SUBVERSIUNE ȘI CRITICĂ SOCIALĂ ÎN TEATRUL CHINEZ DIN SECOLUL XXI

This volume is an exploration of the “small stage theatre” (xiao juchang) in 21st-century China. The study traces how xiao juchang develops a series of socially engaged theatrical aesthetics and practices, exposing the tensions between totalitarian policies, neoliberal socioeconomic practices, and antagonistic Marxist discourses that underlie the post-Maoist Chinese state. Profoundly influenced by various Western theatrical ecologies of the second half of the 20th century, by the tradition of modern spoken theatre (huaju), by the indigenous rebellious avant-garde of the 1990s, and by the commercial turn of the early millennium, small stage theatre launches new formulas of social critique that develop in a unique sociopolitical and economic context. Specific to contemporary Chinese art as a whole, small stage theatre negotiates its existence and relevance in Chinese society according to its own needs for commercial, artistic, and ideological success. This study is strictly limited to selecting and analyzing a series of performances and dramaturgical texts that rely more on the social message transmitted to the audience as well as on artistic innovation, rather than on the commercial ability to attract a large audience. The works of playwrights and directors such as Chen Si’an, Li Jing, Guo Shixing, Tian Gebing, Wang Chong, Yi Liming, Zhang Xian, Zhou Shen, etc. are therefore explored according to their critical force towards the Chinese society consumed by values ​​specific to late capitalism and by deeply interventionist state policies in the model of articulation of artistic discourse.
The study explores in the first part generic trends of socially engaged Chinese theatre, from new forms of comedy and satire with subversive potential, to historical metadrama with didactic inflections. In the second part, a series of emblematic performances are thematically approached for the ways of representing political, historical and gender violence within some of the most controversial Chinese xiao juchang-type performances. The last part selects the most recent theatrical trends exploring precarious realities in urban China, with an emphasis on sensitive themes such as social class differences, economic discrepancies between the various social groups in large and small urban areas, their disproportionate contribution to the building of the “Chinese dream”, fiercely promoted by Beijing.
The volume therefore makes a tour de force through the modes and innovations of subversion and social criticism in contemporary Chinese theater, which oscillate from the postdramatic, experimentalist, intellectualized, and elitist sophistications of the late avant-garde to the most recent critical idioms structured on social neorealism and Brechtian-type interventionism. The transition towards new documentary and ethnographic theatrical practices is the direct result of a process of negotiation between the social missionaryism that animates Chinese theater people and the central nationalist-didacticist policies that massively intervene in shaping and disciplining the artistic landscape in post-socialist China.