Meet the theatre owner bringing art to China’s masses, whether they like it not
Wang Xiang has sold 300,000 tickets for shows at his small theatre in Beijing, but when it comes to saving ‘deprived souls’ there is much work still to do
Just a few yards away from the elite drama school that has been a cradle for international movie stars like Zhang Ziyi and Tang Wei, China’s first independently run theatre is facing an existential crisis.
Over the past year, Wang Xiang, who founded Penghao Theatre in a Beijing alleyway in 2008, has spent far more time trying to raise money to save this unique feature of China’s contemporary art scene than he has planning programmes.
The unwanted change of focus came when the owner of the courtyard property, or siheyuan, that houses the theatre presented Wang with an ultimatum: buy him out, or move out. The asking price was a cool 40 million yuan (US$6 million).
“Penghao is among the minority of minorities in [China’s] highly commercialised and materialistic society,” Wang said. “Fundraising for art and culture is a very novel concept here.”
So too was his idea nine years ago to launch China’s first non-government, literary theatre showing both home-grown and foreign plays in a 400-square-metre century-old building. Since then, the intimate arena, which has just 100 seats, has hosted more than 3,000 performances of 600 works.