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Wang Chong and the Theatre of Immediacy: Technology, Performance, and Intimacy in Crisis
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 August 2021
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In early January 2020, when Chinese theatre director Wang Chong (b. 1982) arrived in New York to remount his production of Nick Payne's Constellations for the Public Theater's Under the Radar Festival, he couldn't have predicted that this would be the last time for months that he would watch his actors from the middle of a full house. By the time his work-in-progress solo show, Made in China 2.0, opened at the Asia TOPA Festival in Melbourne, Australia, at the end of that February, it was clear that there would be no live theatre in Wang's hometown of Beijing for some time. All of China was on lockdown as the disease now tragically familiar as COVID-19 swept the country. Then, as Wang returned to Beijing in early March, businesses around the globe were shuttering, theatres were going dark, and theatre artists were confronting an unprecedented challenge to their personal safety, livelihoods, and ability to make meaningful art. In short order, some well-resourced theatre institutions began to stream performance recordings and reconfigure their seasons for online platforms. Only a month after returning home, Wang Chong joined this mass online movement with his production of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, streamed live on 5–6 April 2020 as Dengdai Geduo.
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Footnotes
My gratitude to Brandi Wilkins Catanese and the two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions, as well as to La Donna Forsgren, Korey Garabaldi, Walter Hsu (Hsu Jen-Hao), Jennifer Huynh, Sonja Stojanovic, Emily Wang, Xian Wang, and many others for their feedback on earlier versions of this piece, and to Yael Prizant for her encouragement and edits. I would also like to thank Wang Chong and Théâtre du Rêve Expérimental for inviting me to rehearsals and performances, granting access to recordings, and for many fascinating discussions about their work over the years; my research assistant Yvonne Feng (Feng Yu) for her help gathering materials for this piece; and Yizhou Huang for providing me with an advance copy of her article on Wang Chong.
References
Endnotes
1 The specific term “New Generation of Chinese Directors” was coined by Chinese theatre critics Annie Feng and Xi Muliang, who both write for the popular WeChat channel “WowTheatre,” to describe a group of directors who have become active since the turn of the twenty-first century. Their work builds on earlier characterizations of this “new generation” as “young directors” (qingnian daoyan) or the “post-Meng” (referring to well-known pop avant-garde director Meng Jinghui) generation. Xi and Feng position Wang Chong and five other directors (Li Jianjun, Huang Ying, Zhao Miao, Sun Xiaoxing, and Ding Yiteng) as key players in the recent growth of private and commercial theatre in the PRC who are significant for their formal experimentation and global mindset. See Xi Muliang and Annie Feng, “Chinese Directors: The New Generation,” Critical Stages / Scènes critiques, no. 18 (December 2018), www.critical-stages.org/18/chinese-directors-the-new-generation/, accessed 31 August 2020. For other discussions of the “post-Meng” and “New Generation,” see Huang, Yizhou, “Performing Lost Politics: Yijing yisheng Yibusheng (Ibsen in One Take) (2012) and Wang Chong's Double-Coded New Wave Theatre,” Asian Theatre Journal 37.2 (2020): 398–425, at 398–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ferrari, Rossella, “Performing Poetry on the Intermedial Stage: Flowers in the Mirror, Moon on the Water, and Beijing Avant-Garde Theatre in the New Millennium,” in Staging China: New Theatres in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Ruru, Li (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 123–40, at 136–7Google Scholar; Ruoyu, Jiang, “Hou Meng Jinghui shidai de qingnian xiju daoyan (Young Theatre Directors in the Post-Meng Jinghui Epoch)” (in Chinese), Yishu pinglun, no. 4 (2009): 92–5Google Scholar.
2 The terms “intermediality,” “intermedial theatre,” and “intermedial performance” have complex genealogies and have been much debated in scholarship of the past three decades. Here, I draw on the nuanced discussion of the term “intermediality” in Robin Nelson's opening contribution to Mapping Intermediality in Performance, as well as previous work by Lars Elleström, Chiel Kattenbelt, Irina Rajewsky, and others that has been influential in recent theatre and performance studies scholarship. Nelson, Robin, “Prospective Mapping,” in Mapping Intermediality in Performance, ed. Bay-Cheng, Sarah et al. (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010), 13–23, at 13–17Google Scholar; Rajewsky, Irina, “Intermediality, Intertextuality, and Remediation: A Literary Perspective on Intermediality,” Intermédialités, no. 6 (2005): 43–64Google Scholar; Intermediality in Theatre and Performance, ed. Freda Chapple and Chiel Kattenbelt (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi Press, 2006); Kattenbelt, Chiel, “Intermediality in Theatre and Performance: Definitions, Perceptions and Medial Relations,” Culture Language and Representation 4 (2008): 19–29Google Scholar; Elleström, Lars, Media Borders, Multimodality, and Intermediality (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Kattenbelt, “Intermediality in Theatre and Performance,” 25; Chiel Kattenbelt, “Intermediality in Performance and as a Mode of Performativity,” in Mapping Intermediality in Performance, ed. Bay-Cheng et al., 29–37, at 29.
