Qiu Fu, the most renowned clown of Sichuan opera, has reached the netherworld. Welcomed by Ox-Head and Horse-Face, shepherds of the dead, he recounts his life with the “New-New” opera troupe before his turn at the Bridge of Forgetfulness. Starting in the 1920s, Qiu’s tale melds with China’s tumultuous century into the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Great Leap Forward, and other socio-political revolutions.

Inspired by his own grandfather’s life, Qiu Jiongjiong’s A New Old Play is a sumptuous intermingling of personal and national history. It transforms China’s many pivots into a vaudevillian theater of its own, culminating in a spiritual rumination on the passage of time and the role of the artist forced to weather the storm of history. Drawing from his background as a visual artist, Qiu arrives at a masterful, painterly style: flowing tableaux, carefully art-directed sets and ingenious hand-made miniatures bringing the act of remembrance into a delightful, phantasmagorical realm.

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