Reading is a mental exercise for HK director Tang Shu-wing

Who: Tang Shu-wing, 66, is the artistic director of Hong Kong’s Tang Shu-wing Theatre Studio and one of the special administrative region’s most influential theatre directors. In 2012, his production of Titus Andronicus was staged at Shakespeare’s Globe in London, marking the first time a Cantonese play was performed at the landmark theatre.

- Clement Yong Correspondent

Tang Shu-wing reads mainly at home, and sometimes in coffee shops and on flights. PHOTO: GWYN LAU

(GWYN LAU)

Tang’s play, a four-hander presentation of Shakespeare’s Othello with four graduating actor-students from Singapore’s Intercultural Theatre Institute, just concluded at Esplanade Theatre Studio on Nov 8. The actors from Singapore and India embodied nine characters using heightened language and mask work.

Tang says of his choice of the tragedy: “It is about fake news, which I think is particularly rele vant today in our digital age.”

“I just finished reading Until August by (Colombian author) Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I came across it at an airport bookshop.

This last novel of Marquez and the only one with a female protagonist does not disappoint me on the whole. It carries his usual narrative power, attention to detail, ability to arouse surprises and imagination.