Hsiung Shih-I

Performance of Lady Precious Stream at Shimer College in 1942.

Hsiung Shih-I (熊式一, also S. I. Hsiung or Xiong Shiyi) (1902–1991) was a writer and playwright in Beijing and London. He was the first Chinese person to direct a West End play, and the first president of Tsing Hua College in Hong Kong.^[1]

Hsiung was born in Nanchang on October 14, 1902, and educated at Beijing University (then Peiping University). As a professor and writer in China, Hsiung translated plays by George Bernard Shaw and J.M. Barrie.^[2] He also published a successful Chinese translation of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.^[3] He taught at Min Kuo University in Beijing and at universities in Nanchang.^[1]

In 1932, he moved to England, studying at University College London and translating Chinese plays into English.^[4] After the success of Lady Precious Stream in 1934, however, he abandoned his studies.

In 1935, Hsiung's Lady Precious Stream was performed at the Little Theatre in John Street, London, by the People's National Theatre, directed by Nancy Price and Hsiung, and ran for 1000 nights between February 1935 and November 1936.^[5] The play was also later performed on Broadway at the Booth Theatre in New York, produced by Morris Gest.^[6] It was adapted for television in 1950.^[7]

Hsiung's subsequent works were also successful, but did not match the success of Lady Precious Stream.^[8]

Hsiung's wife, Dymia Hsiung, was the first Chinese woman in Britain to author a fictionalized autobiography.^[9]

Works

• Lady Precious Stream: an old Chinese play done into English according to its traditional style by S.I. Hsiung (Wang Pao-ch'uan), 1935
• The Romance of the Western Chamber, 1935 (trans.)
• The Professor from Peking, 1939
• The Bridge of Heaven, 1943
• The Life of Chiang Kai-Shek, 1948

Works cited

• Pronko, Leonard Cabell (1967). "Lady Precious Stream". Theater East and West: Perspectives Toward a Total Theater. pp. 51–55. ISBN 9780520026223. 
• Yeh, Diana (2014). The Happy Hsiungs. ISBN 9789888208173. 
• Zhou, Yupei (2002). "Shih-I Hsiung". In Miles Liu. Asian American Playwrights: A Bio-bibliographical Critical Sourcebook. pp. 121–125. ISBN 9780313314551. 

References