Lives of the Buddha

A new play by Alan G. Wagner

Popular Buddhist Theater from Early India and China

Lives of the Buddha is a new theatrical play composed primarily of excerpts from early, popular Chinese Buddhist texts, transmitted from India, which recount the story of the Buddha and many of his past lives. It seeks to imagine and create the experience of orally presenting these materials to an audience, perhaps as it might have been some 2000 years ago, before they were even first written down somewhere in Central Asia.

This project interprets and presents these scriptures as the written traces of a preexisting oral performance tradition which preserved, transmitted, and modified them, generation after generation, for centuries. By treating these texts as alternating passages of narration, dialogue, and stage direction, it also places them among the oldest theatrical writings in existence.

Scriptures transmitted by Kang Senghui, Dharmarakṣa, Zhi Qian, Yijing and others.
Translations from classical Chinese, adaptation and original texts by Alan G. Wagner. Translations in the French version by Édouard Chavannes (1865-1918).

Next Performance: November 22, 2025

A staged reading at the Westin Copley Place in Boston, MA

Hosted by the American Academy of Religion as a special event at their annual conference

World Premiere: June 21, 2023

A staged reading at the Byre Theatre in St Andrews, Scotland

Hosted by the UK Association for Buddhist Studies as a special event at their annual conference

Comments on the Performance

“Although I was familiar with the materials, and had already read and enjoyed the play, seeing it performed really made me think about these stories in a very different way. The audience’s discomfort at key moments, or laughter at places I hadn’t anticipated, demonstrated how much more engaging these materials would have been in a live environment, and how crucial they may have been in communicating Buddhist ideas in new places.” — Naomi Appleton, University of Edinburgh

“Most of the jokes in this play are actually more than 2000 years old... So when we tell them again today, and they land, I feel that we are truly ‘sharing a laugh’ with people from the distant past, as though they could be sitting right beside us. In those moments time collapses in a magical kind of way.” — Alan Wagner, Author and Director

“It definitely went down a storm. It seems like you’ve discovered an effective method of communicating, educating, and entertaining with these texts.” — Emma Lindsey, Actress in the role of Suri