The International Monkey King Troupe

Starring Ghaffar Pourazar
Directed by Ghaffar Pourazar &
Master Shaohua Zhang

The International Monkey King Troupe consists of 15 actors and musicians, led by Ghaffar Pourazar, a British performer who became the first Westerner to complete the rigorous course of training at the National Academy for Traditional Chinese Opera. He has since become the leading exponent of this marvelous theatrical art-form in the West. Their mission is to make Beijing Opera accessible to a worldwide audience. They have performed at the Zheng Yi Ci Theatre in Beijing and have toured internationally in Malaysia and Singapore. The company visiting the US for the 2004 tour includes six leading students from the National Academy and several highly regarded feature performers.

Co-director of the Company is Master Zhang Shaohua, who specializes in the Warrior Clown character, the most physically demanding character in Beijing Opera. A disciple of Zhang Chunhua, a legendary Warrior clown, Master Zhang has performed for President Nixon and Chairman Mao. He has been a senior teacher at the National Academy, and this year joined with Ghaffar Pourazar to open a new school of Bejing Opera for Chinese and foreign students.

As the most successful foreign performer of this Chinese art-form, Ghaffar Pourazar has become quite famous in China and his story has been told in news features [link to Photo & Video Gallery] on the BBC, CNN, CCTV, as well as in the Asian Wall Street Journal and many other publications. Pourazar arrived in Beijing in 1993 and started his four years’ training in the Beijing Peking Opera School. In 1996 he won the Golden Dragon Award in the International Opera Festival, a competition for amateur performers. He then moved on to postgraduate program at the National Academy for Traditional Chinese Opera. He was a British Council Senior Scholar in Beijing from 1995 to 1997, and was awarded a grant from The Asian Cultural Council to research and record Beijing Opera traditions and stories from the old masters.

As Artistic Director of the Zheng Yi Ci Theatre in Beijing, the oldest traditional opera theater in Beijing, he introduced Beijing Opera to many foreign tourists and attracted a large Chinese audience. The theater hosted U.S. Secretary of Commerce William Daly, and has staged special performances for the U.S., British, and German Embassies in Beijing.

s the first non-Chinese to have directed the National Opera Troupe of China, in October 1997, Pourazar adapted and directed the Peking Opera production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Chinese CCTV commented that it was like a “dream come true.” CNN also covered this inter-cultural event and called it “a way to promote Peking Opera in China and in the West.” In 2001 Pourazar took the traditional opera Legend of the White Snake and dubbed it into English, the first time that a performance was simultaneously interpreted into English.

His International Monkey King Troupe has traveled to many different countries. In February 2004 he led the troupe to Malaysia to perform for the Chinese Lantern Festival. In March 2004 he toured with the company of the Peking Opera Institute around Singapore performing Monkey King plays. In previous visits to the U.S. Pourazar has presented workshops at MIT, University of Buffalo, University of Oregon (Eugene), University of Southern Oregon (Ashland), China Institute (NY), Majestic Theater (Boston), Behind the Mask Theatre (Boston), Reed College (Portland), and for Chinese cultural organizations around the USA.

During the tour the troupe will offer over a dozen workshops for students and teachers at the colleges they visit. These workshops will cover aspects of the history, theatrical forms, music and dance of the Beijing Opera. Ghaffar Pourazar, as an accomplished performer and a native English speaker, is uniquely qualified to offer these workshops.