4 Giddens, Anthony, The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Berlant, Lauren, The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008)Google Scholar, quote at viii. See also Intimacy, ed. Lauren Berlant (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).
5 For Wang Chong's “Online Theater Manifesto” in Chinese, see www.theatrere.org/online-theater-manifesto, and for the English, www.theatrere.org/online-theater-manifesto-in-english; both were posted on the Théâtre du Rêve Expérimental website 20 April 2020, and both accessed 31 August 2021. For a brief discussion of Godot and the manifesto, see Yizhou Huang, “Chinese Director Wang Chong Publishes Online Theatre Manifesto,” The Theatre Times, 12 September 2020, https://thetheatretimes.com/chinese-director-wang-chong-publishes-online-theatre-manifesto/, accessed 7 May 2021.
6 e-Station premiered in 2008 and toured to New York in August 2009 and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2012. The description is based on the performance in August 2012, which I attended.
7 Boyd, Mari, “From Ōta Shōgo's Earth Station to Wang Chong's e-Station,” TheatreForum 7.2, no. 36 (2009): 66–72, at 68, 71Google Scholar.
8 Wang Chong “Director's Notes,” Hamletism program, 18 and 24–5 March 2006.
9 Wang Chong, “Xinlangchao xiju xuanyan (New Wave Theatre Manifesto),” blog post, last updated 23 July 2012, http://ent.sina.com.cn/j/2012-07-23/15133692459.shtml, accessed 24 August 2015; trans. in Huang, “Performing Lost Politics,” 401–2.
10 Huang, “Performing Lost Politics,” 411–17; Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, trans. and intro. Karen Jürs-Munby (London: Routledge, 2006).
11 For my comments on the 2018 production, see Chun, Tarryn Li-Min, “Spoken Drama and Its Doubles: Thunderstorm 2.0 by Wang Chong and Théâtre du Rêve Expérimental,” TDR: The Drama Review 63.3 (2019): 155–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 An English-language version of Cao Yu's Thunderstorm, trans. Wang Tso-liang and A. C. Barnes, rev. trans. Charles Qianzhi Wu, can be found in The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama, ed. Xiaomei Chen (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 227–352.
13 See for example Boyd, 71–2; Chun, 158–9; and Huang, “Performing Lost Politics,” 404–14.
14 The folk song “Mantis Takes a Wife” (“Tanglang zuoqin”) was added for the 2016 and 2018 performances. The term pingtan refers to a form of quyi (narrative or sung storytelling) that includes both the spoken storytelling form of pinghua and the sung, ballad-style tanci, and that is usually accompanied by the sanxian and pipa instruments.
15 For a discussion of Wang's particular interest in Ibsen in relation to Chinese theatre and intellectual history, see Huang, “Performing Lost Politics,” 404–5.
16 All descriptions of Ibsen in One Take that follow are based on a recording of the production at the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center in November 2013; those of Ghosts 2.0 are based on footage from productions at the Beehive Theatre (Beijing) in September 2014, provided by Wang Chong and Théâtre du Rêve Expérimental.
17 Huang, “Performing Lost Politics,” 414.
18 The main camera operator was assisted at times by a second camera operator, who helped to move the camera dolly, and by additional stagehands and actors positioning lighting equipment and props.
19 Liao Danlin, “New ‘Take’ on Ibsen,” Global Times, 9 October 2013, www.globaltimes.cn/content/816612.shtml, accessed 24 August 2015.
20 Kattenbelt, “Intermediality in Performance,” 34.
21 A similar observation about government surveillance is made in a review of performances of Ghosts 2.0 in Tokyo (November 2014). Iwaki Kyoko, “(Hyō butai) Maki-den jikken gekidan Gōsuto 2. 0’ gendai chūgoku o ōu ‘uso kusa-sa’ ([Stage Review] Théâtre du Rêve Expérimental 'Ghosts 2.0': the 'Lie' Covering Modern China)” (in Japanese), Asahi Shinbun, 27 November 2014, www.theatrere.org/20141127j, accessed 10 June 2021.
