In 2010, I was in Beijing, persuading the National Theater of China to join a worldwide festival of Shakespeare at London’s Globe, where I was artistic director. Sixteen enormous armchairs were arranged in a perfect square around an empty space; 15 of the Chinese theater’s representatives sat with blank faces, hands hanging slackly from the ends of armrests with chilled gangster styling. Our one representative, myself, sat contorted trying to answer questions and eat a noodle breakfast with clumsily held chopsticks. It was intimidating.
Miraculously, things were proceeding toward closure. Then they posed a deal breaker. With a palpable sense they were in possession of a mold-breaking, world-renewing revelation, they claimed to have uncovered a new definitive portrait of Shakespeare. They wanted to bring it to our festival. “Could I see it?” I asked timidly.
