The Chinese story "The Orphan of Zhao" is "very close to us" despite being Chinese, director of the play Oriol Broggi told Xinhua.

The play, which is being played in Catalan by Catalan actors in Barcelona, was chosen by Broggi after he read a book entitled "Three Chinese Tragedies".

"A friend gave me a book entitled 'Three Chinese Tragedies', three classical Chinese plays, all of them are very important and among them, there was 'The Orphan of Zhao'. It was the one I liked the most," he told Xinhua.

"It's a good story and a really good play," he said, adding "despite being a Chinese story, I found it very close to us, and I thought, let's do this one."

This story was written in the 13th century by Ji Juanxiang and tells how a general kills a rival and the 300 members of his family except a young orphan who will be in charge of revenge.

Broggi told Xinhua that the play was originally divided into different parts and actors introduced themselves at the beginning of each part, which resulted in several repetitions.

"We dealt with the repetitions and adapted the play ... so that the spectator can see a different way of telling a story, but at the same time see some aspects of a play the spectator is familiar with."

The play is also very innovative because of the layout of the stage: it is square, allowing spectators to enjoy the story from the four sides of the stage.

"Spectators have the feeling that they are circling the actors while the actors have the feeling they cannot escape from the stage and they only have a few corners, which are four," Broggi said.

Chinese and Japanese aspects can also be seen in the play, "a mixture of elements that make the spectator realize he or she is watching an oriental play," Broggi said, who is very interested in Japanese films, especially those directed by Akira Kurosawa.

"I wanted to do a Chinese play, played in Barcelona, including some aspects from a Japanese play. I liked this mixture," Broggi told Xinhua, highlighting that since he started working on the play his interest in China's culture had increased. In fact, he did not rule out to do another Chinese play.

"The Orphan of Zhao" is shown until May 11 at the Teatre Romea in the northeastern city of Barcelona.