“Theatre of the censored”: How contemporary Chinese artists subvert commercial theatre censorship

With China’s post-Mao era shift towards neoliberal reform, contemporary Chinese commercial theatre has emerged as a vehicle where theatermakers communicate sociopolitical criticism by navigating the boundaries between two government opposing interests: cultivation of a vibrant market-oriented entertainment industry, and suppression of dissent. Through analyzing experimental director Wang Chong’s banned 2016 production, Da Xiansheng , and the homoeroticism in Focustage’s ongoing musical Apollonia , this paper argues these theatremakers have re-engineered the spectator-performer relationship in order to subversively communicate with their audiences, revealing China’s commercial theatre scene as an underestimated platform for pushing the perceived boundaries of censorship. By examining the shows’ design choices and identifying the differences in their commercial censorship experiences, this research examines how Chinese artists successfully transcend commercial theatre’s heightened content-regulations. Through applying Chang Kyung-Sup’s “compressed modernity” theory in South Korea towards analyzing Appollonia ’s ongoing commercial success within China’s capitalist-censorship society, and interviewing Wang Chong himself on how Da Xiansheng ’s ban influenced his current approach to staging, this paper builds a more nuanced understanding of artists’ ongoing innovations and adaptations within the confines of censorship. The insights from these case studies contribute to an understanding of art as a tool anyone can use to express their beliefs in spite of oppression. As long as art is alive, so is peoples’ ability to express their beliefs—no matter what form that may take.