"Monkey: Journey to the West is a stage adaptation of the 16th Century Chinese novel Journey to the West, by Wu Cheng'en. It was conceived and created by the Chinese actor and director Chen Shi-zheng, together with the British musician Damon Albarn and British artist Jamie Hewlett (the co-creators of the virtual band Gorillaz). However, the original idea came from Jean-Luc Choplin, head of the Chatelet Theatre in Paris."
I'm a big Jamie Hewlett fan. When i first heard of the production last summer it was premiering in Manchester, England as a part of the Manchester International Festival. I was so bored that summer that i actually made a desperate attempt via travelocity and a variety of other websites to figure out just what it would take to get me from Los Angeles to Manchester. Needless to say i never made it out my front door that summer. So when i heard it was coming to the states (and found myself with a steady income) i had to go.
In any case, i made it and it was pretty rad. It's a chinese opera, which has a very, very different sound from a standard western musical. It was more stage kung-fu and Cirque du Soleil type acrobatics than plot line, which is perfectly cool with me. They used bits of limited animation by Hewlett as scene transitions and traveling montages which were cool to see.
All in all a good time, and Charleston is a beautiful city. I've got some pictures on my Flickr if you wanna take a peak.
The show seems to only be playing one city per country at a time. It premiered in Manchester, then went to Charleston (the only US city to have hosted it so far), and it seems to be back in England now. I'm waiting for it to come to Los Angeles, which i'm convinved it must do at some point.
And that is the synopsis of the trip i took... almost a month ago! I thought laziness would get the better of me and i'd never actually post it. Much thanks to Jenny for a little prodding :)
1 comment:
Great rreading this
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