22 Wang Chong and his production team did not set out trying to make a point about government censorship. They chose to use the surveillance feed because the equipment was inexpensive, and he wanted visually to reference mediated communications, like Skype, and the multiscreen aesthetic of videos on sites like YouTube. Yet, Wang's use of this equipment and the way he scripts his actors’ behavior in front of it cannot but call to mind both the PRC government's constant monitoring of its citizens and the possibility of confrontational performance as a means of resistance to that surveillance. Interview with Wang Chong by author, 15 January 2015; personal communication, 28 August 2016.
23 The production generated a strong audience and critical response, both positive and negative. One particularly controversial aspect was its retitling as The V Monologues for part of the run; see discussion in Emily Rauhala, “In China, V Is for The Vagina Monologues,” Time.com, 22 June 2009, http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1906127,00.html, accessed 24 August 2015. For a scholarly critique of Wang's approach to gender politics, see the discussion of Ibsen in One Take in Huang, “Performing Lost Politics,” 408–11. I also touch on the gender politics of Thunderstorm 2.0 and the relationship of its 2018 production to the #MeToo movement in Chun, “Spoken Drama and Its Doubles,” 161–2.
24 Chen Ran, “Jiu cheng guanzhong renke chuanxin ban Leiyu (90% audience approval for innovative new version of Thunderstorm)” (in Chinese), Xin Jingbao, 23 July 2012, http://epaper.bjnews.com.cn/html/2012-07/23/content_358693.htm?div=0, accessed 2 September 2015.
25 Ibid.
26 Machon, Josephine, Immersive Theatres: Intimacy and Immediacy in Contemporary Performance (Houndmills, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
27 Jefferies, Janis and Papadaki, Elena, “Katie Mitchell: Intimate Technologies in Multimedia Performance,” in Intimacy across Visceral and Digital Performance, ed. Chatzichristodoulou, Maria and Zerihan, Rachel (Houndmills, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 188–99, at 198Google Scholar.
28 Mitchell's Fräulein Julie toured to Beijing and Tianjin in 2014; Wang Chong was involved with the production as a translator and postshow discussion host. Liao Danlin, “Stage Film,” Global Times, 3 May 2014, www.globaltimes.cn/content/858071.shtml, accessed 11 June 2021.
29 Barton, Bruce, “Paradox as Process: Intermedial Anxiety and the Betrayals of Intimacy,” Theatre Journal 61.4 (2009): 575–601, at 575–7Google Scholar.
30 Ibid., 577.
31 This particular piece, which is set in the early 1990s, might specifically be read as a meditation on the legacies of Mao-era repression of individual subjectivity and the effects of rapid modernization that echoes earlier trends in the use of interiority in fiction and film. On the latter, see for example the discussion of late 1980s and 1990s fiction in Visser, Robin, “Privacy and Its Ill Effects in Post-Mao Urban Fiction,” in Chinese Concepts of Privacy, ed. McDougall, Bonnie S. and Hansson, Anders (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 171–94Google Scholar.
32 Barton, Bruce, “Subjectivity< >Culture< >Communications< >Intermedia: A Meditation on the ‘Impure Interactions’ of Performance and the ‘In-Between’ Space of Intimacy in a Wired Word,” Theatre Research in Canada (TRiC) 29.1 (2008): 51–92, at 77Google Scholar.
33 See for example Jamieson, Lynn, “Intimacy as a Concept: Explaining Social Change in the Context of Globalisation or Another Form of Ethnocentrism?” Sociological Research Online 16.4 (2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, www.socresonline.org.uk/16/4/15.html, accessed 23 August 2020; and the recent special issue of Modern Asian Studies (50.4) on “Love, Marriage, and Intimate Citizenship in Contemporary China and India,” ed. Henrike Donner and Gonçalo Santos (2016).
34 For a nuanced study of the relationship between intimacy and the transnational circulations of imperialism and colonialism, in an earlier period, see Lowe, Lisa, The Intimacies of Four Continents (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015)Google Scholar.
35 Lu Chang and Wang Chong, “Interview with Wang Chong, Creator of ‘Chinese New Wave Theatre,’” China Plus, 2 November 2015, http://english.cri.cn/7146/2015/11/02/3481s902315.htm, accessed 4 August 2016.
