In Wuzhen, all the world’s a stage

Take a detour from the bustling streets of Wuzhen in Jiaxing, Zhejiang province, and you are likely to find yourself in one of many quiet alleyways that dot its canals and stone-paved paths.

One of them, Hongchang Long, is particularly popular with visitors, who can often be seen strolling or taking photos, drawn by the alley’s unusual dimensions – it is 267 feet in length, but, at most, only five feet in width.

Paved with grey flagstones and flanked by the brick walls of ancient courtyards that rise 20 feet in height, when they look up, visitors only see a narrow strip of the sky, occasionally concealed by overhanging branches from the gardens on the other side of the walls.

One snowy day last year, when director Stan Lai, who is also co-founder and director of the Wuzhen Theatre Festival, emerged from the Shen Estate Teahouse Theatre, which lies just to the right of the alleyway and saw it in its wintry splendour, he had an idea.

This was to find a young director willing to take on the challenge of putting on a play in the alley. “But how could anyone stage a play in such a long, narrow space? It seemed like an impossible task,” he said.

Then, this year, Huang Lei, co-founder and producing director of the festival, challenged Lai to create a site-specific production. The two had collaborated on a conceptual play, Sleepwalk, in 2014. It was staged in an old house in Wuzhen and wasn’t ticketed or promoted. When people walked in, they stumbled upon the actors, who would offer to guide them through the house and tell them a story.

Lai accepted the challenge and asked Huang to find a similar kind of house for the new production, but then quickly changed his mind. “Three minutes later, I texted back saying there was no need. I’d found the space, which was Hongchang Long alley. I’d also found the ‘young director’ – myself.”

That “impossible task” and Lai’s 41st production premiered at this year’s 10th Wuzhen Theatre Festival in October. Called The Long, Narrow Passageway, it begins by dividing the audience into two groups.

They then follow two “tour guides”, who impart the alley’s history. The groups enter from opposite ends of the alley, eventually meeting in the middle. There, the guides argue with each other about the correct direction of the tour, and discover in the process that they are actually the younger and older versions of the same person, and that they are meeting across time.

Following this encounter, the audience is taken into the Shen Estate Teahouse Theatre, where the two versions of the same individual engage in conversations and debates about subjects including happiness, ageing and the possibilities of life.

For its 10th edition, this year’s festival is host to a range of international productions, some of which have also used Wuzhen’s theatre venues as settings.

Polish theatre company Teatr Biuro Podrozy staged Eurydyka at the Water Theatre. The iconic outdoor theatre has a stage on the surface of a lake, with a broken bridge and traditional Chinese architecture as a backdrop.

The play is based on the ancient Greek myth of Eurydice and Orpheus. Soon after their marriage, Eurydice dies of a snakebite, and Orpheus journeys to the Underworld to bring her back.

Hades, god of the Underworld, permits Orpheus to take Eurydice away, on the condition that he does not turn to look at her on the way back to the world of the living. Towards the end of the return journey, Orpheus can’t resist and turns around, seeing Eurydice, who then disappears like smoke on the wind.

Adapted and staged in 2021 during the pandemic, its director Pawel Szkotak said that the story has contemporary implications.

“I thought that when we use this myth about a love that is stronger than death, maybe we can find hope, both for us and the spectators,” he said, adding that love is an eternal human theme.