Poetry, classical music and … live-streaming? How Hong Kong show Spirits was able to continue despite Covid-19 restrictions keeping pianist Yen Chun-chieh out of the city

Pianist Yen Chun-chieh played at the Taishin Tower in Taipei, Taiwan, and Sylvia Chang Ai-chia narrated at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre’s Grand Theatre

Despite the physical distance, the combined talents of the duo were enough that the colour and the poetic nuance of the work and storytelling were not lost

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Yen Chun-chieh played the piano at the Taishin Tower in Taipei, and Sylvia Chang Ai-chia narrated at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre’s Grand Theatre in a live-streamed effort for Spirits. Photo: Cheung Chi-wai

Published: 4:15pm, 28 Oct 2020Updated: 4:59pm, 28 Oct 2020

Before Spirits began on October 24, Mathias Woo Yan-wai took to the stage to explain how the Taiwanese production almost never made it to the city.

Because of travel restrictions and quarantine rules to curb the spread of Covid-19, one of the show’s two artists, pianist Yen Chun-chieh, was still in Taipei in Taiwan. Thankfully, the other performer – veteran screen actress Sylvia Chang Ai-chia – was in Hong Kong.

Because of live-streaming – something the theatre company Zuni Icosahedron had experimented with in a simulcast performance with the Zurich University of the Arts in Switzerland two years ago – the production could go on, with Yen playing at the Taishin Tower in Taipei and Chang narrating at the Grand Theatre of the Hong Kong Cultural Centre in Tsim Sha Tsui in real time.

Though the technical solution added an extra, interesting dimension to the production, it presented the company with new challenges too.

Chang recited poems on the themes of desire, longing and unrequited love. Photo: Franz Lai

Spirits is, in essence, a piano recital. The programme is made up of five classical pieces: Sergei Rachmaninoff’s piano arrangement of a movement from Felix Mendelssohn’s score for A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Maurice Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit; and Franz Liszt’s arrangement of Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre; Années de pèlerinage – Deuxième année: Italie; and Lenore.

In between these classical compositions, Chang, who created the show, would recite poems – originally written in English and French and translated into Chinese by music critic Chiao Yuan-pu – on the themes of desire, longing and unrequited love.