It’s Alive Play Reading Series curated by Anna Kohler presents:
我爱XXX - I Love XXX - by Meng Jinghui, Huang Jingang, Wang Xiaoli, Shi Hang (1994). Translated and directed by Claire Conceison.
About the play
Written by four alumni friends in a college dorm room in Beijing, I Love XXX is an experimental “anti-play” that uses repetition, rhythm, and word play to deconstruct language and historical events, reflecting the nostalgia of young people who came of age during China’s tumultuous revolutionary period. In the 20 years between its premiere in 1994 and its revival last year, Meng Jinghui became China’s top director and a popular icon.
About Claire Conceison
Claire Conceison is a scholar, translator, and director. She is Professor of Theater Studies and Asian & Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University and earned her A.M. in Regional Studies—East Asia from Harvard University and her PhD in Theatre Studies from Cornell University. Her areas of research and teaching are contemporary Chinese theater, cross-cultural exchange and performance, Asian American theatre, translation, and sport as performance. Recent translations include Gao Xingjian’s play Ballade Nocturne from French into English (Sylph Editions, 2010), and Meng Jinghui’s Rhinoceros in Love. She is author of the forthcoming anthology I Love XXX and Other Plays of Meng Jinghui (Seagull Books) and of two books, Significant Other: Staging the American in China (University of Hawai’i, 2004) and Voices Carry: Behind Bars and Backstage During China’s Revolution and Reform, the autobiography of Ying Ruocheng (Rowman and Littlefield, 2009). Her articles have been published in journals including TDR, Theatre Journal, Asian Theatre Journal, and Modern Chinese Literature and Culture.
