Shanghai Theaters Wander through Market Woods

No.288 AnFu Road, in the French Concession of Shanghai, you can find the old Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre, which is the most famous theater performing place in the town, every month there are more than 10 dramas are on performance.

As the cradle of Chinese theater culture, Shanghai was supposed to be the frontier of Chinese theater performance with over 100 years history, after the new PRC, there were two famous organizations, Shanghai People’s Arts Theater and Shanghai Youth Dramatic Group when it was the best time for Shanghai’s local theater together with Beijing’s.

Things never go as you wish. Shanghai’s cultural advantage became less and less because of the change of governmental direction, it got to be more and more economical oriented, and the central government put a restrict censorship on Shanghai’s culture industries. That’s also why Beijing, Canton can be the important media city, but not Shanghai.

A famous Hong Kong Theater Director told me, every show they always first perform in Beijing, and then delete some plot to be able to pass the censorship and present in Shanghai, that’s the typical comparison between Shanghai and Beijing, while Beijing now attracts more and more contemporary and avant-garde artists. However, Shanghai is still trying to break through the bottle-neck by market ways.

SDAC mentioned above is a state-owned organization original from the combination of the two theater organizations in 1995, now it’s getting quite popular in Shanghai for its commercial dramas. This comprises a big restructure of the business module in the system, the SDAC now is not only produce theaters by themselves, but also leases spaces to directors with scenarios, so called cooperation.

Meanwhile, private investment is also jumping into this market. They build up lots of rooms and sign with young directors and actors for running a long-term theater business. In Shanghai Ke Contemporary Arts Centre, there’re some halls renovated from an old factory using for theaters now, offering more pioneer experimental shows. Although the regulation is still not released as Beijing, people can find their way to appreciate fresh theaters, which is getting popular in all age groups. Sometimes you need to be aware of the censorship, it’s not only before the scenario, during the show, there’re occasionally some incidents happening.

So it’s always a question for the theater businessman, how to balance the market and regulation, since most of the plays are on governmental public platforms, underground theatres are hardly surviving. One of the most successful theater businesses in Shanghai is to cooperate with international theater groups; people are scramble for the ticket which is much more expensive than normal ones. And it seems to be more and more recently, just have to wait until when people get tired, because it does no improvement for the local shows.