Talking with Ming Wong about RHAPSODY IN YELLOW

(2023)

Last year, I was invited to interview the Berlin-based Singaporean artist Ming Wong about his theatre piece, Rhapsody in Yellow, which has been touring theatre festivals around the world. The show has been described as follows:

At a time of rising tensions between the US and China, artist Ming Wong presents a musical lecture-performance that traces the Sino-American “ping-pong” diplomacy, starting with President Nixon’s historic state visit to Communist China and his meeting with Chairman Mao fifty years ago. Evoking an international piano competition and a table tennis match, two classical pianists collaborate and improvise on a performative unification of the sonic regimes of the US and China.

In a ping-pong double concerto accompanied by archival moving images and spoken word, they explore the role of European classical music, modernism, and myth-making in the rise of these two nations in the 20th century. From table tennis and television to tanks and trade wars, “Rhapsody in Yellow” charts the changing balance of power between the US and China, in a duet of discord and harmony, chaos and serendipity, humor and pathos.