36 Constellations was part of the Noorderzon Festival of Performing Arts and Society, which has taken place annually in August since 2008, with the exception of summer 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
37 Liliane Campos, “Quantum Configurations in Nick Payne's Constellations,” Études britanniques contemporaines / British Literature in the Present (online) 43 (2013), https://doi.org/10.4000/ebc.901, accessed 19 August 2020.
38 The production used a total of thirteen cameras, with twelve onstage and one in the house.
39 Natalie Rine, “Review: Théâtre du Rêve Expérimental's Nick Payne's Constellations presented by The Public Theater's Under the Radar Festival and La MaMa,” Onstage Blog, 6 February 2020, www.onstageblog.com/reviews/2020/2/6/new-york-review-thtre-du-rve-exprimentals-nick-paynes-constellations-presented-by-the-public-theaters-under-the-radar-festival-and-la-mama, accessed 31 May 2020.
40 Ross, “Public Theater Flies in Under the Radar a Solid Constellations—Asking Us to Look Deep Inside the Details of Engagement,” https://frontmezzjunkies.com/2020/01/11/public-theater-under-the-radar-constellations/, accessed 31 May 2020.
41 Lauren Berlant, “Intimacy: A Special Issue,” in Intimacy, ed. Berlant, 1–8, at 1. This particular definition of intimacy is also invoked by Maria Chatzichristodoulou and Rachel Zerihan in their “Introduction” to Intimacy across Visceral and Digital Performance, 1–11, at 1.
42 Angelaki, Vicky, Social and Political Theatre in 21st-Century Britain: Staging Crisis (London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2017), 127–9Google Scholar, quotes at 129, 136.
43 Berlant, “Intimacy,” 3.
44 Discussion of this production is based on its revival at Under the Radar 2020. I saw the play twice, on 11 and 12 January 2020, and participated in a talkback with director Wang Chong after the 12 January matinee.
45 “Timeline of WHO's Response to COVID-19,” World Health Organization, last updated 28 December 2020, www.who.int/news-room/detail/29-06-2020-covidtimeline, accessed 2 June 2021.
46 Discussion of Made in China 2.0 is based on a recording provided by Wang Chong and my Skype conversation with the director on 11 April 2020.
47 “Made in China 2.0,” Malthouse Theatre, www.malthousetheatre.com.au/whats-on/past-seasons/asia-topa-2020/made-in-china-2-0/, accessed 31 August 2020.
48 Nabilah Said, “Interview with Wang Chong for Made in China 2.0,” Arts Equator, 23 March 2020, https://artsequator.com/made-in-china-wang-chong/, accessed 22 May 2020.
49 For a synthesis of definitions of “intimate interactions” in the field of psychology, see for example Prager, Karen J., The Psychology of Intimacy (New York: Guilford Press, 1995), 20–3Google Scholar.
50 Said, “Interview with Wang Chong.”
51 Brook, Peter, The Empty Space (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 134Google Scholar. Wang Chong translated The Empty Space into Chinese and specifically referenced Brook in the program notes for his production of Where Do We Come From, What Are We, Where Are We Going 2.0 (Women cong he chu lai, women shi shei, women xiang hu chu qu 2.0, 2019).
52 Descriptions of Waiting for Godot are based on the 5–6 April 2020 livestream on Tencent, which I watched in real time, as well as on a recording of the livestream provided by Wang Chong and my Skype conversation with the director on 11 April 2020. On 20 May 2021, Wang's production received a onetime restream as part of The Theatre Times International Online Theatre Festival (IOTF). See “Waiting for Godot,” The Theatre Times, https://thetheatretimes.com/waiting-fot-godot-iotf/, accessed 14 June 2021.
53 Emily Feng, “Restrictions and Rewards: How China is Locking Down Half a Billion Citizens,” National Public Radio (NPR) “Goats and Soda” blog, last updated 21 February 2020, www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/02/21/806958341/restrictions-and-rewards-how-china-is-locking-down-half-a-billion-citizens, accessed 31 August 2020.
54 Beckett, Samuel, Waiting for Godot (New York: Grove Press, 1982), 86–7Google Scholar.
55 Lockdown in Wuhan officially ended on Wednesday, 7 April 2020, the day after act 2 of Wang's Dengdai Geduo streamed.
56 Skype conversation with Wang Chong by author, 11 April 2020.
57 The timing of the performance at a moment of global chaos and the ephemerality of the livestream medium may also have been what enabled the production to avoid attracting the attention of the Beckett estate, with its penchant for taking legal action against productions that alter casting (as here, with Estragon/Ganggang played by a woman) or setting. Wang pointed out to me that he is definitely not the first Chinese director to cross-cast Godot; personal communication with the author, 24 May 2021.
