Morphing Solidity: Wuzhen Theatre Festival at the Crossroads

Zheyu Wei*

Abstract

The Wuzhen Theatre Festival has successfully entered its second decade, cementing its status as China’s largest and most financially prosperous theatre event. This year’s festival, themed “Solidity,” both reflected on the past and looked toward the future, exploring the dynamic relationship between Chinese theatre-makers and social realities. Notable performances included Stan Lai’s River-Cloud, a continuation of his classic Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land and Meng Jinghui’s revival of Waiting for Godot. Emerging theatre-makers also brought fresh perspectives, adapting timeless works like The Threepenny Opera and Chekhov’s The Seagull, while addressing urgent social issues. The Youth Drama Competition offered a platform for diverse creators to showcase their talent, further enhancing the festival’s inclusivity. The article argues that by blending commercial appeal with artistic depth, the festival reaffirmed its role as a vital center for theatre innovation and cultural exchange in China.

Keywords: Wuzhen Theatre Festival, performative utopia, Stan Lai, Meng Jinghui

Wuzhen Theatre Festival has successfully entered its second decade as the largest and financially the most successful theatre festival in China. Over 11 days, 86 performances were staged across 11 theatre venues, along with more than 2,000 outdoor performances by 68 theatre troupes, attracting over 200,000 weekend visitors.

The festival, themed “Solidity,” reflected on the past while exploring the future, showcasing the relationship between Chinese theatre-makers and social realities. Highlights included Stan Lai’s continuation of his classic romance in River-Cloud and Meng Jinghui’s revival of Waiting for Godot. Younger theatre-makers also brought innovation by reimagining classic works like The Threepenny Opera and Chekhov’s The Seagull, while tackling urgent social issues. Additionally, the Youth Drama Competition provided a platform for creators from diverse backgrounds to showcase their talent.

By balancing commercial appeal and artistic depth, the festival reaffirmed its role as a vital hub for theatre innovation and exchange in China. During the closing ceremony on October 27, the festival committee invited eighty-eight-year-old Eugenio Barba, the honorary chairman of the second festival, to the stage to raise a toast to all the participants.

The eleventh Wuzhen Theatre Festival showcased a program that combined both retrospective and potentially nostalgic theatrical experiences, providing insight into the intricate relationship between theatre and reality in China. For Chinese theatre-makers, there are two distinct perspectives on theatre: one views it as a means of introspection, offering healing or atonement for trauma and anxiety, while the other sees it as a direct, performative engagement with the external world.

Look Back with Hope

For the two committee members Stan Lai (Lai Sheng-chuan) and Meng Jinghui, this year’s Festival edition was an opportunity to revisit the past. Stan Lai staged River-Cloud, a play featuring the main characters from his most famous work Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land (1986), thereby crafting a “Stan Lai Universe” for his fans. The heroine Yun Zhifan was portrayed by Ai Hsiao, who had previously played this role in Secret Love on multiple occasions. The production also featured Zhang Zhen, a film star known for his collaborations with Ang Lee and Wong Kar Wai, a casting choice that aligns with Stan Lai’s theatre-making approach.

In Secret Love, Jiang Binliu (the surname meaning “River”) and Yun Zhifan (the surname meaning “Cloud”), who fall in love in Shanghai, are soon separated by the chaotic civil war in the late 1940s. After nearly forty years they meet in Taipei, both married, but with great regret that they have been in the same city for so long without knowing it. Lai in River-Cloud attempts to fill the vacancy of the forty years with what happened to the two characters when they each move from place to place, settle in Taipei and finally have they own family. The storyline revolves around the love letters exchanged between Jiang and Yun, with their narrative enriched by vivid descriptions of the migration of local food from the mainland to Taiwan. It also features the live performance of indigenous folk singer Ara Kimbo (Hu Defu), who, like the characters Jiang and Yun, endured the forty tumultuous years depicted in their fictional stories.

Lai doesn’t rely on elaborate theatrical techniques in River-Cloud, opting instead for a more traditional storytelling style: introspective, slow-paced, and emotionally rich. The set, designed by Daniel Ostling, features “memory boxes,” which serve as the backdrop for the characters to share their personal stories. However, due to a series of dramatic coincidences and accidents, they remain unable to connect with one another.

Accompanied by Ara Kimbo’s singing of “Do not ask where I come from” and “the wind from the Pacific is still blowing,” the play carries a distinctive poetic quality, capturing themes of longing and loss at life’s crossroads, as well as how individuals come to terms with their fate amid the powerful currents of existence (Shangguan News). At the conclusion, a director steps in, breaking the theatrical illusion and reflecting on the metatheatrical narrative in Secret Love. This moment serves to evoke the audience’s connection to the nostalgic memories of past times.

