Black Slave’s Cry to Heaven, the birth cry of modern Chinese drama, and a group of post-’80s amateurs in search of a director

The 1907 bold adaptation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin as Black Slave’s Cry to Heaven by Spring Willow Society (chunliushe) in Tokyo marked a momentous development in the history of modern Chinese drama. This adaptation, which inspired the 2007 play Search for Spring Willow Society, mounted in Beijing to reimagine the rehearsing of Black Slave’s Cry to Heaven 100 years ago, speaks volumes of the important agency adaptations of Western classics exert in shaping the development of modern Chinese drama and indeed the social and cultural life of a country seeking to modernize and redefine itself in a “brave new world.”