Filmed Plays Bring Broadway and West End to China’s Silver Screens

There was no curtain to pull back at the July 22 performance of “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) in Beijing.

The audience had come to watch Daniel Radcliffe of “Harry Potter” fame perform the absurdist play by Tom Stoppard. In the small venue, the crowd of about 50 was treated to views of the English actor they could never get in, say, The Old Vic theater in London, where the production premiered in February.

It was an immersive experience, especially considering that Radcliffe never set foot on stage in front the audience. In fact, there was no stage.

The three-hour play was shown in one of the UCCA exhibition rooms as part of a four-day series of screenings of some of the most popular plays from London and New York City. The screenings, known as “theater live productions,” are essentially films, but they are not simply movie versions of blockbuster plays.

Unlike traditional video productions of plays that simply record the performance, live theater productions seek to meet a much higher standard, theater expert Shang Xiaolei said. Adjustments need to be made to the filming, stage lighting and even the actors’ performances to ensure the play is best presented for the cameras rather than for an audience in a theater.

The International Theater Live Festival will bring 12 famous stage productions from Britain, the United States and Russia to the big screen in 23 Chinese cities through August.

Although still a niche, theater live productions have grown in popularity in China as demand for more-diverse cultural experiences has taken off. In 2016, China’s performing arts market was worth 46.9 billion yuan ($6.96 billion), up 5.07% from the previous year. Last year, 15,100 plays were staged in the country’s theaters, generating 2.4 billion yuan in box-office revenue, according to the China Association of Performing Arts.

Theater live productions present an opportunity for anyone looking to get more plays from London’s West End and New York’s Broadway in front of a Chinese audience. The format, even though it has never been shown live in China, has made Western theater productions more accessible by making them cheaper and more timely.

Helen McCrory performs in Terence Rattigan’s “The Deep Blue Sea.” Photo: Ullens Center for Contemporary Art

A fresh format

Live theater productions were the brainchild of Nicholas Hytner, former director of Britain’s National Theatre, who in 2009 created the National Theatre Live (NT Live) project by using high-definition filming and satellites to broadcast the theater’s most popular plays around the world. Hytner’s goal was to make the stage arts more accessible to people who aren’t regular theatergoers.

As of this year, NT Live has broadcast more than 50 plays at 1,500 cinemas and other venues in more than 50 countries. Its viewership has reached 5 million.

China’s first contact with NT Live was in 2012 when the KT Wong Foundation, a nongovernment cultural exchange organization, brought the play “Frankenstein” to cinemas in Beijing and Shanghai in partnership with the British Embassy in China.

“At that time, I thought it was a very fresh format,” said Man Ding, director of the Inside-out Theatre in Beijing. “(I thought) we should bring this to China.”

Later, Man’s theater became one of the designated venues for NT Live shows in China.

More than a dozen domestic cinemas and theaters have become partner venues for theater live shows. They embraced the new format as it provides a less-expensive way to pack seats for high-quality and diverse productions.

Rather than inviting a troupe of actors and paying the immense travel and rehearsal costs, theaters buy the screening rights to NT Live productions and then share the profits from the screening with the Chinese distributor and NT Live, according to Oscar Wang, former film curator at UCCA, who first introduced NT Live screenings to the center.

The reduced costs also allow theaters to cut the price of admission, Wang said. Currently, ticket for the theater live show costs between 100 yuan to 200 yuan, about the same as a ticket to an Imax movie and nearly one-tenth the price of a stage show.

Over the past two years, about 23 theater live productions have been screened in China. In addition to NT Live, other live theater productions from Britain’s Royal Shakespeare Company, Stage Russia HD and Broadway HD have landed in Chinese cinemas and theaters.

Starring Tom Hiddleston, Shakespeare’s “Coriolanus” tells the story of a Roman general named Coriolanus, who is banished from home and takes revenge on the city. Photo: Ullens Center for Contemporary Art

“NT Live is likely to become a whole new type of cultural product” because it offers new perspectives caught by cameras that are rarely seen by the audience at the theater, said Shan Dan, curator of the China Film Archive in Beijing.

Embraced in China

NT Live’s official entry into the Chinese market was paved in 2015, when the National Theater partnered with the National Theatre Company of China to produce the Chinese version of the British theater’s acclaimed stage production “War Horse.”

Li Zongzhou, CEO of Beijing ATW Culture Media and the executive producer of the production, later clinched the deal with the National Theatre to distribute NT Live productions in China from 2015 onward.

In October 2015, when Shakespeare’s great tragedy “Hamlet,” starring Benedict Cumberbatch, was staged in London, people paid as much as 1,500 pounds ($1,970) to see the premiere at the Barbican Centre. Meanwhile, seven high-definition cameras recorded the performance and livestreamed it in nearly 100 British cinemas to more than 100,000 viewers.

One month later, the recorded show was introduced to China by NT Live as part of the China-U.K. Year of Cultural Exchange. All tickets of the five screenings of “Hamlet” in Beijing were sold out, thanks to Cumberbatch’s popularity as the titular detective in the popular British television show “Sherlock.”

“The camera shots provided more perspectives and a clearer image than I could get at a live show. It was a fascinating experience,” one viewer wrote on social media after seeing “Hamlet.”

The production, along with the plays “Frankenstein” and “Coriolanus,” marked the debut of NT Live in China. The shows received a warmer-than-expected welcome by Chinese audiences, who bought more than 70% of the tickets for each screening, Li said.

“It felt like (I was) watching the show from the best seat at the National Centre for the Performing Arts,” said one viewer after watching NT Live’s “Hamlet” at a Beijing cinema.

Li said ATW Culture has been trying to shorten the time between a play’s premiere and its Chinese screening. In December, Harold Pinter’s “No Man’s Land,” starring Sir Patrick Stewart, was screened at the Inside-Out Theatre in Beijing only 10 days after the play premiered in London.

Ian McKellen (left) and Patrick Stewart portray two aging writers, Hirst and Spooner, who meet in a pub in a summer evening in Harold Printer’s classic play “No Man's Land.” Photo: Ullens Center for Contemporary Art

Timeliness is another advantage offered by theater live productions as popular plays — even blockbusters — can take years to make it to China. For example, “War Horse,” which has been staged 4,000 times worldwide for more than 6 million people, premiered in London in October 2007. It took eight years for the Chinese version of the play to reach the stage in China.

Still, theater live productions face challenges in China. For one thing, none of the screenings has ever been performed live due to the time differences, censorship policy and theaters’ technological limitations.

Censorship poses an especially thorny challenge. All cultural events, including plays and film screening, are subject to content censorship in China. To be shown in the country, theater live productions have to undergo one of several types of regulatory review, the UCCA’s Wang said. They include screening the movie or performing a rehearsal for the censors, or submitting a script. Currently, UCCA needs approval from a committee at its home in 798 Art District.

Contact reporter Han Wei (weihan@caixin.com)