Chunxiang’s Schoolroom Prank at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (2026):Power Games in the Schoolroom

A schoolroom, a stuffy old teacher, a dutiful young lady, and a maid who has no intention of behaving herself. Jingkun Chinese Arts’ Chunxiang’s Schoolroom Prank, presented at the 2026 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, is drawn from ‘The Schoolroom’ (Guishu), an episode in Tang Xianzu’s The Peony Pavilion. Its forty minutes unfold around a lesson on the Guan Ju, the opening poem of the Book of Songs, which gradually slips out of the teacher’s control. The teacher tries to get through the text, while Chunxiang interrupts, misreads, stalls and digresses, until even his disciplinary ruler ends up in her hands. Much of the pleasure lies in watching order being dismantled, one small disruption at a time.

The stage is almost bare. A writing desk, two chairs and a few thread-bound books are enough to suggest a traditional schoolroom. Chen Zuiliang (He Songyuan) sits squarely behind the desk in a dark-blue robe, his scholar’s cap precisely set and a long white beard falling over his chest. Du Liniang (Corey Lyu), dressed in pink, enters with measured steps, bows and takes her seat, hands neatly folded and every gesture composed. Chunxiang (Li Wanjin), by contrast, immediately disturbs this orderly picture. Bright in red, she peers about as she moves in quick, light steps, her water sleeves shifting with her body. Before the lesson has properly begun, she is already complaining that the teacher is ‘so terribly old-fashioned’. Her restless physicality against the stillness of the other two establishes the comic rhythm that carries the performance.

Li Wanjin supplies much of the production’s energy. Her Chunxiang has the quick intelligence of a mischievous child, and she is particularly good with pauses. Asked by Chen to recite the Guan Ju, she confidently declares that she knows it ‘inside out’. Once she begins, however, she suddenly needs a moment to ‘think’. She stretches that moment as she wanders between teacher and pupil, buying time with every step. He Songyuan refuses to chase her tempo. He simply waits, with mounting irritation, and his stillness makes her evasions funnier. When he finally snaps, ‘Recite!’, Chunxiang immediately turns the failure back on him. ‘I’d just remembered a word, and then you shouted “Recite!” and knocked it straight out of my head again.’ Li delivers the complaint with such injured certainty that Chunxiang seems entirely persuaded that she is the wronged party. The audience laughs with her.

He Songyuan is just as important to the comedy. He plays Chen as an earnest teacher determined to get through the lesson, and that seriousness gives Chunxiang something firm to push against. Told that the repeated ‘guan guan’ of the poem imitates birdsong, Chunxiang insists that he demonstrate the sound himself. The phrase ‘on the islet in the river’ (he zhi zhou) becomes, through her wilful wordplay, the nonsensical ‘Prefect He’ (He Zhizhou). The more solemnly Chen reaches for textual explanation, the more material he gives Chunxiang for another diversion. The two performers work in sharply contrasting rhythms, one quick and one slow, one perpetually in motion and the other trying to remain still. Almost every time Chen manages to recover a little dignity, Chunxiang finds another way to unsettle it.

Once the disciplinary ruler appears, the comedy becomes increasingly physical. Ordered to hold out her hand for punishment, Chunxiang raises it high above her head. Told that it is too high, she drops it almost to the floor. Chen has to correct her again and again, turning the simple business of holding out a hand into an extended contest of wills. When the ruler is finally about to come down, Chunxiang suddenly catches the other end and pulls. Chen stumbles to the floor. She reaches down to help him and instead tugs out a strand of his white beard, which she brings to her lips and blows lightly away. The sequence is briskly executed and tightly timed. From the moment Chunxiang takes hold of the ruler, the laughter scarcely has time to subside before the next mishap arrives.

This emphasis on Chunxiang works extremely well as comedy, though it leaves Du Liniang somewhat quiet by comparison. Corey Lyu’s restrained physicality provides a clear counterpoint to Chunxiang’s exuberance, but as the contest between maid and teacher escalates, Du increasingly recedes towards the edge of the action. The stirrings of youthful desire that run beneath the schoolroom episode in The Peony Pavilion consequently register only faintly in a forty-minute version so firmly centred on Chunxiang’s battle with Chen.

The production is modest in scale but neatly handled. Lighting, sound, props and dramaturgical work are shared between the producer and stage manager, yet the pacing remains steady despite the compressed get-ins and turnarounds of the Fringe. Chen Yuxiao’s live music is particularly alert to its lightness of touch. Bamboo flute, xiao and xun enter and withdraw with the actors’ movements. When Chunxiang plucks out the strand of Chen’s beard, a brief flute phrase flits across the stage, recalling the birdsong discussed earlier in the lesson. When Chen finds himself in another predicament, a lower, lingering note gently prolongs his embarrassment.

The final joke returns to the question of order. As Chen straightens his clothes and prepares to leave, Chunxiang secretly sticks a paper note to his back and slips the ruler down the back of his collar. He reaches for it and turns after it, round and round, unable to grasp something inches away. The teacher who entered with his cap straight, his beard immaculate and his authority secure is now spinning helplessly across his own schoolroom, while Chunxiang stands by and enjoys the success of her latest trick. The biggest laughs come whenever Chen tries to restore order and Chunxiang finds another way to throw it into disarray.

Chen Zuiliang (He Songyuan) sits behind the desk, and Chunxiang (Li Wanjin) stands on the left side, looking at the text on the desk.

★★★★★

Production Details

 Production: Chunxiang’s Schoolroom Prank

Company: Jingkun Chinese Arts

Director: Wanjin Li

Venue: C alto, C venues, Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Date Viewed: 25 August 2026