Only 40 people a night get to see “Nightwalk in the Chinese Garden,” a site-specific production staged beneath the evening sky at the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, Calif.
They are among the few members of the public to wander the garden — formally called the Garden of Flowing Fragrance — after its usual 5 p.m. closing time. The play they see, by following performers along specially illuminated pathways, bridges and pavilions, is inspired both by classical Chinese drama and early 20th-century California history.
“I have always been interested in alternate ways of staging the theatrical event, and in then making these alternatives feel primal to an audience,” the playwright, Stan Lai, explained by email.
“This work grew from the elegance and secrecy of the Huntington Chinese garden,” he added. “When a friend suggested I do a performance in a certain pavilion, I suddenly saw the whole garden as a theater.”
Mr. Lai is a prominent Taiwanese dramatist and director whose works have earned acclaim throughout the Chinese-speaking world. The dreamlike “Nightwalk,” which runs through Oct. 26, combines elements of the Ming dynasty-era opera “The Peony Pavilion,” sung in Chinese, with a new English-language story about an artist in 1920s California.
The production is an unusual collaboration between the Huntington and CalArts Center for New Performance; the cast of 20 includes CalArts students and alumni, and members of the Shanghai Kunqu Troupe.
“The Peony Pavilion,” written in 1598 by the dramatist Tang Xianzu, can run almost a full 24 hours if performed in its complete form. In it, a sleeping young woman dreams of a love affair with a man she has never met and, after she awakens, dies of disappointment. But she returns to life after the man learns of her in his own dreams.
Excerpts from the opera are featured in “Nightwalk,” and as in many site-specific works, the narrative unfolds differently depending on how an audience member proceeds.
“This, along with the dreamlike quality of the Chinese Garden at night, enhances the inherent subject matter I deal with: the borders between dreams and reality, composer and composed, cause and effect, art and life, life and death,” Mr. Lai wrote.
