Book of Songs presents poetry from across the span of China's 3000-year literary history, interpreted through traditional Chinese and contemporary Western performing arts. Poems exploring the tensions between ancient and modern, war and peace, sacred and profane, city and nature are woven into a visual and musical score that slides freely between genres of puppetry and performance as it turns smoothly from humorous to serious subjects. Unlike much of Chinese Theatre Works´ past work, Book of Songs is rooted in writing not originally created for the theatre. The production marks another step in our ongoing efforts to bring Chinese literary classics together with a range of performance forms to create compelling theater for contemporary audiences.

The poems which make up Book of Songs come from a wide range of sources and periods: selections from the earliest known literary anthology, The Book of Songs, compiled during the Chou Dynasty (roughly 1000 to 600 BC); works by the poets Wang Wei, Li Bai and Du Fu of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD); and poems reflecting twentieth-century Chinese experience. Similarly, the performance encompasses a variety of puppetry techniques - traditional shadow, overhead projection, hand puppets, masks, and toy theater - as well as classical Kun opera, live singing and musical accompaniment.

Book of Songs is a bilingual production (English/Mandarin) performed by a cast of five Chinese opera artists & puppeteers. Chinese Theatre Works´ co-Artistic Directors, Stephen Kaplin and Kuang-Yu Fong, wrote and directed the piece, with set and lighting design by David Regan, and further puppetry development by Shuyun Cheng (a shadow puppetry specialist) and Chiyuan Ho (a hand-puppet artist and graphic designer).