Photographs of Wei Family Shadows Opera Theatre Troupe Performance in 2007

Two years ago I published a post on a performance I saw at South Gate Space in Dashanzi 798, in Beijing, a performance by Wei Family Shadows Opera Theatre Troupe (1). It was a very interesting example of traditional Chinese Shadows Puppet Theatre; today, after the problem I had with Youtube, re-uploading all my videos, I took advantage of the situation and extracted some still images from those videos and I got a nice group of photographs of the performance. Hope you enjoy.

Slideshow of Photographs

(1) August 13th, 2007.

Street Theatre in Today China ( Part 2): Old days and Performance Art

Note: this is the Part 2 of the post I published on the 3/31/08, Street Theatre in Today China (part 1).

Acrobatics and Street Theatre in 1927 Shanghai


I invite you to observe some spectacles offered on Shanghai streets in 1927. Thanks to the preservation of a German documentary made specifically to show Shanghai’s common daily life in 1927, we can observe scenes of street comic theatre 二贵摔绞 (ergui shuaijiao), acrobatics and martial arts (all of which have been linked to each other throughout the history of Chinese spectacle), and we can also experience one kind of Chinese Opera performed in the open air. We can not forget that Chinese Opera had two lines of performance, one thought for interiors (Tea houses, saloons, theatres and palaces) and another one for exterior spaces (streets, fairs, temporary stages and squares).

These scenes are an example of the life Chinese streets had in last Century’s 1920’s, life completely lost now except on those exceptional moments the government allows.

Shanghai Street Theatre. Ergui shuaijiao. (1927)

Acrobatic Spectacle in Shanghai (1927)




Martial Arts spectacle in Shanghai (1927)



Martial Arts Spectacle in Shanghai (1927)

It is said that a big part of the evolution of Peking Opera (Beijing Opera) during the 19th Century was as open air events; some characteristics of its music, movements and stories had much to do with the requirements of performing on open air stages: attracting the public’s attention in the midst of a multitude during special events. This kind of Chinese opera doesn't exist anymore, at least in important Chinese cities where, today, Chinese Opera is a cultural institution performed always in enclosed spaces, full of depth, elegance, and only accessible to the initiated.

The Street Spectacle in China doesn't have a dramatic structure, it is generally a series of isolated acts of singing, acrobatics or dance. So far (April 2008) I have never seen any street spectacle based on any dramatic structure as (we recognize it) outside China, besides some Chinese Opera special performances in the open air.

Mass events (even those organized by the government or by television producers) are strictly controlled, yet offer an example of one aspect of street theatre evolution. Groups and theatre companies, which had been isolated or independent in the past, have been extinguished and absorbed by cultural institutions and big entertainment enterprises; now, they are part of immense choreographies where multitudes of dancers, actors or martial artists participate. Choreographies where 1000 taijiquan practitioners show their skills on television, where hundreds of children dressed like Shaolin monks perform some amazing routines, or where Chinese ballerinas in a river of movements accompany a famous singer (or just being part of a touristic experience at some important sight).

Street acts with political character are non-existent, and I'm sure the reason for their non-existence is the risk everyone in China could run by trying to produce anything outside the law.

Dashanzi 798


Spectacles have become a "Performance Art"; this artistic manifestation, a cousin of theatre and visual art, has given Beijing a singular way of expressing feelings or some ideas not dangerous to Chinese law views. There is only one place allowed to do "Performance Art", the Cultural Center Complex of Dashanzi 798, the main venue dedicated to Avant-guard culture in China.

A huge space with some useless communist factories (some of them still working), it has been converted into the new Chinese Soho. Dozens of galleries, handcrafts shops, cafés, restaurants and two or three special spaces have become the point of reference in the new artistic wave of the powerful economic China. The special characteristics of those former factory spaces, their squares and alleys, give place to creative events which try to give them new life and try to transform them.

Performance Festival in Dashanzi 798:

In Dashanzi we don't see street theatre, instead we see "performance art events"; there is no dramatic structure but they do keep some aspects of similar street artistic manifestations from the 1960’s, "the happening": improvisation, the idea of a unique act (every performance is different because of many factors, including the public and space), and of course an artistic conceptuality.

Performance Art has become the most serious way of constructing a street spectacle in a Chinese city, even though we are not strictly speaking of a theatrical manifestation. More linked to Visual Arts (painting, sculpture and video) than to Stage Theatre these, they border on it; as a postmodern way of expressing artistic ideas, it shares public and surprise with happenings from the 1960’s, but it doesn't care about dramatic structure, characters or stories. Doing performance art doesn't mean doing theatre. The Gao Brothers are one of the best examples of visual artists doing "performance art" without any knowledge of theatre (or at least it seems to me so); their importance lies in their powerful way of reaching their public with out-of-normal acts or through contexts different from which those acts are usually seen. Aside from some famous Chinese names, most of these performances are created jointly with foreign artists.

