袁學慧

简介

Vivian Yuen grew up in a grassroots family in Sham Shui Po, Hong Kong. Although her parents were not fans or practitioners of Chinese opera, she was exposed to it on television from childhood and developed a passion for it. Due to the absence of a formal opera training system in Hong Kong, she only had the opportunity to learn opera at age 14 or 15, when she attended a Cantonese opera summer camp and met students from the Bahe Cantonese Opera Academy's youth training program. She joined the program and graduated in the second cohort, studying under masters such as Zheng Yongmei, Yuan Zhaohui, and Yin Feiyan. She also developed a love for Kunqu opera and attended as an auditor the general education course "The Beauty of Kunqu" at the Chinese University of Hong Kong during secondary school. In late 2015, she went to the Jiangsu Kunqu Opera Theatre to train with master Kong Aiping, and in 2018 she trained with Shen Fengying. She earned a Bachelor's degree in Cultural Management from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2018, actively participating in campus opera activities and assisting Professor Hua Wei and writer Bai Xianyong in promoting Kunqu opera. In 2017, she co-founded the troupe "Xiao Washe" with classmates. After graduating, she went to Taiwan to pursue a Master's degree in the Department of Drama at National Taiwan University, studying under Chen Meilan, Zhu Anli, and Wei Haimin. In Taiwan, she created and performed her first cross-genre opera work "Pipa Language," which was selected for the 2022 "Opera Dream Workshop" program at the Taiwan Traditional Theatre Center. In 2023, she participated in Taiwan's first island-wide Gezai opera competition, starting from scratch to learn the melodies, defeating many local Taiwanese contestants to become the first non-Taiwanese participant to reach the finals, and achieved second place in the finals held in October of that year.