The staged reading will feature excerpts of plays by Gao Xingjian, and will be performed by students of THET 489G (Globalization and Theatre).

The playwright Gao Xingjian will be present at the reading, and Dr. Claire Conceison of Duke University will facilitate the discussion. Gao Xingjian won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2000 and is a renowned writer, painter, and filmmaker. His paintings and films are exhibited at the Art Gallery at UMD until December 20.

The exhibition has been organized by The Art Gallery, curated by Professor Jason C. Kuo (Art History and Archaeology) with the support of the Department of Art History and Archaeology, the Center for East Asian Studies, the Wang Fangyu Endowment for Calligraphy Education, the Program in Chinese, the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, the Program in French, the Department of French and Italian, the Program in Asian American Studies, the Program in Film Studies, the Graduate Field Committee in Film Studies, and the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, all at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Born in 1940, in Jiangxi province in eastern China, Gao Xingjian is the first Chinese recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Mr. Gao’s interest in theatre, writing, and all things creative was instilled at an early age by his mother, an amateur actress. He began painting at age ten after his uncle gave him a notebook for his birthday. Mr. Gao describes it as “just white papers, no grid and no lines,” and it was in this where he first began writing and drawing simultaneously. Throughout the course of Gao Xingjian’s prolific career, he has had nearly thirty international exhibitions of his ink paintings and, also, illustrates all of the covers of his books.