Nothing else will do except Jingju

By Wayne Harada
Advertiser Entertainment Editor

Elizabeth Wichmann-Walczak has been the keeper of the flame of all Peking opera productions at Kennedy Theatre for about three decades. It's time, she said, to learn the lingo and call the genre its proper name: Jingju.

"My performance teacher has been insisting that we call it Jingju, like the British and the French," she said of the Chinese art form. "All other languages still call it Peking or Beijing opera. It's all a matter of training, to spread it around."

Wichmann-Walczak is directing "Judge Bao and the Case of Xianglian," which she translated with Hui-mei Chang, and part of her task is to introduce Jingju to the vocabulary.

"My teacher, Shen Xiaomei, wrote a note for our program that it's time, based on the valuable work the University of Hawai'i has done on internationalizing this art form, to call it by its proper name," she said. "Madame Shen is the youngest disciple of Mei Lanfang, the most famous performer of young female roles in the 20th century who performed in Hawai'i in the 1930s, and she says that performers in China are learning the major western forms, like Italian opera, ballet and realistic theater, and it's about time people in the west begin learning Chinese performing forms with as much attention to detail."

Jingju has been the core of academic learning for the cast of 25 actors, 25 musicians and several dozen backstage workers (from dressers to stage techs) since last semester, when masters from the Jiangsu Province Jingju Company have been teaching various aspects of opera to students involved in the production. They include Madame Shen, who is a principal actress; Shen Fuqing, emeritus principal musician; Lu Genzhang, a leading actor; and Li Zhenghua, a leading actress.

Jingju is one of the disciplines in the Asian theater calendar at Kennedy Theatre. Last season, the school staged an Indonesian production; next year, the spotlight will be on Japanese bunraku. Kabuki also is part of the ongoing, alternating cultural menu.

Wichmann-Walczak, who makes annual trips to China, said "Judge Bao" is being performed in English for the first time. "Doing it in English clearly opens up the story, makes it more immediate and comprehensive, and allows our students to perform it," she said. It's possible, too, that the work is being performed for the first time in entirety outside of China.

So rare is a Jingju performance that students and scholars have flown in from San Francisco, Oregon, Michigan and London to observe the training and attend workshops conducted by the masters from China, who have been in residency for nine months. "Jingju involves a great deal of lead time, and a translation makes it a lot more complex," Wichmann-Walczak said, referring to suitable English syllables to synchronize with the Chinese, and appropriate vowel sounds for the singing.

"It's an incredible learning experience for the students and incredible public relations for the university," she said. The production has been invited to tour China and London, pending fund-raising at both destinations as well as locally.