Director Tian Qinxin found herself transported back to 17th century Nanjing by the Qinhuai River, famed for its beautiful scenery, charming courtesans and talented young scholars.

She did not need a time machine, however.

All she did, over the past 10 months, was to immerse herself in a classical Kunqu Opera script and direct a cast of mostly teenage performers to revive late Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) scenes of the Qinhuai River and unfold a tragic love story on stage.

"It is such a leisurely and romantic place that I wished I could have had a love affair with somebody during my work here," Tian said in a rehearsal break early this month in Nanjing.

"I am really fascinated by the lifestyle here and I have been really addicted to Kunqu Opera," she added.

Tian was commissioned by the Jiangsu Provincial Kunqu Opera Theatre to direct the theatre's brand new production "The Peach Blossom Fan," one of the gems in the Kunqu Opera repertoire, written by playwright and poet Kong Shangren (1648-1718) 300 years ago.

The three-hour epic will premiere at Beijing's Poly Theatre on March 17 to 19 and has been invited to the 2007 Zurich Arts Festival.

"I immersed myself in the peaceful and prosperous scene along the two sides of the Qinhuai River. I felt so good, escaping from the hectic metro life while working with so many graceful Kunqu Opera artists to revive an old play," she said.

The general touch of the production is leisurely and quiet, the director said, but underneath it lies the sorrow the playwright felt for the dying Ming Dynasty, which Tian tries to exemplify through the separation and reunion of the two protagonists, the courtesan Li Xiangjun and the scholar Hou Fangyu.

Playwright Kong, a distant descendant of Confucius, once was sent to the Yangtze River valley to help with flood control. While visiting Nanjing and Yangzhou, he learned much about the fall of the Ming to the rising power of the Manchus from the north. He began to think of writing a play about it.

Major challenges

After he returned to Beijing, he devoted some 10 years to writing the play "The Peach Blossom Fan," based on the episodes of the short-lived so-called Southern Ming regime in Nanjing.

The play premiered in 1669. Made up of 44 scenes, it lasted nine nights.

Tian's main challenge was how to shorten the 44 scenes into six acts and come up with new ideas, revitalizing and maintaining the original spirit of the masterpiece but making it accessible, palatable and enthralling for a modern audience.

That, Tian said, has not been easy, given that "The Peach Blossom Fan" is originally a story, not a play.

"The most difficult task is to visualize a literary work," she pointed out. "The work is at its best when it is read and not performed," she said.

Tian is not the first to try a modern version of the classical play.

Chinese dramatists Ouyang Yuqian (1889-1962) adapted the legendary story into a play in late 1930s while director Sun Jing made it into a movie in 1963.

However, Tian revealed that she did not want to follow in the footsteps of Ouyang and Sun, and she believes her version will be much more loyal to Kong's original version.

"Ouyang's version is more concerned with loyalty to the Ming Dynasty, a kind of patriotism, as he created the drama during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1937-45)," she explained, "while Sun's movie highlights the love between Li and Hou.

"I am more interested in the 'legend'," She said.

After carefully studying the scripts, she said she found many things in the story that will appeal to modern audiences.

For instance, there were political maneuverings. One minute Hou and Li are seeing an opera, the next court men break in and take them to jail.

There were sharp contrasts: The courtesans and court officials are still flirting without any worry or fear even when the Manchu army is approaching Nanjing. And a loyal general named Shi Kefa sheds tears and blood when he fails to defeat the Manchu army.

Tian also points out that Kong wrote a surprising and interesting ending to his script, but Ouyang and Sun worked out their own different versions. Li and Hou reunited after the Southern Ming regime collapsed, but they did not live a happy life together. Instead, Li entered a nunnery while Hou became a monk. The peach blossom fan was collected by an old Taoist priest.

Using intuition, Tian created some 30 roles of different jobs to revive the prosperous scene of the Qinhuai River, and produced a magnificent fighting scene featuring more than a dozen Ming and Manchu soldiers.

"These scenes are seldom seen in today's Kunqu Opera play which usually has an actor and an actress singing slowly on stage. But according to my research, there were such grand scenes in history," she said.

The set design by Xiao Lihe is simple, mixing modern art with tradition, yet still fully functional.

A small "stage" stands at the centre of the real stage against the backdrop of an old scroll featuring scenes of the Qinhuai River.

The painting is transparent, allowing the audience to see the band behind the backdrop.

Stage set

The whole set looks like a courtyard of a museum. The surrounding backdrop of the painting is structured like the winding corridor of the courtyard. Performers not acting the scene sit or stand on the corridor just like they are audience watching the performance on a small stage.

"Opera stages, museums and Chinese courtyards jointly inspired me for the setting," said Xiao, who studied theatre in New York with the distinguished lighting designer Jennifer Tipton.

"First, the playwright Kong used a narrator to tell the story and director Tian follows this approach and has a narrator on stage and some performers pose as viewers, so I thought to build a small stage," Xiao explained.

Kunqu is an old art like something restored in a museum. And the Chinese courtyard is a typical symbol of Chinese culture, she said.

The floor of the main stage has a shining mirror surface. With special lighting effects, the floor looks like a gently moving river. It is for the scenes happening over the Qinhuai River.

Whatever their efforts, they are recreating scenes and events three centuries ago.

"Kunqu has developed for more than 600 years. To be honest, it is impossible for us to make a play 100 per cent in the style of hundreds of years ago," Tian said. "What we can do today is to learn from old artists and from their documents, while giving play to our own interpretations and modern concerns."

Asked whether today's audience could endure a three-hour long play, she said she has no qualms if viewers doze off during the show.

"People fall asleep watching Wagner's 'Ring Cycle,' so, if you want to sleep, that's OK," Tian said.

(China Daily March 14, 2006)