Cultural Restructuring: Commercialization of Performing Arts

By staff reporter JIAO FENG

DURING the week-long Spring Festival holiday in January 2012, instead of traveling outside of the capital to enjoy her time, Mrs. Wu chose to watch performances in Beijing, and she was not alone. Many other people in China shared this idea and chose to avoid the hectic holiday transport to enjoy more relaxing entertainment in their hometowns.

Choice for those who stay behind has multiplied, as Mrs. Wu found when she went online to book tickets. At first she was bewildered by the 74 different performances showing during the week-long holiday, but eventually managed to find something for everyone in her family – Peking Opera at Meilanfang Grand Theater for her father, Absolute Child at the China Children's Art Theater for the little one, and The Nutcracker at Poly Theater for herself and her husband.

Shining a Spotlight on Beijing's Theater Scene

With the cultural restructuring that is ongoing in China, various performing groups no longer experience the disconnection with the market that comes from relying on government finance. Venturing out into the commercial world, some performing groups have produced a number of excellent productions that have been well received by audiences, filling a niche in the marketplace and enjoying considerable economic benefits.

As China's political and cultural center, Beijing has been the main city carrying out cultural restructuring. In 2009, the capital integrated its performing arts resources and set up the Beijing Performance & Arts Group, whose members include the China National Acrobatic Troupe, Beijing Dance Drama and Opera Company, China Puppet Art Theater, and Beijing Children's Art Theater. "Performing arts are the core business of our group," said Kang Wei, board chairman of the group, when the group was founded. "Our priority is to strengthen market awareness and produce first-class artistic brands."

The group has produced a series of first-class productions, such as dance drama Nüwa, puppet show My Own Swordsman, and stage drama adapted from Lao She's classic novel, Four Generations Under One Roof. The performing troupes of the group have come together to produce variety shows such as acrobatic musicals Goodbye UFO and A Letter Home.

One of the Beijing Performance & Arts Group's most recent events was the launch of the Three Chinese Tenors World Tour at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. The three tenors, Dai Yuqiang, Wei Song, and Warren Mok, represent the crème de la crème of China's bel canto, and tickets were sold out within a month.

In recent years, performances have not been exclusive to big cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, and touring performances have become commonplace for people in small cities. "Five years ago my biggest spiritual enjoyment came from watching a stage drama in Beijing at the weekend, but now every week there are several new dramas performed in my city," said Zhang Jun who lives in Zhengzhou, capital of Henan Province.

Splendid, a touring show recently produced by the Beijing Performance and Arts Group's China National Acrobatic Troupe, is the country's first large-scale acrobatics extravaganza, flush with national and international award-winning acts. In 2010, the show was performed over 100 times, thrilling local residents in cities across China. Last August, the troupe took up residence in the wing hall of the National Indoor Stadium and transformed it into the largest and most superbly equipped professional circus in China. Besides its latest production Acrobatics Dreamwork, the troupe plans to launch a panoramic circus party, which has no equivalent in the domestic cultural market.

Not only are the Beijing Performance & Arts Group's members presenting new and exciting productions to entertain China and the world, they have also produced a number of creations that have continued to amuse audiences year after year. Maze was the first big-budget pantomime of Beijing Children's Art Theater after it became a commercial business in 2004. For the past eight years, the show has been performed more than 100 times in cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Macao and Taipei, and has left happy memories with hundreds of thousands of children.

A number of small performance societies are also active on stage in Beijing, providing more niche attractions to audiences. Dramas held in small theaters have long been popular and have become part of the lifestyle of many of the emerging middle class in the capital, who have a choice of around a dozen dramas to attend every night. For the younger generation, for example, performance groups like the Hip-hop Crosstalk Society, whose members are mainly amateur crosstalk performers in their 20s, offer entertainment that is modern and relevant, loading their comedy dialogues with current buzzwords and online terms.

Beijing's Performance Venues

Data from Beijing Trade Association for Performances indicated that in 2011, the 94 commercial venues in Beijing offered 21,075 performances, selling 10.26 million tickets and generating an income of RMB 1.405 billion.

Among these venues, since it opened at the end of 2007, the National Center for the Performing Arts (NCPA) has become a performance operator of international standing. With performance seasons including the Spring of Chinese Symphony and the May Music Festival, the NCPA's performances have attracted audiences from all over the country, selling over 900,000 tickets to its nearly 900 performances hosted every year.

However, the high quality of the shows doesn't mean high ticket prices. The NCPA always sets reasonable ticket prices to attract average citizens. More than half of the tickets are priced at RMB 300 or lower. The NCPA also takes a role in art education and has launched projects like the Weekend Concert and the Classic Arts Lecture, whose membership costs just RMB 10 and annually organizes more than 1,000 art popularization activities in which many professional arts groups and accomplished performers participate.

