Jim Henson and his Muppets may have never performed at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, but Chinese Theatre Works has his legacy to thank when it brings a different kind of puppetry to CSPAC Tuesday night.
Led by Co-artistic directors Kuang-Yu Fong and Stephen Kaplin, Chinese Theatre Works will deliver a show including traditional Chinese opera and shadow puppetry. With Fong and Kaplin serving as the newly appointed Jim Henson Artists-in-Residence, the husband-and-wife tandem will show off their talents before taking over teaching responsibilities throughout the year.
“The reason we do the performance here is for the Jim Henson Foundation and for the students,” Fong said. “We wanted to introduce the kind of art form we are going to teach.”
Fong and Kaplin founded Chinese Theatre Works in 2001 as a merger between the Chinese Theatre Workshop and the Gold Mountain Institute for Traditional Shadow Theatre. Based out of Long Island City, N.Y., the company mixes several Chinese artistic techniques while promoting appreciation of the culture and blending Eastern and Western aesthetics.
It was actually Henson’s widow, Jane, who recommended to the Jim Henson Foundation that Fong and Kaplin bring the Chinese Theatre Works to the university and join the faculty, theatre department Chairman Daniel MacLean Wagner said. Although Fong and Kaplin were raised in distinctly different cultures, they grew up with similar creative interests that ultimately led to their partnership both professionally and personally.
“Kuang-Yu was born and educated in Taiwan, and Stephen is American, but they came together out of a common interest in puppetry and Asian art forms,” Wagner said.
The program will open with The Peony Pavilion, an epic Chinese opera Tang Xian Zu wrote during the Ming Dynasty. Following will be Fong, Kaplin and Ron Sopyla’s original shadow theater presentation, Tiger Tales. The performance will close with Fighting in the Dark, a single operatic scene featuring a pitch-black fight that serves as a famous showcase for Peking Opera martial arts.
“It’s an art form with which students may not be familiar, especially the Chinese opera piece of it,” Wagner said. “It is a performance that is going to be a very interesting and very energetic.”
Although Chinese Theatre Works’ performers’ training included the expected choreography and memorization, it also included elements that are a bit more complicated. Performers Yuhang Wen, Lili Yang, Jing Shan, Xinnian He and Ning Li all grew up and learned the art in China, making for a bit of culture shock when they came to the U.S.
“The artists are all very good, well-known performers in China,” Fong said. “Their training and how to present it is all provided by the Chinese government, so it’s very different from the Americans. Now they are in the U.S., the artists have to provide everything for themselves, so it’s very difficult for them to train.”
Chinese Theatre Works marks the first event in CSPAC’s “Take Five” series of free, interactive performances featured on occasional Tuesday nights. And the opportunity a free program presents to the campus is why Fong believes the show is such a special occasion.
“It is in the ancient art from China, and the school really thinks it is something that students should get a chance to see without paying for an airplane ticket to China,” Fong said. “I think it’s worth seeing, because it is generations and generations of artists’ work and it is very different.”
Chinese Theatre Works will perform Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. in the CSPAC’s Kogod Theatre. Admission is free.
tfloyd1@umd.edu
