Great Regulars: When you write a poem, you write partly

with your head, but mostly with your solar plexus. It's all a matter of how things hit you down there. And when I had my four main songs in place (a fifth, a lullaby, was to follow), I felt also that I had my poetic language up and running. The play isn't written in verse. But it's written in a poetic style that suggests the feudal psychology of early China.

We workshopped the first part of the play at Ann Arbor in Michigan, and gave it a reading.

from James Fenton: The Guardian: The Orphan of Zhao at the RSC: a very modern massacre

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