Multimedia director Hui Shu-ning’s sources of inspiration are as schizophrenic as his theatrical methods, as Edmund Lee discovers.

Hui Shu-ning is a multimedia director, and his new Cantonese play, Age of Wilderness, isn’t even listed under ‘Theatre’ on the ticketing website; it’s to be found under the ‘Multi-Arts’ category instead. “Our theatre productions are… not very traditional,” offers Hui, understating the creative direction of Shu Ning Presentation Unit, the multimedia arts organisation that he established in 1997, and which is revered primarily for its creative re-imaginations of classic texts as varied as The Little Match Girl and the Bible.

A visual stylist who’s apparently obsessed with exploring the potentials of the theatre space, Hui once staged a play – very loosely based on Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, titled i.Cherry – entirely using wire-work, with actors flying between the two sides of a stage decorated as a playground. His recent production Inferno et Paradiso – a small-scale, stream-of-consciousness performance inspired by 90 Minutes in Heaven – disoriented its audience’s temporal perception and immersed them in a spectacular hall of shadows by using live video recording and projection, aided by real-time computer processing.

It’s only fitting, then, that Age of Wilderness, Hui’s new interpretation of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, is presented as part of the LCSD’s Boundless Multi-Media Series. The video element of this production may have been considerably toned down by Hui’s standard (he’s limiting it to the use of video projection on a mirror “for its magical effects”), but audiences expecting a complete theatre experience will likely not be disappointed: they’ll be seated right in front – if not in the middle – of the action, surrounded by the forest of a deserted island on which a group of teenagers are stranded.

As is the norm for Hui, Age of Wilderness is not an adaptation. “I’ve only taken the main theme and the frame [of the story]. It’s still a deserted island, a crashed plane, a group in uniforms; but we’ve developed our own storyline and characters,” Hui says. The play begins with the court interrogation of a military captain, the sole survivor on the island. In an obvious nod to Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, the captain gives the jury (that is, the audience) his account of how all his military school students, with an average age of 19, had discovered the dark side of human nature, literally becoming marauding zombies, and slaughting everyone – except him. “A bit like the movie Battle Royale,” adds the director on the story’s headlong descent into savagery. “Zombies are not frightening – it’s human nature that’s the most horrifying.”

Has he just mentioned zombies? Oh yes, for Hui is also inspired by Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, as well as, um, I Am Legend – which isn’t all that surprising considering the director’s signature creative methods. In his celebrated Haruki Murakami series, Hui incorporated a series of iconic Murakami items – from the Rat, to the dark world, the bottom of a well, cats, and silly twin girls – into a completely new story. In Hui’s liberal take on Peter Pan, Peter Pan’s shadow is an evil that takes Wendy with him to the sinister version of Neverland, while the real Peter Pan takes an aged Wendy to the real one – and the parallel narratives may all be in the imagination of a mentally handicapped child.

Hui’s gleeful abandon in lifting from literary and cultural texts may drive the purists nuts, but he doesn’t mind. “We’re not as literary as [fellow experimental theatre director] Chan Ping-chiu of On&On [Theatre], and we’re not as intent in our artistic pursuit as [minimalist director] Tang Shu-wing. I’m not saying I have none of these, but I think what I’m doing is a lot closer to the teenagers’ [interest].” The director cites Peter Pan, The Adventures of Pinocchio, and now Lord of the Flies, as illustrations. “These stories all sound like secondary school materials, yet I like to inject an extra layer of depth into them. I relate them to the society, to social phenomenon.”

So what urges Hui into staging a version of Golding’s harrowing tale? “This is in response to my observation of the young people today. They’re so slack, and thin, and they’re gazing at increasingly tiny screens,” Hui shapes his hands into the size of a handheld game console, “I cast my actors based on this.” I nod in the direction of the young actors playing around behind him: do they know? “No, I haven’t told them,” Hui lowers his voice, grinning.

Age of Wilderness is performed in Cantonese, at Kwai Tsing Theatre Black Box Theatre from September 25 to October 4; see listings.