Actors filmed for Miss Juile are seen on the big screen above the stage. Photo: Courtesy of Duan Chao

Over the past week, many celebrities, actors and directors have posted about going to see the multi-media stage show Miss Julie on their Sina Weibo. People have traveled from Shanghai and other faraway cities to come all the way to Tianjin and Beijing just to watch the performance.

Thanks to the efforts of the Goethe-Institutt China, the Lin Zhaohua Theatre Arts Festival and the Tianjin Cao Yu International Theatre Festival, Chinese audiences were able to enjoy a new and refreshing theater experience developed from the classic tragedy of Swedish writer August Strindberg's Miss Julie as performed by Schaubühne Berlin.

Different perspectives

Written in 1888, the classic Strindberg tale - which focuses on social classes, lust and human nature  - is well known to lovers of drama around the globe. Over the past 100 years, the story has been put on stage a multitude of times as well as adapted to film.

In the original play Miss Julie is an upper class lady living in on 19th century estate. At a midsummer party, she flirts with a well-educated servant, Jean, who eventually seduces her. After a night of passion, the embarrassed young woman hopes to run away with her new lover.

Unfortunately, when morning arrives Jean is no longer the charming and pleasing man he was the night before. He persuades Julie to steal her father's money, but when the action is noticed by Jean's fiancé, the young lady's story is pushed to a tragic ending.

A naturalist play, Strindberg portrays the superiority that some classes lord over others and the unequal relationship between men and women in a rational, exquisite and sometimes even cruel way.

The new version of Miss Julie, co-directed by British theater director Katie Mitchell and video artist Leo Warner, keeps the main story line but uses little of the original text.

Miss Julie's background, her relationship with her mother, father and fiancé is neglected. Instead, a Danish writer's poem is inserted throughout the whole play, making the tone of the drama feel suddenly more artistic and slower paced.

In the updated adaptation, Jean's fiancée, Kristin becomes the protagonist. The entire story takes place in the manor's kitchen, Kristin's bedroom and her dreams. Standing in opposition to the intentions of Strindberg, who is known for the misogyny of his works, the alteration of the leading role emphasizes a female perspective.

The gap between different classes and the vital change of power between Julie and Jean after their passionate night are both weakened in the new version, whereas the use of a stream of consciousness style of performance helps highlight themes that may have never been noticed in the original drama.   

The incorporation of movie screens into the stage play allow close-ups of Kristin, her hands, her hair and how she works in the kitchen and puts daisies under her pillow to stress a female perspective.

In this way, Mitchell makes Miss Julie a more modern and personalized show by transferring the focus from social classes to individuals and from a critical realist view to a softer female point-of-view.    

Before a live studio audience

Incorporating filmmaking techniques into a stage play is nothing new. Frankenstein, produced by National Theatre Live in the UK, and Leo, co-produced by Canadian and German teams, are examples of how moving images and the theater no longer have to be separate mediums. 

Even so, Miss Julie was a surprise for many Chinese, even those with a certain level of knowledge about post-drama theater. What Miss Julie presents on stage is not just a simple technique but a combined, multi-channeled artwork.   

With six cameras working together, the whole team of nine people play multiple roles during the production: The technical crew sometimes acts as stand-ins and the players occasionally find themselves behind the cameras.

The creative team behind Miss Julie utilize meticulous stage design in order for the lighting and mise-en-scène to be persistent across different scenes and be able to imitate different lighting levels from daylight to candle light.

In China, avant-garde director Wang Chong is also famous for the use of movie screens in his dramas. After the shows in Tianjin and Beijing he hosted a question and answer panel along with the actors to discuss the use of cameras in live theater.

"I talked to a very experienced film director and he couldn't believe that everything was shot on stage. He felt that it was impossible to maintain the appropriate lighting as the camera moves around," said Wang during the panel.

During the performance the audience is not only able to see the actors but also the entire crew on stage, including the sound recording staff. Meanwhile, the results of the crew's efforts are shown up on a big screen above the stage.

In some cases Bertolt Brecht's alienation effect is used to create distance between the performance and the audience as in some scenes actors perform in a closed off room where the action taking place can only be viewed upon the screen.

However, on the other hand, the multitude of close-ups used during the play present even the smallest details of people and items to the audience, making everything look realistic to the point that the audience feels they are witnessing a day of Kristin's life through her eyes.

The fact that so many things are happening on stage creates more possibilities for the show, as different people in the audience will focus their attention on different areas.

International production

Mitchell has worked for many famous theaters in her almost 20 years of directing, including the Royal Shakespeare Company, Royal National Theatre and the Royal Opera House. Her cooperation with Leo Warner makes filmmaking in a theater setting both natural and simple. The Berlin performance of Miss Julie in 2010 marked the first time the duo worked with Schaubühne Berlin.

After the project was written by the English team, actors from Schaubühne Berlin worked 10 hours a day for four weeks to rehearse the whole performance. Its first trip to China, Miss Julie shows how far international theater has come. 

Corresponding to the multi-media era where everyone is used to multi-tasking and using various devices simultaneously, Miss Julie successfully merges the aspects of theater and filming before a live audience to create a brand new experience which constantly changes depending on where you direct your attention.