Tang Shu-wing is a prominent stage director and actor in Hong Kong. Sometimes nicknamed the "Alchemist of Minimalist Theatre", he received the Best Director award three times at the Hong Kong Drama Awards. While studying law in the early 1980s, Tang acted in student productions. He is the Dean of Drama at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. Parole Magazine describes Tang as "one of the most talented theatre directors of Hong Kong".
Career
Tang Shu-wing was born in Hong Kong, and although he was keen on pursuing studies related to history, debating and medicine, he finally decided to study theatre at the Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle and acting at the Ecole de la Belle de Mai, both in Paris, France; “Woyzeck” by German playwright Georg Büchner was his inspiration. Returning to his home country in 1992, he established the company, No Man's Land, in 1997; its productions include puppetry, video, and multimedia. Tang serves as the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts' Dean of Drama. In May 2012 he put on a production of Shakespeare’s "Titus Andronicus" which premiered at the World Shakespeare Festival, Globe to Globe. It was a unique presentation at the Cultural Olympiad in May, which brought out the first Cantonese performance on stage. The original play was made into a narrative format with Asian aesthetics of movement and music, which was titled “Titus 2.0”, and presented in Fredrikstad in Norway, Bytom and Wroclaw in Poland and Beijing. Later in 2012, the Tang Shu-wing Theatre Studio produced “Detention,” a "non-verbal physical comedy", a new theatrical style in Hong Kong. Its repertoire includes acrobatics, martial arts, Chinese opera movement and percussion. It was presented at the Edinburgh Festival in August 2012 and received critical acclaim. Stage Magazine said of it: "Fringe triumph… very inventive and highly amusing show." The Tang Shu-wing Theatre Studio returned to London, where they'd performed during the Cultural Olympiad, for Globe to Globe 2015. They presented a production of "Macbeth" in Cantonese, infused by the culture of Hong Kong, at Shakespeare's Globe theatre in August. A further run will follow at Hong Kong's City Hall in March 2016. The Financial Times praised the actor's performances, accompanying music and, though its pared-down status was felt to dampen the narrative pace, concluded the production had a "bewitching hypnotic grace".
