{"id":5950,"date":"2017-07-05T11:59:52","date_gmt":"2017-07-05T11:59:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/?p=5950\/"},"modified":"2017-10-11T04:00:03","modified_gmt":"2017-10-11T04:00:03","slug":"podcast-american-theatre-podcast-offscript-alison-friedman-on-touring-disgraced-in-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/podcast-american-theatre-podcast-offscript-alison-friedman-on-touring-disgraced-in-china\/","title":{"rendered":"Podcast: American Theatre Podcast “Offscript”: Alison Friedman on touring “Disgraced” in China"},"content":{"rendered":"

Go to original American Theatre Podcast Here<\/a><\/p>\n

On this week\u2019s podcast, we interview Alison Friedman of Ping Pong Productions, which regularly takes American productions to China. Plus the editors discuss Hedy Weiss, \u2018Julius Caesar,\u2019 and the history of theatre architecture.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BY AMERICAN THEATRE EDITORS<\/p>\n

\n

Every other week, the editors of American Theatre curate a free-ranging discussion about the lively arts in our Offscript podcast.<\/strong><\/p>\n

On this week\u2019s episode, editors Rob Weinert-Kendt and Diep Tran are joined by Joshua Dachs, the founder of theatre planning and design firm\u00a0Fisher Dachs Associates<\/a>. They discuss the recent controversies around the Public Theater\u2019s\u00a0Julius Caesar<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0theatre critic\u00a0Hedy Weiss<\/a>, and what each case\u00a0says about free speech and censorship. Then Dachs\u00a0talks about his essay\u00a0about the cyclical history of theatre design, which anchors\u00a0AT<\/em>\u2018s July\/Aug. \u201917 theme issue about theatre architecture.<\/p>\n

Next Rob interviews Alison Friedman, founder of\u00a0Ping Pong Production<\/a>s, which facilitates artistic sharing between the United States and Beijing. She discusses how she got into producing theatre in China\u2014and bringing Chinese theatre to the West\u2014as well as Ping Pong\u2019s recent production of\u00a0Disgraced\u00a0<\/em>by Ayad Akhtar<\/a>, which toured China. Some interview snippets below:<\/p>\n

On the Chinese audience\u2019s reception to\u00a0Disgraced<\/em>.
\n<\/strong>Yes, we\u2019re reading in the paper that China is cracking down on Western thought in the universities. Yes, we\u2019re reading that things are getting more conservative. And\u00a0<\/em>we could have easily booked a three-month tour, there was so much interest in this production. We had to turn away schools because we had a month of time to make it all happen. I think what resonated most with a lot of these venues and these audiences was the play\u2019s grappling with cultural identity and who gets to choose and what do you give up. The internal struggle and the struggle with outer forces of cultural identity really resonated with people.<\/p>\n

I think that\u2019s obviously a universal issue, but in a place like China that\u2019s so\u00a0ancient and modernizing so\u00a0quickly, and has always\u00a0had international influences, even more so now than ever before. A lot of these young people\u2026who are trying to go abroad in America for college, they were thinking: How am I going to perceived when I get to America, and what will my issues be? How do I preserve my authentic self in another context?<\/p>\n

On censorship in China:<\/strong>
\nThere are three explicit laws on the books about what\u2019s not allowed onstage: nudity is not allowed, self-mutilation is not allowed, and explicit criticisms of the Communist Party and the government are\u00a0not allowed. Everything else is gray area and subject to interpretation. So as you know, the tour of\u00a0The Pentagon Papers<\/em>\u00a0in 2011 and 2013, which is all about freedom of the press, independent judiciary, all of that, the Ministry of Culture gave us all the performance permits. It was the first American theatre company ever to perform at the National Center for the Performing Arts\u00a0in Beijing\u2014it was very much aboveboard. Now that was also very much about America. If we brought a play that was pointing fingers at China, it would have been a harder process.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.americantheatre.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Offscript_79_Alison-Friedman.mp3<\/a><\/audio>
\nDownload the episode\u00a0here<\/a>.\u00a0Subscribe via\u00a0RSS<\/a>,\u00a0iTunes<\/a>,\u00a0Google Play<\/a>, or\u00a0Stitcher<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On this week\u2019s podcast, we interview Alison Friedman of Ping Pong Productions, which regularly takes American productions to China. Plus the editors discuss Hedy Weiss, \u2018Julius Caesar,\u2019 and the history of theatre architecture […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5920,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized-cn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/IMG_7569-edited.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5950"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5950"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6662,"href":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5950\/revisions\/6662"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}