Descriptions
“Those who know can see; those who do not know cannot.”
During the height of the Qianlong era, a youth from the north, Amuktai, learns from his shaman mother how to summon deer by whistle. At night, he and his confidante, Pinar, sit by the fire basin, gazing at the stars.
Inside the Forbidden City, the Qianlong Emperor dreams of Kangxi seated upon an antler chair. Woke unsettled, he resolves to travel to the Mulan hunting grounds and enter the forest, searching for a voice that can answer him.
At the edge of the hunting grounds, a fateful encounter between ruler and subject draws near— the whistle echoes through the woods, the shadows of the deer flicker in and out of sight. In this deer pursuit, upon whose hands will rightful primacy ultimately fall?
The Yilin says:
“Where there are deer, the nine clans live in harmony and know no hunger.”
Following The Silly Elephant, Theatre Ronin continues its romantic intuition, adapting Xi Xi’s classic historical novel The Tear Deer, written in the 1980s and inspired by Qing dynasty Western painter Giuseppe Castiglione’s (also known as Lang Shining) Whistling for Deer.
In the style of magical realism, the stage reimagines a world where humans and deer merge as one—losing themselves completely, traversing life and death, shaking heaven and earth, and ultimately returning to nature.
“Xi Xi long ago saw through what fame and fortune truly are. Her writing does not take the path of pleasing or pandering.”
— Ho Fuk Yan
“Xi Xi’s ultimate vision extends beyond the scope of Hong Kong history and Chinese history, even beyond world history, entering the realm of natural history instead.”
— Dung Kai Cheung
“Yes, we are not afraid. Life is fleeting—what is there to fear?”
— Xi Xi, The Imperial Astronomer
