Teahouse' by Lao She, at Michael Schimmel Center For The Arts

Yangtze Repertory Theatre of America, together with Columbia Productions, will present the New York debut of Beijing People's Art Theater, arguably the most famous professional theatre company in China, in the play which is the cornerstone of its repertory, Teahouse by Lao She and directed by Lin ZhouHua.

Teahouse will play at the Michael Schimmel Center for the Artsfrom the 27 Nov - 1 Dec 2005. The production will be performed in Mandarin Chinese with both English subtitles and simultaneous English translation through headphones.

Teahouse is set in a typical, old Beijing teahouse and follows the lives of the owner and his customers through three stages in modern Chinese history, from approximately 1898 to 1948. It brings a cast of over sixty characters together in the Yutai Teahouse to reflect the changes that took place in Chinese society during that tumultuous period.

The play offers snapshots of the seismic forces of modern Chinese history by looking close-up at three key times in the modern era. It opens in 1898, under the Empire, when reformists failed to strengthen the Qing dynasty. Act Two leaps nearly twenty years, to the period after Yuan Shikai's death, when the warlords, at the instigation of the imperialist powers, set up their separatist regimes and there were continual civil wars. The play ends in 1948, during the intrigues of the Post-WWII civil war.

Lao She saw the teahouse as the nucleus of Chinese society, a place where people from all walks of life came together. The story traces the changing lives of the multitude of characters who regularly frequent the establishment. They range from a manipulative pimp, Liu, and an aging court eunuch, Pang (who buys his wife out of poverty), to the upright and honest teahouse owner, Wang Lifa, and his business companions.

This production is the final stop of a U.S. tour that has also included performances to-date at University of California at Berkeley, Houston and Los Angeles. From October 27-29, the production will appear in Washington, DC as part of the Kennedy Center's Festival of China 2005.