What does war mean to women? What would they do on the battlefront? And what would they need after returning from war? Pioneering Chinese theater director Li Liuyi and acclaimed composer Guo Wenjing have created a contemporary trilogy of three women fighters' stories to explore a woman's life in war.

In June, the world premiere of the trilogy Chinese Heroines was widely acclaimed when it opened the Holland Festival, the largest performing arts festival in the Netherlands. Now the Beijing Music Festival has invited it back to run at the Capital Theater tomorrow.

Each of the three heroines - Mu Guiying, Hua Mulan and Liang Hongyu - played an important role in Chinese history. In this trilogy, which is created in a style combining Western and traditional Chinese operas, they hold conversations with men who have played crucial roles in their lives.

In the first opera, Mu Guiying pursues her inner struggle between hate and desire during a purification ritual in the hours before a battle, recalling memories of her dead husband and his heroic ancestors. Mu and the male characters, including her dead husband, father-in-law and grandfather-in-law, are all played as lao sheng, the old man roles of Peking Opera.

The second character, Hua Mulan, will be more familiar to Western audiences, thanks to the Disney version of her tale. Hua, who dresses as a man to fight on behalf of her father and brother, returns to her parents after winning fame as a brave warrior. She returns home accompanied by her superior, an older general, and by the younger general with whom she has fallen in love.

In discussions between Hua, her father and the generals, played as traditional jing roles (characters with painted faces), the story explores Hua's struggles to disclose her real self, as well as issues of filial piety, patriotism and collective versus individual desires.

The Peking Opera traditionally minimizes its set as "one table, two chairs". In this part of the trilogy, director Li changes it to "one bathtub, two chairs", an approach that retains the lyric theater's tradition of imitation but incorporates a modern aesthetic.

In the third and last segment, Liang Hongyu becomes a famous prostitute, even after establishing her fame as a warrior. She refuses to be honored by the Emperor and chooses to live in seclusion in her brothel. The head of the brothel uses 72 types of herbs to prepare her a bath, so as to preserve Liang's beauty and youth - but she is still plagued by loneliness and boredom. Three dead spirits come to visit Liang one night, hoping to cheer her up.

A comic atmosphere permeates this drama, in which the actors appear in chou roles, the clowns in Peking Opera.

"The three women are actually one woman," says director Li. "And the three parts in fact tell of one woman's life before, in and after war. The complete trilogy offers audiences the essence of a desolate, lonely woman who finds herself under attack both from outside and within.

"I have been long interested in Chinese traditional opera, which is one of the three major drama forms in the world. Greek tragedy and comedy have evolved into a mainstream theater style, while the Indian Sanskrit drama has died out in history. I try to revive the Chinese opera, borrowing modern elements of the Western opera."

Li's three plays combine traditional opera movements and aesthetics with daring, symbolic stage props to reflect the psychological dimensions of the legendary female warriors.

Composer Guo Wenjing, whose music gives the trilogy an extraordinary atmosphere, adds: "I have experimented to make the score sound typically Chinese but with a Western-style orchestration.

"Though I use traditional Chinese instruments, the whole sense is contemporary."

(China Daily October 17, 2008)