Performing Poetry on the Intermedial Stage: Flowers in the Mirror, Moon on the Water, and Beijing Avant-Garde Theatre in the New Millennium

Abstract

“Woman dreams of the love between Man and another woman called Water; in an airport waiting lounge, a flight attendant, wearing earphones, remembers her puppy dog and a boyfriend who deserted her; a man called Mirror studies Darwin’s On the Origin of Species ; Woman wakes from her dream to find herself inside another dream… Flower and Moon walk from the sea to a hospital, carrying fire extinguishers; Mirror starts tilting, and another dream begins… “1 Thus reads the whimsical synopsis of Flowers in the Mirror, Moon on the Water (Jinghua shuiyue, 2006; Flowers hereafter), an experimental work directed by Meng Jinghui and based on two series of poems by the contemporary poet Xi Chuan. Beijing audiences were presented with a composite intermedial environment saturated with intersecting sound- and image-scapes: prerecorded environmental noise and electronic compositions, live music, textual projections, slideshows, digital video, and a stage design dominated by metallic tones, cold lighting, and shades of black, white, and gray. Sitting or standing at different corners of the stage, six expressionless actors delivered poetic verses, oneiric streams of consciousness and fragmented conversations dispassionately and without emotion, surrounded by reflecting panels irradiating intermittent fluorescent lights and distorted shadows.