When you go to Tears of Barren Hill, a multimedia presentation with Chinese and English text, you are going to more than just a show; you are treated to an onstage tribute to Cheng Yanqiu, one of the most celebrated Beijing opera legends in China's history, and you are going for a dialogue with Danny Yung.
'After the play I want members of the audience to come to me with questions,' he said.
Founder and executive director of one of Hong Kong's most famous experimental theatre groups, Zuni Icosahedron, Yung has been experimenting with traditional Chinese opera theatre for a decade. In recent years, he's become more interested in exploring things about the artists and not just the acts.
His arts festival programme, an experimental rendition of a legendary Beijing opera script of the same name, looks at Master Cheng's life rather than the brutality of the tyrannical government of the Ming Dynasty's final years as the original story intended.
The tale depicts the plight of a poor family in a village, whose harvests from the field barely make ends meet. When the government raises levies to pay for war and its own fiscal irresponsibility, the father has to track the hills to pick herbs for extra income, only to be eaten by a tiger. The son is drafted into the army and the women in the family die one after another of sheer trauma and heartbreak.
Elements of the old tale will be extracted and given a new spin in Yung's play to express the theme: Crossing.