River-Cloud, directed by Stan Lai. Photo: Courtesy of Wuzhen Theatre Festival

Meng Jinghui staged Waiting for Godot, a play that marked his start as a theatre director thirty-five years ago. In 1989 Meng, as a student at the graduate school, organized an unofficial open rehearsal by coal piles at the sportsground of Central Academy of Drama. The rehearsal was not finished, and two years later, in 1991, Meng completed the production as part of his master project in directing. According to Meng, the play captured the intense energy of the youth at the time (Dongjianfanhua). Similarly, this year’s production radiated youthful energy, featuring a young cast and emphasizing the “restraining and liberation of the body” (ibid.). For Meng, waiting is not a passive or pessimistic act; rather, “even God might be waiting for us to take action [through waiting]” (Meng Jinghui Studio).

Meng continues the use of his characteristic style –playfulness, pop arts pastiche, and expressionist choreography. Before the show starts, audience members are invited to paint graffiti on the backdrop of the stage, which has been filled with random images and texts, famous paintings, commercial ads, slogans, etc. At the end of the play, two dummies are put on stage, replacing Gogo and Didi, as a cheap trick of the audience’s eyes to blur the boundaries between theatre and reality, and solidify the moment of waiting (Meng Jinghui Studio). The production for Meng was an opportunity to share and enjoy the stage, “letting audience members to walk past the stage, […] leaving footsteps and noises as well as the expectation towards the stage and the performers, to gather faith for the future”(ibid.).

In brief, the plays of Lai and Meng evoke emotions tied to a complex past, while also offering a sense of hope for change. As River-Cloud suggests, “happiness is subjective,” and as Waiting for Godot conveys, “there will be hope as long as there is [someone] waiting.”

Waiting for Godot, directed by Meng Jinghui. Photo: Courtesy of Wuzhen Theatre Festival
Look for Engagement

As a director who has made multiple debuts in Wuzhen in recent years, Li Jianjun continues to experiment with challenging the audience’s expectations. Known for his raw yet precise approach to scenography and choreography, Li pushes boundaries further in the production of Threepenny Opera by incorporating elements of popular culture. In this adaptation he tries to blend popular entertainment with serious political concern. For the V-effect, the dressing room is brought onto the stage, with live camera projections capturing the performers’ preparations as well as some scenes set in the jail. The story and setting are placed in a contemporary world, with the music and songs reimagined in a modern rock style, incorporating a few traditional Chinese instruments and addressing contemporary social issues through adapted lyrics. At the play’s conclusion, gangster Macheath, facing execution for his crimes, delivers a speech and a song in which he argues that he is not the most heinous criminal, but that society itself is the most corrupt.

A series of AI-generated video clips depict Macheath’s song going viral on social media, with celebrities such as Elon Musk and Donald Trump performing it on camera. For Li Jianjun, replacing atonal music with catchy melodies and transforming fragmented translated text into comic-style dialogue makes profound tragedy more approachable through modern pop culture. Nevertheless, it remains a powerful tool for engaging audiences with the current political climate

Threepenny Opera, directed by Li Jianjun. Photo: Courtesy of Wuzhen Theatre Festival

Other young theatre makers also seek to engage directly with reality through their work. For instance, in Echoing: The Seagull by He Qi (adapted by Hu Xuanyi), Chekhov’s original story is set in a small town in China. The characters are reimagined as five girls, one of whom commits suicide, consumed by a deep Konstantinian melancholia, while the others continue to grapple with the dilemma of whether to surrender to the hardships and challenges of life.

Echoing: the Seagull, adapted by Hu Xuanyi and directed by He Qi. Photo: Courtesy of Wuzhen Theatre Festival

In The Revised Future, written by Gao Yuan and directed by Ma Yan, disabled actors are used in an upside-down world. In this futuristic sci-fi world, individuals with disabilities have access to advanced alien technology that significantly enhances their physical abilities, offering them more opportunities than their able-bodied counterparts. The audience is prompted to reflect on the ironic disparity between fiction and reality: while the able-bodied are encouraged to abandon their education, young men are pressured to marry and become househusbands, all under the misguided belief that “men are not fertile without women.”

In The Animals, director Li Luka boldly seeks to capture personal trauma by adapting Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape. By blurring the boundaries between the audience and the performers, as well as between fiction and reality, Luka creates a unique experience. Three performers in the play share their personal experiences of social crisis with the audience, prompting deep reflection on both the world and the stage.

