First person
Playwright Rupert Chan Kwan-yun, 55, has translated the Broadway musical Man of La Mancha, based on Cervantes' Don Quixote, for a Cantonese-language production in Hong Kong. He argues it is important for young audiences in Hong Kong to watch western as well as Chinese classics.
I call it the curse of affluence. Ever since Hong Kong became rich in the 1980s and 1990s, we became arrogant and Cantonese culture overshadowed everything else.
Before, we used to listen to western pop songs and watch western movies along with Chinese movies. In those days we were more cosmopolitan. We had the best of both worlds, and that is what made Hong Kong successful.
It is wrong if, after reunification, we try to make Hong Kong like the rest of the mainland. What is the use of Hong Kong if it is just another corner in China? It serves no useful function and we can never be as successful as Shanghai. Hong Kong is Hong Kong. It is a meeting place of east and west and it can make use of that fusion of east and west.
My work translating western classics started when the late Bernard Goss was artistic director with the Chung Ying Theatre. We collaborated in the late 1980s. We wanted to stage western plays in Cantonese so that the local audiences would feel some empathy with them.
Bernard once wrote in his programme notes that, in a sense, Shakespeare in this adapted form (performed in Cantonese) was closer to the audience than it was in the original to a contemporary English audience.
I remember when we put on a production of Twelfth Night, I overheard two young girls chatting during the interval. One of them said: 'It's all above my head. There are a lot of lines I can't catch - but it is very beautiful.'
I was very flattered, because I think a London teenager going to a Shakespeare play may well have the same sort of feeling - they may not fully understand it but they know it is very beautiful to the ear.
We shouldn't have an all-Chinese and all-local theatre season. I don't think it is right. If a western play is good enough to be chosen, there must be something about it that makes it worth bringing to a Chinese audience. You can always learn from the classics of other cultures.
We need variety. I like to use the example of food and eating because I enjoy that too. In Hong Kong, you can eat everything. If you like Chinese food, you can have authentic Chinese food. If you want western food, you can have authentic western food. If you want fusion, you can have that too.
The same goes for theatre. In Hong Kong, we have Chinese opera, plays written by Chinese playwrights and original plays by local playwrights. We also get the Royal Shakespeare Company. We even have Russian companies performing Hamlet in Russian
There is always something fairly universal in the western works performed in Hong Kong. Shakespeare and Cervantes, although they were written in a particular historical period with a particular setting, have something that transcends geographic and cultural boundaries, even boundaries of time. With Cervantes, you can get the message even though it is a story about an old knight in medieval Spain. There is something universal in the quest for truth, and for purity, courage and the impossible dream. I like to bring all these things to the younger generation who are not yet ready to read the original.
I hope the future generations can be as widely read as we were in our own childhood days.
It is important to bring international culture to the younger generation. Otherwise, they will be too parochial in their outlook. That is the mission I have given myself.
