Chen Shi-Zheng is a director, choreographer, singer, and actor. He was born in Changsha, Hunan, China in 1963. As a teenager, he studied with some of the great masters of Chinese opera and became a leading traditional opera actor, performing in many productions throughout China. Mr. Chen immigrated to the United States in 1987 and has worked to create a new expression that crosses the boundaries between music, opera, theatre, and dance, and between different cultures.
In Spring 2006, he directed the premiere of the contemporary opera Mercury Light World by Chinese composer Cong Su for the Berlin Festival, and just a month later, Orfeo by Monteverdi was successfully premiered to great critical acclaim at English National Opera as part of a complete Monteverdi cycle he has envisioned. Future projects include Monkey – Journey to the West – a circus spectacle based on a Chinese classic with music by Gorillaz – for the Manchester International Festival, the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris and the Berlin Staatsoper, and Bonesetter’s Daughter, a new opera by American composer Stewart Wallace based on a novel by Amy Tan for the San Francisco Opera. Chen Shi-Zheng will be making his feature film directorial debut with Dark Matter, starring Meryl Streep, Aidan Quinn and Liu Ye. The film is scheduled for release in early 2007.
Mr. Chen conceived and directed a trilogy of revolutionary contemporary theater works based on Chinese classics, culminating with Peach Blossom Fan for the Center for New Theatre at the California Institute of the Arts, at REDCAT as an opening event for Disney new concert hall designed by Frank Gehry in Los Angeles, Orphan of Zhao (Lincoln Center Theater & Lincoln Center Festival,) and Snow in June (American Repertory Theatre,). Among Mr. Chen’s other recent directing projects were a new theater work for Denmark’s Hans Christian Andersen bicentennial celebrations in 2005, My life as a fairy tale, which premiered at the Lincoln Center Festival in New York and at the Aarhus Festival in Denmark. Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 with Handel & Haydn Society in Boston; Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman for the Spoleto Festival USA; Night Banquet, a chamber opera by Guo Wenjing co-commissioned by the Festival d’Automne à Paris, Kunstenfestival des Arts in Brussels, Hebbel-Theater in Berlin, and the Ensemble Modern in Frankfurt, at the Lincoln Center Festival in summer 2003; and the documentary film Cultural Warriors of The Revolution for TV France 3. Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte at Aix-en Provence Festival and Théâtre des Champs Elysées in Paris; Euripides’ tragedy The Bacchae, performed by China National Beijing Opera Company, at Hong Kong Arts Festival and to Athens Festival 1998. That same year, he directed Alley, a new opera by Jack Body for New Zealand International Festival for the Arts.
The year 1999 marked the premiere of his 19 hour staging of Tang Xianzu’s complete Peony Pavilion as the centerpiece of the Lincoln Center Festival. This production has subsequently been presented at Festival d’Automne in Paris, Piccolo Teatro in Milan, Perth International Arts Festival, Aarhus Festival in Denmark, Berlin Festival, Vienna Festival and at the Esplanade Centre in Singapore. It has been filmed for home video distribution by RM Associates.
Mr. Chen received the title of Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters from the French Government in 2000 and he resides in New York City.
Liu Xing a brilliant Chinese student, arrives at University and makes the transition into American life with the help of Joanna Silver. Xing joins a cosmology group working to create a model of the origins of the universe. He is obsessed with the study of dark matter and a theory that conflicts with the group’s model. When he begins to make breakthroughs of his own, he encounters obstructions.