‘Be Vigilant of the Crook on Stage’: Remembering Daring Playwright Sha Yexin

For years, Sha Yexin introduced himself to his readers on social media as a playwright who never does evil. “I’m a playwright, or a ‘playmaker,’ as we were called in the past,” according to his profile on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter. “I’m not an evil playmaker, but a kindhearted one.”

Sha, one of the top playwrights in modern China who died at the age of 79 late last month, left his family with a wish that he not bother his family and friends with a memorial service. Instead, he said he wanted to be laid to rest quietly and with dignity.

The former director of the Shanghai People’s Arts Theater, one of the nation’s leading art troupes, left behind a treasure-trove of theatric works and writings produced over a career spanning nearly four decades that shines a light on both humanity and social ills.

Sha rose to prominence in the late 1970s and early ’80s by penning plays that blended politics with theatric suspense, including “If I’m Real,” a six-act drama that satirizes the privileges of the ruling Communist Party elites, produced shortly after China’s opening-up and reform began.

In his 1987 play “Jesus, Confucius and John Lennon,” Sha assembles Confucius, Jesus, Galileo Galilei, Ludwig van Beethoven, Isaac Newton, John Lennon and an astronaut in the same setting, and uses the absurdity to provoke thoughts on some of the pressing issues facing the modern world.

In September 2015, Sha sent me, Fu Guoyong, a signed draft of his new play “The Conscience of Hu Yaobang,” a depiction of efforts in the late ’80s spearheaded by the then-Communist Party general secretary to rehabilitate millions of Chinese intellectuals purged in the Anti-Rightist Campaign of the late ’50s.

The work ends with the abrupt downfall in 1987 of Hu, who is still beloved by millions as a wise liberal statesman and clean official. Sha said that he felt compelled to write about Hu because he once insulted the leader in a piece of writing, but despite this, Hu overruled Shanghai authorities’ rejection of Sha’s application to join the party, allowing Sha to become the head of the People’s Arts Theater.

The play, a full display of both Chinese politics in a critical period in modern Chinese history and theatric beauty, was never staged or published on the Chinese mainland, as was the case with several of Sha’s other works.

Among his plays that have been widely produced in China is “Mayor Chen Yi,” a wholesome production from 1980 that documents the reconstruction of Shanghai under Chen, a revolutionary general and the first mayor of Shanghai under Communist Party rule.

But it was not Sha’s theatric achievements that caught my attention in the first place. Instead, I was impressed by a speech he delivered to mark the centennial of the founding of Southeast University in Nanjing in 2002 because it was full of witty jokes, satires and stinging criticism.

The theater has been snubbed by audiences largely because playwrights have turned their backs on reality, he told students and academics at the gathering. “Instead, they choose to embrace pretense because it brings harmony,” he said.

I kept in contact with him after I was able to meet him in person in 2005. Unlike many other well-known writers who can be smug and self-righteous, Sha was easy-going and very approachable.

Sha battled cancer for years, and I sent him a message via WeChat after I learned that his condition had deteriorated late last year. But I didn’t hear back until reports of his death emerged on July 26.

To me, he was not only a prolific writer who never put down his pen, but also an intellectual with integrity.

He said he was a fan of Vaclav Havel, the Czech writer and president, for his motto of “living truthfully,” and he sought to make an example of himself.

“Be vigilant of the crook on stage, and don’t be one of the fools in the audience,” Sha once said.

Translated by Li Rongde (rongdeli@caixin.com)