Interview Danny Yung

by Saskia Törnqvist

The audience of the Hong Kong Arts Festival was astonished in 2008 by Tears of Barren Hill, a controversial music theatre production by librettist and director Danny Yung. Audience reactions to it were passionately divided but Yung was much praised nonetheless. The production has since made a great impression on other stages both in Asia and in the West.

For just under thirty years Danny Yung (Shanghai 1943) has filled the role of cultural iconoclast, inspirer, organiser and above all of creator of countless productions in Hong Kong in which he brings together and amalgamates different artistic disciplines, searching continually for ways to shake audiences out of their lethargy. His long period of residence in the USA - Yung studied architecture, computer science and town planning in Berkeley and in New York - undoubtedly contributed to his inexhaustible capacity for questioning themes that are current in both art and society. Together with his theatre group Zuni Icosahedron he has been investigating the no-man's-land between tradition and avant-garde, between Western and Eastern cultural values. Tears of Barren Hill is the third production in which he subjects the centuries-old conventions of Chinese opera to a severe test by employing them in an alienating context.

Cheng Yanqiu
It would be incorrect to think that Danny Yung was the first to challenge the conventions of Chinese stage techniques. Others have preceded him, including Cheng Yanqiu (1904-1958), a legendary singer of Peking Opera. Yung: ‘Cheng Yanqiu fascinates me because he was driven by a great curiosity and an ambition to broaden his artistic horizons. Cheng spent several months in Berlin in 1932 to familiarise himself with Western operatic art, but was unfortunately forced to return prematurely to China by external factors. We can only speculate how he might have developed if things had gone otherwise.'
A fresh vision of his own operatic tradition can be seen in Cheng's own operas. He composed Tears of Barren Hill in 1929, a tragedy about a woman who goes in search of her husband, not knowing that he has died. The plot takes place in Cheng's own time and can be regarded as a statement against the political chaos that engulfed China at that time. ‘Cheng created something exceptional here', says Yung; ‘he dared to put everyday reality on stage.'
We also know that Cheng, impressed by the acoustics of a cathedral that he visited in Berlin, sang an aria from Tears of Barren Hill there. ‘It was a symbolic moment', says Yung; ‘Cheng did there what no Chinese opera singer should ever do: he sang without instrumental accompaniment. In exchange, he received an acoustic response from a new and strange environment. This image plays a crucial role in my production.'

Disorienting experience
Yung goes one step further by having his principal character sing the theme from J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations, although with the nasal vocal colour and stylistic figures that characterise Peking Opera. Yung: ‘With this step I have consciously transgressed the frontiers of time, space and culture. Elsewhere in the production I have works performed that were created by Cheng's contemporaries including Billie Holiday, Glenn Gould and Leni Riefenstahl: they too were controversial artists who each represented the same moment in time in a completely individual way.' In contrast with the hyper-individualism of the Western artist, the Chinese opera singer is still firmly tied to the hangdang, the traditional role type to which he or she must portray, sometimes their whole life long. Yung: ‘Cheng was an acclaimed performer of female roles, the Dan type. He sang in a high register and had perfectly mastered the relevant styles of speaking, movement and mime. In my production I have deconstructed the entire traditional system of performing styles: my performers have exchanged their traditional costumes for trousers and shirts, their faces bear no make-up and they are blindfolded so that the audience cannot focus on the staring gaze that is characteristic of Peking Opera. They do, however, remain partially true to the traditional patterns of movement. It is a disorienting experience, both for the performers and for the audience.'

During the rehearsal process of this production Yung discovered that the great themes and questions raised within Cheng's life and work have lost little of their relevance. ‘Cheng opened up a path that we are continuing to develop with this production. During the rehearsals one of the actors said that it would be ironic if we, now, just under one century and many experiences later, should remain riveted to the straitjacket of traditional opera. I hope that Tears of Barren Hill will initiate much discussion about our cultural and social positions, and that this will take place both on stage and outside the theatre, for we all live in a rapidly changing world.'