Ameret performance in Dashanzi:

Even though we can say that Performance Art is the new choice which substitutes street theatre (if that is possible), it also faces a big challenge. Performance art in China reached its peak between the 1990’s and 2000, and little by little it has become less strong and powerful (1). Since 2005 the number of new style "rebel events" has decreased, and only some not very publicized festivals have had place. No more explosions of fire along the Great Wall or people hanging for hours from their own sculpture as we can saw some years ago. Dashanzi has then become a refuge of all of them.

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Streets are fascinating for the scene creator, they are a space where theatre goes to the scenography, where life is surprised by the fictitious act of the theatre. The Chinese government fears it because of its surprising and liberating way of reaching spectators, and it has been looking to at least control it (if not repress it), almost to its extinction. But hope for its permanence lies in all those experiences of Chinese street spectacle from the past, in the essence of it, in imagination as creator; street spectacle opens our imagination where we don't expect it and that shows us another way of getting our priceless freedom.

(1) Only as a point of reference for the reader, this is what Wikipedia says about Performance Art in China: "Performance art in China has been growing since the 1970s as a response to the very traditional nature of Chinese state-run art schools. It is becoming more and more popular in spite of the fact that it is currently outlawed. In 1999 the importance of contemporary ChineseChinese artists in the Venice Biennale. In recent years many of these artists have made performances specifically for photography or film. Interest in Chinese art has never been higher. art was recognized by the inclusion of 19 contemporary.

Some of the more extreme examples of Chinese performance art have become notorious in the West. In 2000, Zhu Yu, a painter and performance artist from Cheng Du, created a scandal by taking a number of photographs of himself, supposedly, eating a foetus as a protest against state abortions as a means of population control. Peng Yu and Sun Yuan have also worked with human body parts as well as with live animals and are equally notorious. Some younger performance artists who have exhibited widely in the west in 2005-6 are Shu Yang organiser of the Dadao performance art festival in Beijing, Yang Zhichao, famous for having his identity card number branded on his back and Wang Chuyu who went on hunger strike as part of an exhibition called Fuck Off that took place in Shanghai in 2000 in opposition to the Shanghai Biennale.

They acknowledge a debt to older performance artist/ curator Ai Weiwei. Other well known artist are Ma Luming and Zhu Ming.

The 1996 film Frozen (Chinese title: Jidu Hanleng; 极度寒冷) by Chinese director Wang Xiaoshuai, made under the pseudonym Wu Ming, has as its protagonists a group of Chinese performance artists, who are shown engaging in several street performances in the film."

Chinese Shadow Puppet Theatre from Sha'anxi.

South Gate Space is a Performance venue in Dashanzi 798, the world famous Avant-gard Art complex in Beijing. It is not a conventional space; small and with little technical features, it’s mainly dedicated to putting on stage spectacles with music and dance groups from remote areas of the country, with only one objective: to preserve the Chinese cultural tradition without caring about their quality or their knowledge about performing arts. This is, from my point of view a “dangerous” philosophy.

I’ve seen some performances at this space and confirmed that only a few of them had knowledge on how to put the spectacle on stage; most of them were folk groups who perform during religious or social festivities in their villages, family singers and musicians, and some, only some, prepared artists. When watching or listening to those groups you, as spectator, change your point of view and try to see these people with pity, you smile and want to say “poor” native artists (most of them were poor farmers indeed) who came to Beijing to be seen by us, people who know what they’re worth. I know what I am saying is very hard but that is what I saw.

In contradiction to my criticism I must accept that thanks to South Gate Space I have seen several folk artists who would be almost impossible to reach from Beijing without traveling far away for hours to find them in their villages. Yes, a contradiction from someone who is trying to observe and criticize.

The show itself had a strange structure, four “scenes” of Shadow Puppet Theatre were combined with short performances by singers and dancers who didn’t have any connection to Sha'anxi province or to Puppet Theatre; our Shadow Theatre Troupe were the “hook” to attract public and to trap it to watch those new groups and singers. I have to say that it was shameful, their work was more a nuisance than anything. It seemed that only their “friends and families” were happy watching them.

About our Shadow Puppet Theatre Troupe, (also called Opera Puppet Troupe because of their use of Song, as any other Opera Theatre in China), I had some mixed opinions.

The troupe was led by 76 year-old Wei Zhenye, and it is said that the Wei family has worked with puppets since the Qing Dynasty. That does not mean a very long time, since the Qing Dynasty ended at the beginning of the 20th century, and the information provided about the family mentioned three generations, so they could have started their job around end of the 19th century or beginning of the 20th. The company has made its own fame through tours all over China and even some overseas ones to Europe; they have also performed in films by known Chinese directors.

Too many photographers inside the space, too many people (many of them walking and chatting) and the difficult structure of the spectacle were a big impediment for getting good material to show, but nevertheless I can offer to you three videos:

The first video shows how the Wei family prepared their puppets before the performance.

The two follow videos shows scenes of fighting and; it’s bizarre because of its large moments without movement, but when there was movement we could enjoy a good puppet performing technique.

