Collaboration Announced Today In Beijing#
Scotland's deepening ties with China are going beyond simply supplying Scotch, cashmere and the game of golf to the latter's emerging high-end consumer class (and receiving two giant pandas in return). Today, the National Theatres of China and Scotland announced a new collaboration aimed at finding and cultivating new talent and new works. For their first collaborative project, the theatres will work together to discover new Chinese writers and plays, then work together with the playwrights to develop their works and, by this autumn, choose a handful to mount their plays in Scotland.
A selection of these pieces will be produced in Glasgow next year as part of an international season of Chinese work in the "A Play, a Pie and a Pint" series at the Oran Mor venue.
As the Daily Record notes today:
This summer, 10 Chinese writers will take part in an intensive two-week writing session in Beijing with playwright and director Davey Anderson and George Aza-Selinger, literary manager at National Theatre of Scotland, and will then be given 24 hours to write a one act play.
The works will then be considered for production in Scotland and the playwrights whose writing are chosen will be invited to Scotland in the autumn.
Zhiqiang Zhou, president of the National Theatre of China, said: "It looks like there will be many exciting possibilities for long-term collaboration between Scotland and China.
As Scottish Culture Secretary Fiona Hyslop added this week, "By bringing together Chinese theatre writers with Scottish artists and performers, this lively and exciting collaboration is another example of how Scotland's relationship with China is being strengthened across a wide spectrum of cultural, business and education links."
For their talent hunt and cooperative productions, the National Theatres of Scotland and China are working with the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre, British Council (Beijing), Beijing Children's Art Theatre, The Confucius Institute for Scotland in the University of Edinburgh, Peking University and A Play, a Pie and a Pint at Oran Mor.
