Los Angeles, and Honolulu; presents a concert of new works in Tokyo, headlines the 2nd Hawaii International Taiko Festival, and is featured at the Hawaii Jazz Festival. Endo will be a guest soloist with the Hong Kong Philharmonic in 2001.

Song Hee Lee was born in Pusan, Korea where she studied both traditional Korean and modern dance since childhood. She is particularly noted for her performances of Salpuri (female shaman dance). Upon graduation she joined the Pusan Metropolitan Dance Company where she became a principal in the company. She premiered her choreographic solo work Karma in New York last year and is currently working on a new piece Karma II: 108 Defilements in Purification.

Kang Kwon Soon is a young leading vocalist of new music in Korea. She trained as a traditional singer in both court and folk styles, including pansori and chungak. She has performed with many important ensembles and orchestras such as Seoul Metropolitan Traditional Orchestra, National Traditional Performing Arts Center, and the Korean Court Music Association, as well as at the Celebration of Buddha's Birthday at Bulkook-temple and the 50th Anniversary of Liberation and the Korea Festival.

Zhou Long started his formal study of the opera at the age of eight with one of the best-known jingju masters, formally enrolling in the Beijing Opera Academy when he was twelve. He has been guest lead actor with many different jingju companies in China and has performed throughout Asia and in England. In 1996, he performed the lead part of Dionysus in Chen Shi-Zheng's jingju version of the Bacchae. He has published essays and articles on different aspects of performance technique and contemporary creativity in jingju.

Wu Man is one of China's most outstanding pipa players. In addition to the traditional pipa repertoire, Wu Man is also internationally recognized for her interpretations of contemporary pipa music. She has collaborated with groups including the New York New Music Consort, Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, the BBC Chamber Orchestra (Scotland) and others. She has also performed at numerous festivals and venues including Festival d'Automne à Paris. Wu Man is the 1998-1999 fellow of the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College.

Zhou Ming was educated at the Shanghai School of Traditional Opera (Kunju). He is a master of the dizi, a bamboo Chinese flute, the importance of which in the Kunju opera orchestra is equivalent of the first violin in Western orchestral music. He has studied with the masters of Kunju music for the last twenty years, and is widely regarded as the leading flute player in China. He performed as the lead musician in over twenty-five major Kunju operas for the Shanghai Kunju Opera Company. In addition, he has led music ensembles in Japan and Taiwan as a guest conductor. Zhou Ming was music director and flutist in Chen Shi-Zheng's productions of The Peony Pavilion.

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