Zuni History Theatre
A Tragicomedy in 7 Acts on God Reforming and Opening Up China

God came to China, and accompanying him were not only the holy Bible and missionaries, but also artillery, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, education and an endless series of killings and violence. Around the time of the first Opium War in 1840, God had two faces, one kind and gentle, the other vicious and horrible.

You hear the rumbling sound of battle on stage. You see a lecturer standing on the platform ready to start a talk on history. What have all these got to do with how the Chinese see history?

God Came to China sets out to trace the stories of Matteo Ricci, the Italian Jesuit priest; the Chongzhen Emperor of the Ming Dynasty; Johann Adam Schall von Bell, the German Jesuit missionary; the Kangxi Emperor of the Qing Dynasty; Robert Morrison, the Scottish missionary; Official Lin Zexu and his campaign against opium; Hong Xiuquan, the leader of the Taiping Rebellion; Empress Dowager Cixi; the Boxer Rebellion, an attempt to overthrow the Qing Government...

God Came to China is Zuni's latest work in the History Theatre series, a collaboration by Mathias Woo and Zhang Jianwei, the team who created “1587 – A Year of No Significance”. Once again, they interpret Chinese history on stage.