Creator and creature

The play is coproduced by the Beijing company ATW Culture, which is NT Live's distributor in China, and Theatre Rocks, a company of Alibaba's online ticketing platform Damai. Co-producer of the play and CEO of ATW Culture Li Congzhou says despite the difficulties brought by the pandemic, the team was determined to make the international cooperation happen.

"As the novel was written by a British author and the original play was staged in the UK, I hoped that a British director would be able to bring the story to China with its original flavor, and also generate new chemistry and interpretations when collaborating with Chinese theater artists," Li Congzhou says.

"It is interesting that such a dark and cruel novel was written by a female author, so Dromgoole changed the standpoint of the story slightly, by adding the role of Mary Shelley, with the care and anxiety about the world from a woman's perspective. Our stage design, music and physical expressions were also redesigned and recreated."