Lu Xun Blossoms

Theatre Smith-Gilmour and the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre’s production of Lu Xun Blossoms is the first ever Sino-Canadian co-production in theatre. 

Lu Xun Blossoms is based on five short stories of Lu Xun: a great writer and teacher. Considered by many to be the father of contemporary Chinese literature, Lu Xun wrote about China at a time of great change. He wrote about “The Living City” of his time, using deeply etched characters and riveting images, documenting the early urbanization of China and the conflicts and joys in the early 20th century.

Lu Xun Blossoms is a journey back to Luzhen (home). It is childhood memories, compassion, death, shame, a scream in the night, a rickshaw driver growing larger and larger, and the slippery oil bean hell for those who seek knowledge. Poignant, amusing, uplifting and raw: “it is consistent with the style of the works of Lu Xun – both humorous and wailful.” – Oriental Morning Post.

All Artists Confirmed:

Chinese Company:
Wang Yang Meizi – Actor
Guohong Bo – Actor
Zheng Ping – Actor
Zhang Hua Hua – Assistant Stage Manager / Translator

Canadian Company:
Michele Smith – Co-Artistic Director / Actor
Dean Gilmour – Co-Artistic Director / Actor
Adam Paolozzo – Actor
Kimberly Purtell – Lighting Designer
Stage Manager – TBA
Colin McIntyre –Tour Manager

With a cast & crew of 6 Canadians and 4 Chinese, Lu Xun Blossoms is two cultures and two languages (English & Mandarin) dancing together - a cultural exchange on a very profound level.

Lu Xun Blossoms premiered to great acclaim in Shanghai on May 26, 2007 followed up with a Fall 2007 tour to Macau, Beijing, Hong Kong and Guangzhou. Theatre Smith-Gilmour is excited  to build on this momentum and to return to Shanghai to perform in the Canada Pavilion for World Expo 2010.  

Praise for Lu Xun Blossoms:

“The shades of color of Lu Xun Blossoms are consistent with the style of the works of Lu Xun----both humorous and wailful.”-  Oriental Morning Post

“The most surprising thing of Lu Xun Blossoms is that few prop is used in the performance. From the door, the table, the rickshaw to the coins and ropes, the actors and the actresses perform with their body. This technique is also shared by traditional Chinese players with equally satisfactory result.”  -News Times

“The actors and the actresses bring to the audience exactly the respect for the rickshaw driver, the love of the Book of Hills and Seas and the sob for Xiang Lingsao.”  -Shanghai Evening Post

"Consistent with Lu Xun’s works, the play cleverly expresses sorrow through humour." Oriental Morning Post (Shanghai)

Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield is an exquisite and beautifully moving adaptation, full of passion, love, sexual awakening, innocence, longing, death and loss. With their inimitable, visually-arresting style, Gilmour and Smith capture Katherine Mansfield’s unsentimental dance of life and death.

The Daughters of the Late Colonel lived life as if in a tunnel and realized too late that life might have been different. In Prelude, Lottie, Kezia, Pip and Raggs go to see how the “Kings of Ireland” cut off the head of a duck. Carnation: Katie fantasizes about the workman just outside of the classroom window while Mister Hugo reads a little French poetry. Finally, in Six Years After, as the little steamer pushes forward through the desolate rain and cold, a woman cannot forget that her son is dead and there is nothing she can do for him.

Mansfield’s mysterious and delicate words are what attracted Gilmour and Smith. Her short stories are fragile and beautiful, sometimes cruel and cynical.  Her passion for life intoxicates with images, scents and the tactile, like a garden in summer.

Company:
Michele Smith – Co-Artistic Director / Actor
Dean Gilmour – Co-Artistic Director / Actor
Adam Paolozzo – Actor
Claire Calnan - Actor
Kimberly Purtel – Lighting Designer
Andjelija Djuric – Set & Costume Designer
Veronic Formosa – Stage Manager

Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices, Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth. - Katherine Mansfield

These words capture the essence of our work.  We are dedicated to creating exceptional theatre that emerges from our imaginations.Katherine Mansfield has challenged us to explore artistic territories we have never explored. The delicate and concise arrangement of Mansfield’s words defies the rules of form and structure. Her writing is unique and Smith-Gilmour has created a unique piece of theatre that Paula Citron, Classical 96.3fm called "...brilliant, touching...effective theatre" and Robert Crew, Toronto Star called "...fluid, polished, and delightfully imaginative..."

“Katherine Mansfield flenses away everything but the emotional essence of its source material, creating a laconic dream world punctuated by silence and frenetic movement. The effect is eerie. We're not so much watching characters in a narrative, but witnessing the combination and confrontation of emotions. By boiling down Mansfield the writer's complicated relationships and observations, the performers create a focused little lightning bolt of energy and some exhilarating theatrical moments.”  - David Leyes, blogTO

“Katherine Mansfield adapts four stories in the company’s signature Commedia dell’arte style. We see spinster sisters coming to grips with their father’s death; a schoolgirl’s erotic daydream; a mother’s heartbreak at the loss of her soldier-son; and the cruel slaying of a duck. Mansfield’s fiction comes out well though the Smith-Gilmour wringer… The troop’s physicality makes the everyday emotive: a flurry of cacophonous meringue-crunching, for example, conveys profound uncertainty on the eve of hysterical grief.” - Shelia Hanlon, EYE Weekly