Creative Team:
Text - Wong Teng Chi
黃庭熾
Composer – Njo Kong Kie
楊光奇
Director – Tam Chi Chun
譚智泉
Mr. Shi and His Lover 時先生與他的情人 is a contemporary music theatre work inspired by the enigmatic real-life affair between a Chinese opera performer and a French diplomat, who believed his male lover was a woman. Performed in Mandarin, the work straddles the worlds of opera and musical with a score that evokes the music of East and West, contemporary and classical, Peking opera to vintage pop. Mr. Shi and His Lover ponders the complexities of love and intimacy, gender and sexual politics, individual identity and nationhood.
Composed by the long-serving music director of La La La Human Steps, this international production features a creative team and cast from Toronto, Hong Kong and Macau.
“a truly mesmerizing experience… worthy of an international audience”-
— Robert Lepage
“an engaging, provocative evening for mind and ear … What makes Mr. Shi especially unusual is its radical deconstruction of storytelling”-
— NOW Magazine
“a show for the musically adventurous”
— Globe and Mail
“There is a timelessness to Mr. Shi and His Lover as we try to understand the full range of people’s gender identities and the dynamics behind sexual persuasion. That the presentation can be so well crafted and compellingly interpreted makes it a special treat”
— Toronto Star
“Puccini’s Madama Butterfly crossed with Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years”
— mooneyontheatre.com
A Music Picnic (Toronto) and Macau Experimental Theatre (Macau) Production
Duration: 80 minutes
for 2 singers, piano, marimba and Chinese Percussion
2016 at SummerWorks (Toronto)
2017 Tarragon Theatre (Toronto)
2018 National Arts Centre (Ottawa)
2019 Cervantino Festival (Guanajuato, Mexico); Macau Cultural Centre (Macau)
2020 Thousand Cranes Festival (Estonia)
