Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures Zhuoyi Wang was recently invited to join composer and University of Delaware Music Professor Xiang Gao, writer Alan Goodson, University of Delaware Professor of Material Culture Joyce Hill Stoner, and stage director Chongren Fan in the creative project Shanghai Sonatas.
Shanghai Sonatas is a new musical “based on the memoirs of Jewish refugee musicians who escaped Nazi Germany and found refuge in Shanghai in the 1930s and ’40s.” It “shares how music helped them to survive the war and how they taught classical music to the local Chinese.” Having developed for several years, the musical project has been endorsed by such figures as President Emeritus of the University Musical Society Ken Fischer as a “compelling story that few know but that must be told.”
In his role of history and comparative literature advisor, Wang will help the creative team finalize the theatre piece and possibly develop it into a feature film and a documentary film in the future.
