Little Theater

Lin Zhaohua   Meng Jinghui  Main Plays

General Introduction The Little Theater Movement is a movement that began around the turn of last century in Europe and which spread throughout the world, even to this day. "Little theater" refers to more intimate, community-oriented theater as opposed to the large, more commercially oriented fare of establishments such as Broadway. The plays of this movement are experimental and often avant-garde in nature. For historical reasons, the Little Theater Movement did not hit China until 1982, which saw the opening of the play Absolute Signal, directed jointly by Gao Xingjian and Liu Huiyuan. Performed in an original way, the play attracted much attention within the theater circle. In April 1989, during the First Chinese Little Theater Drama Festival held in Nanjing of East China's Jiangsu Province , a total 15 plays were performed, including Absolute Signal, You Should Not Bully Children and Old Men, Owl in the House, God of Fire, and Girl of Autumn. A discussion was also held over the aesthetic features and meaning of little theater drama. This festival had great significance in the Chinese drama scene, as it represented the drama artists' hard fight for the survival ...more  Big-name directors Chinese theater artists started to explore the way of little theater from the end of the 1980's. Their works expresses an intense dissatisfaction with the traditional creating method, which excessively relies on play scripts and which generally has a sole mode of expression. To let the theater become an artistic form, and to explore a drama with many kinds of expression methods have become the theater artists' common goal.

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