Content provided by British Council
Read the following text and answer the quiz below.
[1] A Hong Kong creative team has brought Oz to life – in Cantonese. Developed to coincide with the release of Wicked: For Good in November, “Wicked in Canto” is a video series featuring songs from the fantasy musical performed in the city’s mother tongue. The project championed Hong Kong talent and highlighted the potential of international musical theatre productions being performed in Cantonese. It made waves on YouTube and Instagram, with tracks dropping weekly.
[2] The project’s lyric adaptation was officially led by Jason Lung, a University of Hong Kong graduate in Chinese literature and translation. Inspiration struck while listening to the soundtrack of the first Wicked film. “I just kept thinking, these songs sound like they would be really good in Cantonese,” he recalled. “There’s a certain musicality and emotional depth in our language that felt like a perfect match.”
[3] Lung reached out to Marco Tang, a seasoned performer from New Gen, a Hong Kong troupe of rising young performers. The project quickly took flight. “Energy flows both ways,” Tang said. “By giving these incredible new artists this platform, we’re not only promoting musical theatre in Hong Kong but also giving back to the creative community. They lift the art form, and the art form lifts them.”
[4] What followed was the formation of a 17-person troupe comprising fellow industry experts and friends. It included a coalition of performers, vocal coaches and even a make-up artist, all united by a common goal. “The professional musical scene here is relatively small. We have the talent, but we often lack the large-scale, visible platforms. ‘Wicked in Canto’ is that opportunity to push musical theatre here,” Lung explained.
[5] Tang added that they paired performers with roles based on more than just vocal range or technique, sharing that they cast actress and singing coach Hailey Mak Hiu-lam – “someone who is very sweet and bubbly in real life” – to play the role of Glinda, for example. “We didn’t just want singers – we wanted embodiments,” he said.
[6] With such strong source material, the linguistic journey was one of the project’s greatest challenges. Lung wrestled for months with Stephen Schwartz’s lyrics, starting in January last year – two months after the release of the first Wicked film – and working tirelessly to finish the translations by September. Not only did he translate the specific vowels in each song to match the rhymes used melodically, but he also had to somehow carry over particular cultural idioms, humour and Oz-specific wordplay for a Cantonese-speaking audience.
[7] Looking beyond Broadway for inspiration, the team found a blueprint in East Asia, specifically in South Korea. “We are incredibly inspired by Korean musical productions, which really took off recently,” Kwok said. “Their advances in musical theatre, the professionalism of their adaptations and translations – they show that localised musicals can be world-class. They prove this model can work and thrive culturally, and I really hope that the same can happen in Hong Kong.”
Source: South China Morning Post, December 6