Another major venue, Capital Theater, has a history of more than half a century and is a landmark of Beijing's cultural world. Small-theater drama was born here in the 1980s. The theater continues to play an important role in China's performance scene, and on its second floor you can find China's only drama museum, which has held many exhibitions, bringing greater understanding of drama to the public.

The popularity of these two venues as well as other smaller venues across the capital has proved irresistible to private investors. Beijing-based popular theater group, Xixiaotang, or X-square Drama Studio, obtained China's stage drama scene's first venture capital in July 2011. In the next three years, the studio plans to invest in 100 theaters in major cities around the country, tapping into this growing market and providing China's increasing theatergoers with more performances.

Bringing New Life to Traditional Arts

In 2010, Beijing's most iconic performing art, Peking Opera, entered the World Intangible Cultural Heritage list. Previously, this traditional culture had been struggling, and people debated as to whether Peking Opera should survive in a market-oriented world or be conserved in museums.

The Forbidden City in Dawn Light, a modern and innovative Peking Opera produced by the China National Peking Opera Company, is an adaptation of the stage drama Princess Der Ling and Empress Dowager Cixi. The Western-educated Princess Der Ling told Cixi about wonders such as steam engine, telephone and camera. The original stage drama was based on Der Ling's 1911 book, Two Years in the Forbidden City. While the new show retains the traditional vocals, gestures and costumes of Peking Opera, modern orchestral music and stage elements are incorporated into the production.

Lin Kai, producer of another traditional Peking Opera, The Lucky Purse, at Beijing's Meilanfang Grand Theater, is confident about Peking Opera's future. "I firmly believe that there is a good market for Peking Opera," he says. Lin Kai invested much in The Lucky Purse's marketing, flying in famous designers from Taiwan and a world-famous photographer to put the campaign together. "Audiences prefer popular opera, so that is what we publicized," Kai says. "My hopes are for art troupes to become market-oriented and able to produce high quality performances with considerable profits."

According to statistics of the Ministry of Culture, there are 2,451 troupes specializing in traditional Chinese dramas in the country, making up 35.7 percent of China's art performance groups.

Beyond Beijing and Across the Border

As well as reviving China's traditional performing arts, the growing popularity of the theater in Chinese society has brought an increase in international performing traditions and acts.

The Chinese version of smash-hit musical Mamma Mia! (see China Today January issue) marked a significant development for musicals in China. Putting the show together was a huge and challenging project for United Asia Live Entertainment. Their hard work and the guidance given by UK copyright holders. Littlestar, have paid off. Since its debut in Shanghai last July it has been performed in six cities across the country and has become one of the most popular shows in Chinese performing market, earning RMB 80 million at the box office. Buoyed up by this success, United Asia Live Entertainment just obtained Chinese version copyright of musical Cats from the UK's Really Useful Group, and plans to bring it to the Chinese stage later this year.

While United Asia Live Entertainment is putting on Chinese productions of Western musicals, the NCPA has been instrumental in bringing international acts to China. To date, the center has invited some 70 performing groups from 60 countries to make their debut in the Middle Kingdom. Besides directly introducing performance from abroad, the NCPA is also actively involved in international collaborations. Collaborations, such as their productions of Madame Butterfly and Rigoletto with Italian theaters Teatro La Fenice and Teatro Regio di Parma respectively, have won recognition with audiences and brought new opportunities to Chinese artists.

Until 2010, the NCPA relied solely on incoming and collaborative productions. In order to put together a first-class production team, they drew on talent from around the world, and later that year the center celebrated its third anniversary with its first original dance drama, Marco Polo, inviting experienced international artists to assist in this project. With a score blending music from the West, Mongolia and southern China, Marco Polo uses advanced multi-media to create a sumptuous and romantic vision of 13th-century China for its audience.

At the same time, the world is eager for Chinese performance groups to grace its stages. Last year, the China National Acrobatic Troupe's three-month tour of 65 US cities filled some 80,000 seats. Over in Australia, Chinese drama Rhinoceros in Love toured Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane, and in January, a performance of the dance drama The Peony Pavilion by the China Jinling Dance Company was selected as the most recommended New Year performance by The New York Times. Today, China's performing arts scene is bursting with life, local amateur groups as well as major national venues and touring troupes, are bringing both enjoyment and prosperity to its participants. With the mix of tradition and modernity and the startling variety of cultures from both China and abroad that is made so clear in productions like the NCPA's Marco Polo, China's performing arts can be expected to be a source of excitement and pleasure to local and international audiences alike.