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BURNING IN CHINA: A PLAY
When I went to Shanghai in 1988 to teach at a Chinese university, I took with me a hundred parchment copies
of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, not knowing that I would find among my grim silent Chinese students such a yearning
for personal freedom and a government "of the people, by the people, for the people" that before long they would
abandon the classroom and risk their lives for democracy. Burning in China is the true story of an American witness to the Chinese democracy
movement that ended with the killings in Tiananmen Square.
At the heart of the story is the enactment of the bilingual rap opera The Great Emancipator Meets The Monkey
King, which I wrote, directed and performed in with my Chinese students. This dramatic encounter between freedom
and fear was China's first live performance of rap music, presented to a cheering audience of 1700 on New Year's Eve,
1988, a few months before the Tiananmen demonstrations began.
Burning in China has been staged more than twenty times,
including a performance at the John Drew Theater in East Hampton, New York. It has been optioned for
film by Academy Award nominee Caleb Deschanel. It was presented in the San Diego area at the Poway
Center for the Performing Arts in February/March, 2009, in connection with the Lincoln Bicentennial and the twentieth anniversary
of Tiananmen. Lost Nation Theatre of Montpelier, Vermont, will present it on May 21, 22, and 23.
"When you go back, tell the world the truth of what happened here," my Chinese
friends begged me. Burning in China tells that truth.
Burning Comes To Montpelier, Vermont
Recent performance of Burning in China
Burning in China preview, San Diego Union-Tribune
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