With a few monkey puppets joining the auditorium to play with the audiences, the puppet show Journey to the West has recently been unveiled at the China National Theatre for Children in Beijing.

 

Many well-known stories from Chinese literary classic Journey to the West are included in the show. The new show is a joint production between Chinese and Romanian artists. It is co-directed by Mao Ernan from China Romania's Calin Mocanu.

 

 

“Journey to the West” is one of the four classic novels in Chinese, published in the 1590s. The work is a cult for the national Chinese culture; the text became a basis for many films, serials, cartoons and performances. The book is a chain of entertaining episodes. The historical origin is full of the most fantastic adventures, the folklore narrative is combined with the author’s, folk utterances go along with a high literary style, the prose is interspersed with numerous verse inserts.

 

 

Yin Xiaodong: “Every China literary masterpiece contains Chinese spiritual pursuit and value orientation. Journey to The West is such a great work, which has widespread and profound influence in China or even the world. It is our responsibility to make and produce stage plays based on traditional Chinese classic culture."

 

“A few years ago, we have put three series shows of Journey to The West Journey onto the stage; now, we recreate this production in puppetry form for smaller venues. Meanwhile, small size programs are suitable for external exchanges and international tours, which will also help to spread Chinese culture to abroad."

 

 

“This production is created by artists from both China and Romania. Through international cooperation, taking full advantages of each other, we would like to build up a higher platform for this co-production, thus to realize the creative transformation and innovative development of children’s drama; to make this show to be an excellent production with Chinese style, Chinese manner as well as international visions.”

 

 

China National Theatre for Children
China National Theatre for Children was formerly the China National Children's Art Theatre of the People's Republic of China. It was founded in 1956 and the first president was Ren Hong. The Theatre has created and performed excellent children's theatre works many times with tours all over the country and has been to Singapore, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Australia and other countries for exchange performances.

 

The Theatre's “China Children's Theatre" was inscribed by Soong Ching Ling. On the fourth floor of the Theatre in 2005, a Holiday Classic Theatre was created, interpreting the classic story of all times on the theatrical stage with its relatively fixed performance time, mode and changes in a variety of styles. The establishment of the Holiday Classic Theatre is not only a new exploration in the field of artistic creation but also a whole new attempt in performing and business philosophy.

Credits
Producer: Xiaodong Yin
Chef Producer: Xining Lei
Artistic Director: Li Feng / Zenghong Shan 
Supervisor: Fan Yang / Hanbing Zhao 
Scriptwriter: Chuanmin Chen 
Directors: Calin-Octavian Mocanu (Romania) / Mao Ernan
Overall Visual Design: Wanfeng Hu
Choreographer: Andreea-Anamaria Duta (Romania)
Composer: Junli Liu 
Light Design: Wei Li
Multimedia Design: Erwen Bao 
Stage Supervisor: Chuanhua Zhu 
Performance: Qi Liu / Yuanbo Xv / Liang Yin / Bing Guo / Zuquan Song / Xuelu Wang / Yang Zhang / Xiaoyue Yan / Jia Li