Peking Opera meets hip-hop in NYC musical

The musical Monkey King Fighting Ox Monster was performed on Feb 25 at the Sheen Center Loreto Theatre in New York by teachers and students from the Shenzhen Watt Children’s Theater Academy.

The musical is based on the Chinese masterpiece Journey to the West by Wu Cheng’en in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).

The novel is about the pilgrimage of the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907) Buddhist Xuan Zang, who traveled to the “Western Regions”, that is, central Asia and India, to obtain Buddhist sacred texts, and returned after many trials.

The musical combines Chinese and Western cultural elements such as Peking Opera and American hip-hop. Teachers and students of the theater academy also learned acting from Mimi Stuart and Broadway performers as part of the Children’s Acting Academy cultural exchange.

This event was sponsored by the Global Future Leaders Organization and organized by the Shenzhen academy, the National Music Center and the World Harmony Foundation. It was co- hosted by the Children's Acting Academy, the New York Besay Dancing School and the New York Shaolin Temple Martial Arts Center.