Director Stan Lai and actress Xu Qing promote the new stage play "A Dream Like a Dream" in Beijing on Monday, September 24, 2012. The 8-hour drama will feature Xu Qing in the lead role. [Photo: CFP]

Taiwan playwright and theater director Stan Lai will stage a new version of his epic "A Dream Like a Dream" for a performance tour of Asian cities that will kick off in Beijing in April 2013.

The play, which debuted in Taipei in 2000, lasts about eight hours, as actors and actresses continuously circle the audience who are seated on a stage. There are about 100 characters in the epic.

The performance is lengthy because to understand the story of one person, one must also go through the stories of others, the director has said.

Lai said he had a sudden burst of inspiration for the play when he saw Buddhists circling the Bodhi Tree during a trip to India in 1999.

"All that I had been thinking and viewing for more than ten years came upon me, and then I scribbled down the script on one sheet," he said of the epic that tells stories about dreams and dreams within stories.

The new version will debut at Beijing's Poly Theater, and is scheduled to be performed in Taipei in August 2013 and in Singapore in February 2014.