This production is an adaptation of the legendary Chinese classic »The Peach Blossom Fan« from 1699. It was adapted in 2022 as a direct answer to our current social problems and is an attempt to discover new meanings of classical texts in a contemporary context.

The play tells of the love between the scholar Hou Fangyu and the prostitute Li Xiangjun at the end of the Ming dynasty, which was marked by social upheavals. More than 300 years have passed and the peach blossom fan is no more. The young director Xiao Jing rewrites the story using contemporary language and interprets it in the style of Brecht’s epic theatre. Four performers comment on and play dozens of characters in this historic play. Plastic garbage piles up in heaps in the background, blending into a pretty landscape backdrop and creating a fantastic link between the current and the old China.

At the end of Kong Shangren’s The Peach Blossom Fan, the hero and heroine feel the destruction of their country and become Taoist priests. Xiao Jing created a new ending: As there is no way to escape the course of history, the fight of each individual person against fate is ever more valuable.