Oriental Expression

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This year's Edinburgh Festival has posted its brochure up online, with an amazing selection of Asian material, including a Beijing Opera version of Hamlet, a dramatisation of Haruki Murakami's Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and a ballet of the Peony Pavilion.

And tucked away among the sideshows, "writer and biographer Jonathan Clements" in conversation about matters of orientalism and cultural transmission with Ahn Eun-Me and Anita Nair. Since I'm flying early and leaving late, I will at least get the chance to catch King Lear in Chinese, but I'm gutted that I won't be around for the opening night of Hanan al-Shaykh's new adaptation of The Thousand and One Nights, dramatised and directed by Tim Supple. Regular readers of this blog will know of my previous dabblings on this subject; I met al-Shaykh last month (at a party in Wimbledon, what were the odds?), and had a fascinating talk with her about the story's finale.

But anyway, an amazing selection — I wish I were there for a whole month to catch it all.