Grass Stage and the Fate of Social Theater

World Factory and After: Grass Stage and the Fate of Social Theater in Xi Jinping’s China

Sydney China Distinguished Fellow presents X Talks in Chinese Humanities

The Shanghai-based Grass Stage theatre troupe performed versions of World Factory at various venues in China, Hong Kong, and North America from 2014-2016. World Factory, a non-narrative, experimental documentary-based production, considered China’s new working class from historical, subjective, psychic, and social perspectives. Performances were also venues for intense and heated discussion with the audience. As the character of the Xi Jinping regime became more and more clear, 2016 marked an apogee not only for the performance, but for the Chinese worker’s movement in general. This talk traces Grass Stage’s trajectory from World Factory to the present, and uses that trajectory as a diagnosis of the state of political subjectivity and the fate of social critique.

Christopher Connery is Professor in the Literature department at the University of California Santa Cruz, where he teaches Cultural Studies, Chinese Studies, and courses in Marxist and neoliberal theory. He has also served recently as Visiting Professor in the graduate department of Cultural Studies at Shanghai University. His research has involved four areas: early imperial Chinese culture and history (Empire of the Text: Writing and Authority in Early Imperial China; contributions to the Columbia History of Chinese Literature); oceanic ideology and mythos in global capitalism (articles in boundary 2, Journal of Historical Geography, PMLA, Harvard Design Magazine, et al); the global 1960s (various anthologized articles, plus special issues of boundary 2 and Inter-Asia Cultural Studies); and contemporary Chinese culture, ideology, and politics (articles in Made in China, boundary 2, New Left Review, et al). Since 2010 he has been involved as writer, performer, and political consultant in the Shanghai-based, Chinese-language social and experimental theatre group Grass Stage, which has performed throughout China, as well as in Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, Macao, and North America.

As part of the Sydney China Distinguished Fellowship Program 2024, this event is co-hosted by the Discipline of Chinese Studies in the School of Languages and Cultures, the China Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. The fellowship is enabled by the acuity of vision and generosity of Mr James Lee, a University of Sydney alumnus now based in Hong Kong. This event is part of our talks in Chinese Humanities, a monthly event that we present with the Australian Society for Asian Humanities at the UNSW Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture's Judith Neilson Chair of Contemporary Art.

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