Prolific director Yi Liming is on a mission to bring the underrepresented in world theater as well as top original Chinese works, writes Raymond Zhou.

"There are two types of theater in China: One is within the establishment and the other outside it," says Yi Liming, who has just presented the opera version of On the Land of White Deer - a new adaptation from contemporary Chinese literature - at Beijing's Tianqiao Art Center. He is now rehearsing an unusual edition of Danton's Death.

He will also direct the China premiere of Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande in Shanghai later in the summer.

Yi is the rare stage director who straddles both types of theater.

Those within the establishment tend to be big productions with elaborate sets, such as the Chinese opera The Rickshaw Boy produced by the National Center for the Performing Arts, while his non-establishment offerings are generally more intimate but often more daring in conception. It would be simplistic to draw the line at opera and so-called straight plays.

Yi is most proud to have presented and directed relatively obscure works including Britten's The Turn of the Screw, Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle and Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex. All were premiered in China.

For the investment in one such opera production he could do 10 plays, he says. But he never intended to recoup the cost, or even part of it, because he usually offers a one-night presentation and for an invited, nonpaying audience.

"I just want significant works that others have ignored to leave their imprint on the Chinese stage," he says.

Some have wondered if what Yi does should fall within the realm of government cultural entities with their deep pockets and grand goals. But he does not care about such niceties.

Another ambitious project he launched last year was an international cultural exchange program that would otherwise involve lots of bureaucracy had it been through an official channel, "at least two years for a production like Ulysses to come to China".

Ulysses was an imported production that was part of a six-play, one-opera endeavor called "China-UK Literary Theatre Exchange". It also included A Journey Round James Joyce, an accompanying piece written by Andy Arnold, who directed Yi's company, Xinchan, to rapturous acclaim.

This year, Yi is replicating 2015's success with a similar program with France, with five plays and three operas, culminating in the Debussy opera. "And there will be six other countries down the road."

The money for this herculean undertaking is his own, which comes from a fund originally earmarked for renovating and managing a theater.

"Since I won't have my own theater, I'll just produce works, which is what theater is all about," he says.

Yi gripes that we often lump together foreign fare as if it is homogeneous, "but each of these countries have a different theater tradition".

What he is aiming for is "authentic presentations of some of their best - yet not readily available even accessible - stage works so we can learn from each other and, in the longer term, put some of China's best on the world stage."

When asked why he chose such "difficult" works, Yi is univocal about literary value being the primary concern. "There are members in the Chinese audience who are highly educated and deserve to be served the best of world literature."

Indeed, literary value is one of three factors he cites for the hallmarks of a great stage work, which is often distilled in the dialogue. "What cannot be said outright can be embodied in the music," he says, and that's why opera has been a bigger and bigger attraction for him.

"Other than that is the form."

Lin Zhaohua, the renowned stage master, has been Yi's mentor ever since the latter graduated from the Central Academy of Drama in the late 1980s and joined Beijing People's Art Theater. "Yi's understanding of music is extraordinary and that stimulated my creativity," says Lin.

Yi specialized in set and lighting design, collaborating with Lin on hundreds of productions.

Yi has set his eyes on The Classic of Mountains and Seas, a collection of Chinese mythology, for the long term. What he has in mind has a mammoth scale of 36 plays.

"I don't know whether I can finish it in my lifetime as it depends on whether God will give me the chance," he says.

For all his reliance on classics, Chinese or Western, Yi is most emphatic about original work. He complains that the best Chinese writers are not into stage plays.

"I want to present stage works that reflect the zeitgeist," he insists. "They do not have to break rules, but they have to speak to the audience."

The Imperial Express and The Seven Sages, two in last year's lineup, are both ancient stories, but their relevance to the current times was obvious to those in the know. This year's theme is myth and revolution, about which he has a great deal to say, "but I won't divulge to the critics what I think of the destructive power of revolution. They'll have to find out from my treatment."

Yi hasn't jumped on the bandwagon of Shakespearean anniversary celebrations this year. He has done Hamlet and Coriolanus, and habitually adds his own twist to the standard repertory.

With Lin, he did a hybrid of Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Chekhov's Three Sisters.

"Of course it's not the same kind of waiting in the two plays, but I was audacious and didn't know better," he says.

His Oedipus Rex opens with a train loaded with mine workers and his La Traviata is set on the deck of a cruise liner that sailed from Paris to Shanghai. He notes that his offerings may not be "for the masses", but they are anything but complacent.

"I don't believe theater has the potential to lead a nation out of suffering and I don't think one can transcend oneself, but we all have to make our best effort."