Creator and creature

While the size of the stage is challenging to the actors, as according to Zheng, the venue is at least four times the size of their rehearsal room, to the directors the story itself is suited for a grand theater setting.

"It is a story of a big scale, almost an operatic scale. It was written at a time when people wrote large, and they wrote huge stories. It was written with a huge engine to drive it through even a big theater,"Dromgoole says.

The former artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe in London says he has had a lot of collaboration with China, inviting the National Theatre of China to visit the United Kingdom and also touring plays, including Hamlet and The Merchant of Venice, in the country.

"I think international collaboration is very important at any time, especially during the pandemic. I am a passionate believer that the best way for people to talk is through shared cultural artifacts, and see through those things how they are similar in many ways and different in many ways, and it's the most eloquent way of uncovering that," he adds.