City Stage: Hong Kong Playwriting in English

Millennlum Autopsy

Tang Shu-wing and Peter Suart Millennium Autopsy is the middle play in a trilogy created by a team for the Hong Kong-based theatre group No Man's Land between 1997 and 2000. The Life and Death Trilogy is inspired by puppet theatre and other non-naturalistic modes of creative theatre, and was intended as an experimental project with the goal of extending modes expression in Hong Kong theatre practice. The second play in the trilogy was commissioned for the Hong Kong Arts Festival and designed as a multimedia performance, incorporating human actors, live music, puppets and video. Its New York production for the Henson International Festival of Puppet Theatre prompted revision of the English version by writer and director Tang Shu-wing, together with instrumentalist, composer and pictorial designer Peter Suart, and the play was again performed in Hong Kong, fittingly t o coincide with the events celebrating the new millennium. The play wa s partly inspired , accordin g to Tang Shu-wing, by a visit to his US-based uncle, who had been jailed during the Cultural Revolution, and had felt the compulsion on his eventual release to get married and procreate in order to continue the family lineage. Reflection on this cultural mindset led Tang to explore the ideas of cloning an d a projected interfac e between clonin g an d Chinese tradition . I n the play a doctor, wh o specialize s i n geneti c engineering, has a grandfather, who was formerly a puppeteer, and was tortured and killed in the Cultural Revolution fo r makin g a n avant-garde film wit h puppets. The doctor's wife , pregnant by him but also infected wit h a genetic disease canied b y the doctor, dies in an operation to change the genes of the embryo. Following the failure of the operation he canies out to save them both, the doctor decides in his frustration an d despair to clone an embryo with his grandfather's genes. Millennium Autopsy is constructed as a monologue, in which the doctor is video-recording himself, but it develops into a psychological journey inside the protagonist's head. The use of puppets and a human mummy to represent the soul of the dead grandfather enhance s the play's other-worldly atmosphere , and the mental images created by the doctor's monologu e are visualized onstage through both two-dimensional and three-dimensional stage images. One of the most anesting images is the scene in which the doctor, now dressed in Chinese opera costume, receives the image of the cloned embryo. The doctor's movements ar e constantly tracked by a moving camcorder on stage, which conveys a sense of close surveillance, and the set design of the piece echoes the structure of DNA in its interwoven complex of patterns. Interestingly, after the New York English-language performance in which he played the doctor, Tang Shu-win g revise d th e Cantones e versio n i n Hon g Kon g t o be played a s a femal e monologue with a woman playing the doctor's role. This strategy highlighted the experimental and ope n natur e o f th e play , i n keeping wit h it s concern s wit h huma n chang e throug h biotechnology, a s well as the boundless possibilities an d cultural and ethical challenges of science in the new millennium. Millennium Autopsy 22 9 Characters: Doctor Soul of Doctor's Grandfather Male and Female Puppets Doctor: Doctor: (The flooris covered by a number of rectangular platforms with cracks separating them. A staircase leads to a higher platformon stage right. On this higher platformthere is a red chair. On stage left there is a hollow platform. A huge black gauze hangs as backdrop, behind which stands a large white cloth, serving as the projection screen. On stage left, a video camera, hanging from the ceiling, captures and transmits live images on the stage.) (A surgery bed in down centre stage with a mummy on top of it. The mummy is covered with a white cloth. Doctor sits on the chair in the higher platform while watching an experimental puppet film made by his grandfather. Puppet filmfinishes.) (to the camera, image of Doctor projected on the screen) 31 December 2000. Very noisy outside. (Pause.) I just watched my grandfather's puppe t film onc e again. I've see n it so many times . . . (Pause.) Both of...