Born from stone and driven by a restless hunger for immortality, Sun Wukong is one of the most iconic figures in Chinese mythology: trickster, rebel, warrior, student, troublemaker, and seeker. Based on the opening episodes of Journey to the West, The Monkey King brings this beloved cultural hero to the opera stage through music, movement, puppetry, Buddhist philosophy, and the unruly force of transformation.

With music by Huang Ruo and a libretto by David Henry Hwang, this world premiere opera reimagines Sun Wukong not as a distant mythological figure, but as a living theatrical force: mischievous, brilliant, excessive, and deeply human in his desire to become more than what the world has named him. Performed in English and Mandarin, the work moves between Chinese classical imagination and contemporary global opera, asking how a legendary figure travels across languages, bodies, and generations.

Directed by Diane Paulus, the production fused opera, dance, puppetry, Peking Opera vocabulary, and large-scale visual storytelling. The Monkey King appears not only through voice, but through physicality, scale, and transformation — sung, danced, and embodied across multiple theatrical languages. The result is a world where myth is not illustrated, but activated: clouds, weapons, gods, demons, animals, and heavenly courts become part of a constantly shifting stage universe.