{"id":12657,"date":"2013-10-16T22:57:12","date_gmt":"2013-10-16T21:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=12657"},"modified":"2013-10-16T22:59:12","modified_gmt":"2013-10-16T21:59:12","slug":"blog-action-day-and-our-viewing-of-the-play-chimerica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=12657","title":{"rendered":"Blog Action Day &#8211; and our viewing of the play &#8220;Chimerica&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Around the globe, today is <a href=\"http:\/\/blogactionday.org\">Blog Action Day<\/a>\u00a0and this year&#8217;s theme is human rights.\u00a0Coincidentally this afternoon, my wife and I made a too rare visit to the theatre in central London. We went to see an amazing play called <em>&#8220;Chimerica&#8221;<\/em> written by \u00a0Lucy Kirkwood (who has never actually been to China).<\/p>\n<p>It is all about the massacre of human right protestors in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989\">Tiananmen Square<\/a>\u00a0on 4 June 1989 and offers a very original take on the so-called tank man who stood in front of army tanks carrying a couple of plastic bags. In the process, the play examines the relationship between the USA and China &#8211; hence the term <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Chimerica\">&#8216;chimerica&#8217;<\/a>. A sharp script, an inventive set design, and excellent acting make this a superb production.<\/p>\n<p>The play finishes at the Harold Pinter Theatre this week but you can read a review <a href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/arts-entertainment\/theatre-dance\/reviews\/theatre-review-chimerica--lucy-kirkwoods-piece-is-a-strong-contender-for-play-of-the-year-8774310.html\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Nobody outside China yet knows the full truth about that day and its aftermath and most people in China have virtually no knowledge of the event thanks to rigorous censorship. I have been to China three times since 1989 and each time visited Tiananmen Square [for my first visit, see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/China.html#Beijing\">here<\/a>]. I can never forget and I can never forgive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Around the globe, today is Blog Action Day\u00a0and this year&#8217;s theme is human rights.\u00a0Coincidentally this afternoon, my wife and I made a too rare visit to the theatre in central London. We went to see an amazing play called &#8220;Chimerica&#8221; written by \u00a0Lucy Kirkwood (who has never actually been to China). It is all about [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-issues","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12657"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12665,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12657\/revisions\/12665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}