Created by Victoria MARKS and XU Ying
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Ah Q! is a tale of self-delusion and rationalization that exposes a basic human trait. Marks and Xu combine movement vocabularies and traditions, comic and tragic, from Chinese Opera and Western postmodern dance, in a performance piece built around China’s best-known literary character, Ah Q. Based on "The Real Story of Ah Q," (1921) by Lu Xun, Xu and Marks’s production retells the story in a way that invites universal recognition for the portrayal of a protagonist considered to be an embodiment of Chinese character. "I’m not certain that Ah Q is Chinese, though I am sure that he looks like you and me," Xu notes. Ah Q is a man with no morality or allegiance to any principle besides self-aggrandizement and saving face. The character’s amoral opportunism repeatedly lands him in hot water and tight spots, but thanks to his own idiosyncratic logic, he is able to twist things around so that—in his own mind, at any rate—Ah Q wriggles out of trouble and ends up the winner.
The creative collaboration between the American choreographer and the Chinese playwright was both tense and productive. As the collaborators describe it, the tension between their artistic traditions in fact contributed in large part to the fruitfulness of their partnership: "It was very hard to work together," Xu Ying matter-of-factly reported. "Vicky is a very stubborn person. So am I! That is why we often struggle." This is not delivered as a complaint; Xu immediately continues: "The relationship between us is great: We can each say ‘I don’t like this’ or ‘I like that.’ So, sometimes she makes me angry, and sometimes I make her angry. But at the end we agree."
Marks shared some background on the evolution of their approach to their material: "I was far more interested in Xu than in Ah Q. I was intrigued by his personal experiences growing up during the Cultural Revolution. This made for some conflict between us: I wanted to work with Xu’s own remarkable experiences, while he wanted to deal with the symbolic story. After my visit to China, Xu began to believe that his personal experiences ‘belonged’ in Ah Q. He had collapsed the boundaries between the personal and the mythic—found that his own life contained stories that paralleled Ah Q’s. I found a point of connection in Xu’s stories—I empathized with his experience. And that’s how I could begin to recognize Ah Q in myself."
"The Real Story of Ah Q" is required reading for Chinese schoolchildren and Lu Xun is regarded as a great patriot. Nonetheless, stage performances of the story are forbidden in China. The opportunity of presenting this richly ambiguous character in the United States becomes not only a chance to see Ah Q on stage but allows the co-creators to work with Xu Ying’s own experiences growing up during the Cultural Revolution.
Xu and Marks say, "It is not our aim to retell the story of Lu Xun’s fictional creation. Instead, we are interested in revealing how Ah Q can be seen to embody a central aspect of the human condition. If we are successful, and members of the audience recognize themselves in the figure on stage, then perhaps it is possible to avert our inclination to repeat Ah Q’s follies."