Arthur Miller goes to Beijing and Singapore in Jeremy Tiang’s Obie Award-winning play

SINGAPORE – When Arthur Miller flew to Beijing in 1983 to direct a Mandarin adaptation of his acclaimed tragedy Death Of A Salesman, he faced more than just a language barrier. The American playwright found that his actors – fresh after the Cultural Revolution – could neither fathom the vocation of a travelling salesman nor the concept of selling insurance.

What made the cross-cultural conversation possible was the oft-neglected figure of interpreter Shen Huihui, who is the focus of Singaporean playwright and translator Jeremy Tiang’s Obie Award-winning play Salesman之死. With a Chinese-English title referencing Miller’s play, it opens the Singapore International Festival of Arts with three shows at the Victoria Theatre on May 15 and 16.