abstractSynopsis:
Adapted from Ming Dynasty Tang Xianzui's (1550-1616) Nanke Dream, this play tells about the vicissitudes of life through an allegory of dreams. The protagonist Chun Yufen met a girl by chance at a Lantern Festival. The girl turns out to be the princess of Huaian who ties the nuptial bond with him;this marriage leads to Chuni's conferral as the prefecture chief. Many years later, soon after his wife's death, Chun was sent back to his hometown by the emperor due to a snob's calumny. When he mourns at home, under a pagoda tree where he used to take a nap, he finds an ant net whose structure is the same as Huaian Country. The twenty-year floating in the official sea turns out to be just a dream. The stage design, featuring a circling seesaw, creates visual effects of a Merry-Go-Round while the actors move up and down around the movements of the seesaw. The dreamy atmosphere echoes the life-is-a-dream theme.