Past Festivals

The Xiqu Centre’s Black Box Chinese Opera Festival returns for the fifth year with four productions – including two original new works. Combining contemporary aesthetics, innovative staging and state of the art technologies, the performances offer new perspectives on Chinese opera, showcasing the talent of local artists and the vitality of the heritage art form. 

This year’s programme includes two new Xiqu Centre productions of experimental Cantonese opera: Asura Judgement – Solo Performance, a uniquely demanding one-man adaptation of Law Ka-ying’s Rashomon-inspired ensemble work (2021), written, directed and performed by Law himself, and The Imperial Decree, a thought-provoking original drama about fate and freewill by award-winning duo Keith Lai and Janet Wong. 

The Xiqu Centre’s acclaimed original productions Experimental Cantonese Opera Farewell My Concubine (New Adaptation) and Wenguang Explores the Valley also return to the stage, this time offering audiences a new audio-visual experience at The Box in Freespace, Hong Kong’s largest black-box theatre. The event also includes a programme of hands-on xiqu-inspired workshops, the Living Heritage Workshop Series, where participants explore traditional crafts and try their hand at marigold flower embroidery, imitation kingfisher feather brooch making and printmaking.

Black Box Chinese Opera Festival 2022: See full programme details

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