58 For discussions of the unique nature of domestic space, privacy, and private life in China, see for example Chinese Concepts of Privacy, ed. Bonnie McDougall (Leiden: Brill, 2005); and Li, Jie, Shanghai Homes: Palimpsests of Private Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014)Google Scholar.
59 Liu Qing, review of Dengdai Geduo , in “Jintian Geduo lai le ma? (Did Godot Arrive Today?)” (in Chinese), Theatre Critics’ Circle (Xiju pingshen tuan), vol. 53, WowTheatre (WeChat channel), https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/8XWZ6jFjGfm5nqF-fMix7w, accessed 31 August 2020.
60 Mengting Zhuo, Ruguo meiyou geli, ze xianshang wu yiyi--tan Wang Chong Dengdai Geduo ji ‘yunzuoxi' (If There Were No Quarantine, the Online Would Have No Meaning: On Wang Chong's Waiting for Godot and ‘Cloud Theatre') (in Chinese), 10 April 2020, https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/d0VVKxsnH-Aw_ZorTrWQJw, accessed 6 May 2021.
61 Barton, Bruce, “Intimacy,” in Mapping Intermediality in Performance, ed. Bay-Cheng, Sarah et al. (Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2010), 46; emphasis in the originalGoogle Scholar.
62 Berlant, Female Complaint, viii.
63 My thanks to Brandi Catanese for this particular insight.
64 “A Conversation with Igor Golyak and Wang Chong: Discussing the Online Performance of State vs. Natasha Banina and the State of Online Theater,” moderated by Annie Levy, HowlRound Theatre Commons and ArtsEmerson (livestreamed 11 August 2020), 19 August 2020, https://howlround.com/happenings/conversation-igor-golyak-and-wang-chong-asl-interpreted, accessed 22 August 2020.
65 Sun Xiaoxing, review of Dengdai Geduo , in “Did Godot Arrive Today?”
66 Chatzichristodoulou and Zerihan, “Introduction,” in Intimacy across Visceral and Digital Performance, 5.
67 Wang, “Online Theater Manifesto.”
68 Ibid.
69 Ibid.
70 “Conversation with Igor Golyak and Wang Chong.”
71 Since 2017, Wang has lived in a space he calls the “De-electrified Zone (Ting dian ting).” He uses email and Skype for professional correspondence, but has not had a social media presence for several years.
72 Wang, “Online Theater Manifesto.”
73 Ibid.
74 Bolter, Jay David and Grusin, Richard, Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), 5–6, 34–5Google Scholar.
75 Huang, “Performing Lost Politics,” 416.
76 See for example the Critical Stages / Scènes critiques special section on “COVID-19 and Its Impact on the Performing Arts: A Survey,” ed. Savas Patsalidis, published in June 2020 (www.critical-stages.org/21/category/covid/, accessed 31 August 2020), as well as recent interviews with artists published on HowlRound Theatre Commons, such as Jasmine Jamillah Mahmoud and Autumn Knight, “Melted Snow on Virtual Stages,” 26 August 2020, https://howlround.com/melted-snow-virtual-stages?fbclid=IwAR0yeGmY-NnQ5t8NEzg7Sz15Vq7LtP0_Zz81eUoNAZBz0E9k-6M-9WmbfMk, accessed 31 August 2020.
77 Kattenbelt, “Intermediality in Theatre and Performance,” 25.
78 For more information on the productions, see the website for the 49th Annual Hong Kong Arts Festival: www.hk.artsfestival.org/en/programmes/theatre-the-plague-english/, accessed 6 May 2021.
79 Michael Paulson, “Broadway Is Reopening. But Not until September,” New York Times, 5 May 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/05/05/theater/broadway-reopening-new-york.html, accessed 6 May 2021.
80 See for example Winnie Byanyima, “A Global Vaccine Apartheid Is Unfolding,” The Guardian, 29 January 2021, www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/jan/29/a-global-vaccine-apartheid-is-unfolding-peoples-lives-must-come-before-profit, accessed 6 May 2021.
81 HowlRound Theatre Commons’ “COVID-19” site (https://howlround.com/tags/covid-19), the IATC journal Critical Stages / Scènes critiques (www.critical-stages.org), and The Theatre Times (https://thetheatretimes.com) for example, have been important venues for online conversations, podcasts, scholarly essays, and practitioner reflections on pandemic theatre and the question of what theatre will become in a post-COVID world.