The Revised Future, written by Gao Yuan and directed by Ma Yan. Photo: Courtesy of Wuzhen Theatre Festival
The Animals, directed by Li Luka. Photo: Courtesy of Wuzhen Theatre Festival

In the Youth’s Drama Competition (qingnian jingyan, YDC hereafter), the most eagerly anticipated event every year among young audiences, attention is also focused on social issues. The non-commercial event is organized by the festival committee, who every year selects eighteen teams (mostly amateurs, under the age of thirty-five) among about one thousand applicants from all over the country to perform a thirty-minute play with minimum scenography. In this latest festival edition the first prize was awarded to Amy Zhang Returns to Her Hometown, which focuses on young people’s life dilemma whether to stay in overcrowded big cities or to return to the developing hometown.

Amy Zhang Returns to Her Hometown, written and directed by Zhai Bowen. Photo: Courtesy of Wuzhen Theatre Festival

Two award-winning plays, Baby Boxes (by Anquan Dao) and Seesaw Law (by Qiaoqiaoban Dilü), both explore the role of mothers in a society that periodically exhibits hostility toward women who are raising or contemplating raising children. Notably, young female theatre-makers are emerging as powerful voices in Wuzhen, with these plays and Echoing: The Seagull serving as prime examples. The competition and creative environment have fostered an increasing number of female artists from diverse backgrounds, inspiring them to continue pursuing their artistic dreams.

Baby Boxes, written and directed by Xu Linlin. Photo: Courtesy of Wuzhen Theatre Festival
Seesaw Law, written and directed by Han Yannanfei. Photo: Courtesy of Wuzhen Theatre Festival
From Solidity to Swirling up: Towards a Collective Utopia in Performance

Wuzhen Theatre Festival, set in a picturesque location with eleven beautiful theatre venues, strives to balance commercial success with artistic integrity. On one hand, the high costs of entrance to the scenic area, hotel bookings, and premium ticket prices make it increasingly difficult for theatre enthusiasts to attend and enjoy performances. On the other hand, the festival organizers have successfully arranged a range of free events, including master workshops, discussions, salons, open readings, and a specially curated off-Wuzhen section, offering greater accessibility to the public. The organizers have extended invitations to young audiences from underdeveloped regions, including remote areas in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Sichuan, to attend performances. These efforts, combined with the non-commercial nature of the YDC, imbue the festival with a utopian atmosphere, where freedom of artistic expression is cherished—at least for its predominantly middle-class theatergoing audience. Reflecting on the festival’s eleven-year history, Huang Lei, a committee member, notes that what has remained unchanged is “the seriousness and sincerity of entering the theatre, and the joy and ease of leaving it” (Xincaijing News).

Undoubtedly, audiences will continue to seek sincerity and joy, yet there is room for more. Theatre, after all, has the potential to be both radical and progressive, in terms of aesthetics and politics.

Due to the large crowd, many spectators watch the show live from outside the theatre. Photo: Courtesy of Wuzhen Theatre Festival

During the past festival years different generations of Chinese theatremakers have grown and flourished, making their debut and developing their own styles. The festival has been a hub for both Chinese spectators and artists to explore aesthetic possibilities and form art communities. As Jill Dolan notes, the audiences elect to spend time with performers not only to enact a certain narrative arc or aesthetic trajectory, but “form temporary communities, sites of public discourse that, along with the intense experiences of Utopia performatives, can model new investments in and interactions with variously constituted public spheres” (10).

The theme of “Solidity” of the latest Wuzhen Theatre Festival signifies not only affirmation of the past ten years’ artistic approach, but also encouragement to bravely move forward as, for the first time since 2020, the festival is free from restrains of regular epidemic prevention and control.

The festival next year, titled “Swirling Up,” provides a vision of a future where, similar to Chinese society, there is a deep yearning to break free from the weight of uncertainty and conservatism in order to embrace greater unity and freedom.


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*Zheyu Wei is an associate professor and deputy director of the Department of Drama, Film, and Television Literature at Guangxi Arts University in the People’s Republic of China. He was a Trinity Long Room Hub Fellow from 2013 to 2017 and earned his PhD from Trinity College Dublin. Wei has written numerous articles on contemporary Chinese theatre, intercultural theatre, and intermedial performance studies. In addition to his academic work, he is also a drama translator and playwright.

Copyright © 2024 Zheyu WEI
Critical Stages/Scènes critiques, #30, Dec. 2024
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