Pu Songling:
Strange Tales
Enter the spellbinding world of Pu Songling, the visionary writer whose tales of the supernatural have captivated audiences for centuries. Now, in a striking new adaptation, we bring these timeless fables to life.
By turns whimsical and spine-tingling, this dynamic production captures the spirit of a literary master whose work touches on timeless themes that bind us across generations.
Pu Songling: Strange Tales reaffirms our love of fearless, boundary-pushing storytelling — where theatricality reigns and the extraordinary occurs in every moment.
PRESS: PU SONGLING: STRANGE TALES
"Fans of Theatre Smith-Gilmour will rejoice to see the renowned performance company return in such fine form. TSG, which has staged several previous shows based on multiple short stories, now turns, in Pu Songling: Strange Tales, to a master of Qing Dynasty China for its source. TSG’s use of mime and movement bring these exciting stories to vivid life and transport us to a fantastic world where the supernatural is part of everyday life. The show is an example of theatre in its purest form and one no theatre-lover should miss. Seeing a show by Theatre Smith-Gilmour is always like drinking spring water after having downed too many cocktails of shows with high production values and no content. Theatre Smith-Gilmour is one of the very few companies to produce shows that are consistently refreshing and enlightening."
Chris Hoile THE STAGE DOOR.
"The group of actors — comprised of Gilmour, Hao, Hodges, Ng and Tso — each play a crucial role in adapting Pu’s work off the page. Every performer moves with grace and specificity to embody various humans, ghosts, and animals, sometimes switching between multiple roles in an instant. It’s as if they’re armed with endless Pokémon balls and can summon these creatures out of thin air."
Shunsho Ando Heng, NEXT
The Cast
John Ng
Diana Tso 曹楓
The Director
The world of Pu Songling is mysterious and magical: fox spirits get married to humans and have children, a young man and the ghost of a young woman, who died long ago, meet and fall in love; a man remembers his past lives as a horse, a dog and a snake; after an earthquake people stand around on the ruined streets, talking frantically with no clothes on.
At the heart of these stories is the imagination of the travelling storyteller. These stories walked from village to village hundreds of years ago, in China, and Pu Songling captured them and wrote them down.
Now we have the good fortune to tell them again.
-Michele Smith, Director
The Production Team
