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A French troupe debuts in Hong Kong with a startling but somehow logical combination of theatre styles.

Tradition meets innovation and East meets West when Chinese opera and Commedia dell’ Arte marry in a Le French May presentation this month – Harlequin Travels in China represents an “aesthetic encounter” between the two distinctive, enduring and culture-specific performing arts traditions. Fittingly, this production from France’s Asphodels Theatre Company (Compagnie du Théâtre des Asphodèles) will have its world premiere in Hong Kong, gateway city between East and West, before touring mainland China and later Europe.

Commedia dell’ Arte literally means ‘Artistic Comedy’ in Italian, although it has also been translated as ‘Play of Professional Artists’. A specialist theatre that had its origins in Renaissance Italy, it has developed into an exacting performing art whose colourful productions regularly mix genres and disciplines. Thierry Auzer, the Asphodel Theatre Company’s Director, maintains that good practitioners of Commedia dell’ Arte “must have training in singing, acrobatics, fencing [and] mime” as well as acting. They also need a wide dramatic range as, despite the ‘comedy’ emphasis in its name, in Commedia dell’ Arte, tragedy and comedy live more closely together than in any other Western theatre form.

Instead of elaborate sets, Commedia dell’ Arte relies on costumes and masks, which makes it portable theatre that can be performed just about anywhere – in public places as easily as in formal theatrical spaces. Also, Auzer points out, it has its own brand of “visual and universal language to depict the attitudes, the physical and psychological postures of man, through codified and stylized characters”. That, he believes, opens up possibilities to touch a wider and more diversified audience than usual, and to look for encounters with other forms of theatre such as Chinese opera.

It also helps make Harlequin Travels to China understandable to as many people as possible. The Asphodel Theatre Company’s performers emphasize body movements over dialogue in the play. Far from breaking with tradition, though, this emphasis harks back to a time before Commedia dell’ Arte migrated out of its native Italy, when the vast number of Italian dialects – among them Rome’s Romanesco, Naples’ Napoletano, and Sardinia’s Sassarese, Algherese, Campidanese, Gallurese, Logudurese and Sassarese – forced a focus on physical forms more than spoken text.

One of fewer than 10 Commedia dell’ Arte companies in Europe today, the Asphodel Theatre Company is named after the rather ordinary plant that establishes itself through a hole in dry rocks, hostile soil or a wild hillside. Yet, as Auzer observes, it presents “a sudden and unexpected beauty appearing on roadsides where maybe only a few travelling people stop”. Inspired by this flowering perennial, this specialist theatrical troupe from France hopes to capture the attention and hearts of those who deign to pause and be surprised by colourful, even ephemeral, visions of beauty and originality in works like Harlequin Travels in China.

With a simple, against-impossible-odds romantic plot that allows plenty of room for the kind of improvisation around a pre-established scenario that is one of Commedia dell’ Arte’s fortes, this original production focuses on the Chinese princess Azure Pearl, who has to fend for herself after being spirited away to Venice upon the revelation of a murder plot against her. Disguised as a Harlequin, she is embroiled in a series of adventures and, after meeting a young Venetian named Orazio, falls in love.

So why Harlequin Travels in China rather than, say, Harlequin Travels in Japan or Harlequin Travels in the USA for a theatrical troupe whose previous productions include a Commedia dell’ Arte adaptation of Molière’s Dom Juan or the Feast with the Statue? “Chinese opera seems to be, for us, the closest form of theatre to Commedia dell’ Arte,” explains Auzer. “Indeed, many aesthetic affinities exist between these two genres.” And he especially mentions body movement as an art form.

Auzer also points to the archetypal characters and coded gestures typical of both commedia and Chinese opera: “To express his fear, the clown of Chinese opera will have his hands shaking,” he divulges, while Commedia dell’ Arte’s clownish Harlequin (aka Arlecchino) will make his legs shake. Both, he notes, convey that fear makes us shake – and that needs no interpreter for us to understand.

“The integration of many artistic disciplines (such as dance, singing, martial arts)… masks, costumes and make-up are important in both Chinese opera and commedia,” he further explains. The integration frequently serves to identify stock characters, like Harlequin, whose trademark outfit includes a cat-like mask with a low forehead and a wart.

Finally, Auzer states, “The two forms of theatre don’t intend to reproduce reality but to transpose it in order to ‘tell about the human being’, whatever country he’s from.” In doing so, room is left for the imagination of both performer and audience. Indeed, the way Auzer sees it, in Commedia dell’ Arte and Chinese opera it is the imagination of the spectator that completes any production.

The Asphodel Theatre Company’s Harlequin Travels in China will play for one night only on Tuesday, May 13, at the Sheung Wan Civic Centre’s Theatre. Showtime for this Le French May presentation is 8pm. Tickets are $250, $200 and $150 from URBTIX, 2734 9009.