The Soongs: By Dreams Betrayed

Before Somosa, before the Shah… there were the Soongs. Yangtze Repertory Theatre presents a 10th anniversary production of The Soongs: By Dreams Betrayed, a bilingual 3-act epic with English and Chinese subtitles, written and directed by Joanna Chan, Artistic Director.

The bilingual (Mandarin-Chinese with English) epic spans 5 decades of tumultuous history of contemporary China by tracing the rise and ultimate defeat of the first Chinese republic through the lives and times of the three famous Soongs sisters: Ching-ling who became the wife of Dr. Sun Yat- San, Father of the 1911 Revolution; May-ling, Madame Chiang Kai-Shek; and the eldest, Ai-ling, wife of H. H. Kung, Finance Minister of Chiang’s Nationalist government.

Beginning with the Soong patriarch who as a 9-year old stowaway from South China was taken under the patronage of Methodist missioners in Boston and groomed for the conversion of China, the play follows the emergence of his children, especially the three daughters as well as his Harvard-educated eldest son, T. V. Soong, on the world stage amidst towering figures, including Mao Tse-Tung and Chou En- Lai. With 11 speaking parts and an ensemble of 9 in multiple roles, the drama examines the corporate responsibility of the populace in the rise of tyranny, the myth-making machine of modern media, and the delusion of the missionary movement and U.S. foreign policy.