Video: Beheading enemies

Video: scene of battle and death

The third video shows one “scene of love and singing”, almost without movement but with Opera singing. It was nice to listen to it but it is difficult to write about my appreciation for it, as it was sung in the Shaanxi dialect and it was impossible to understand any words of the songs.

Video: Scene of singing and love.

The Shadow Puppet Theatre performance was enjoyable, yes, and now I can add one more experience in my search for Chinese traditional performing arts, but it also pushed me to remember and even to see the videos of other performances I’ve already seen: the one in Wuzhen, the one in Siem Reap in Cambodia, or the 20 yuan-private performance I had in Xi’an (1) and, given my impossibility to criticize because of my poor knowledge about it, I must accept that the Wuzhen performance is the most memorable of them all.


(1) It is a pity I lost the material recorded in Xi’an.

La Fura dels Baus in Dashanzi 798: IMPERIUM

On May 1st, 2007, La Fura dels Baus performed IMPERIUM at the Dashanzi 798 Art Compound in Beijing, China. These are some impressions about the event and, of course, some images I took of it.

Since the 80s, as a spectator I’ve kept in touch with the work of La Fura dels Baus. I knew about them for the first time when I was a theatre student at university in Mexico; people were saying that a group of crazy spanish actors was going to come, trash cars and spray the public inside the parking of the National Auditorium with paint (and it was like that, of course). Some time later I saw them in some theatre festivals and tours around Mexico; as everyone did, I also watched their spectacle for the Opening Ceremony of the Barcelona Olympic Games, and watched the TV news about their performances in the World Expo in Germany; and the last time, live, in Beirut, Lebanon, when a part of the company was travelling on a boat through the Mediterranean and stopped at the Beirut port and moved, with their technological and spectacular games, the static Lebanese culture.

I was very surprised when I heard La Fura was coming to Beijing: the Chinese (the Chinese government, of course) usually avoid “dangerous” Performing Groups, but I also remembered that La Fura dels Baus, even if they like to play with violence, protest and rebellion, have got an advantage: their spectacles are mainly movement, music, sound,yet very little text (1). And I wasn’t wrong, they choose IMPERIUM, a spectacle where text is minimal, in Spanish, and with no translation.

An old depot or factory room was chosen as the performing espace, one of dozens with huge theatrical possibilities that exist in this former industrial complex in the east part of Beijing.

Dashanzi is currently the avantgarde in China, more than any other artistic place in the country, including Shanghai; they say it’s the next Soho China offers to the world. In one enormous area of obsolete factories where the Comunist era had its climax many years ago, with some interesting Bauhaus style buildings, a small group of chinese artists (first) and some foreigner investors (later), took root there and established their studios and small galleries. Time passed by and Dashanzi 798 (the name by which people knew the factory place) became the new Mecca for the new Chinese artists, for foreigners hungry for contemporary art, for more entrepeneurs and, of course, for the Chinese government(2). Now Dashanzi is included in the plans for the modernization of the artistic chinese world; yes, it’sa fact and there’s no turning back. But thanks to that, it was in the eyes of the international Cultural World, and La Fura dels Baus performed there.

Any spectacle by La Fura del Baus is always fantastic; once you taste their products inevitably you offer yourself to them, and that’s because they offer everyhting to the spectators.

I’ve always had my doubts about their way of managing dramatic structure, about the developing of the story within any spectacle, even about Acting (when acting refers to the needs of a classical character), but at the same time I recognize every spectacle is an evolution in their amazing way of exploring the stage. IMPERIUM got the same “mechanical” structure of other spectacles of theirs: machines in continuous movement, video, physical violence, but the story and the way to put it on stage got a real link with the spectator, the mix between technology and the human body (including the spectator’s body) is really punching; this time there are no unresolved points because, as a spectator, I couldn’t define any intelectual point beyond body language, beyond sound. It is not an apology of Violence, it is a showcase of it. IMPERIUM is very “actual”, we can see terrorism, politics, the media, and our bodies, our horrified minds; it literally moves the spectator, running together, shouting together, yelling together.

I saw dozens of spectators yelling and running and taking video and photographs at the same time; and this is for me one of the most interesting points, the creators of IMPERIUM are in concordance with our modern world: you can’t forbid people to bring in technology if the spectator actually wears it, uses as a part of his memory… They wanted us to take photos and videos as part of the spectacle, IMPERIUM is still performing in my computer, every time I see the images extracted from it.

IMPERIUM video (first part)

IMPERIUM video (second part)

(1) There are exceptions, as their “Fausto” (Faust), but they definitely didn’t want to perform those kind of spectacles, first because of the language barrier and second because of the obstacles Chinese could put to any theatrical text. Of ocurse all these are suppositions of mine.
(2) That means censorship working nearby (let me remind you of The Gay and Lesbian Dashanzi 798 Cinema Festival, banned since 2005); it also means big enterprises look at it as a good way to spend their “cultural taxes”, investing in special galleries and museums like Nike and Guess have done, showing their products like pieces of art. This bizarre mix between unknown artists looking for spaces to show their art and the “new Chinese free market money” make of Dashanzi 798 a place partly fascinating, partly hideous.