I Perform Every Face Through Nuo Opera

An inheritance gives him a Nuo opera script he was never meant to possess, and with one step, he enters a world from which there is no turning back. He can no longer tell: is he speaking on behalf of these things, or has he been keeping them alive? The ritual master is old. He has worn a mask all his life, and now his face has grown fused with it. For this performance, he wears “suffering”: it isn't carved from wood, but from himself. He takes the stage and sings of a nameless ghost. The gods gathered from all directions below aren't here for the Nuo exorcism. They are here to inspect him: does this ritual master still remember the rules? And the lifetime of suffering he portrays is the rules themselves. Yang Shen can barely tell whether he is the ritual master or the offering to be sacrificed in the play. He cries injustice; you call it suffering. I perform the suffering of all living beings.