Actors rehearse a performance in the Jiangnan Theater in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province on March 17, this year. Photo: CFP

At first glance, the two people singing on the small, worn-out Beijing stage seemed innocent enough, but as their performance reached a crescendo, smiles and bursts of laughter erupted from the audience. The voices of the performers rang out with the slang and accent of Northeast China, but a careful listener could pick out the subtext within their words.

Between the lines of their discussion, the innuendo portrayed a startlingly graphic description of clumsy sex between two newlyweds.

The fate of small, avant-garde plays like this may be in doubt after the Beijing government announced it would be making anonymous inspections of certain performances deemed to be out of touch with community standards.

Plays in small, amateur theaters that "threaten the country's interests, incite ethnic hatred or promote pornography or violence" will be the target of anonymous volunteer inspectors dispatched by neighborhood administration offices and residential communities in Beijing in a bid to clean up the industry, according to a report published on the website of the Beijing government early this month.

The Global Times made a number of enquiries to the culture bureau over several days, but did not receive a reply by press time.

Vulgarity targeted

The theaters targeted by the decree are known as "mini theaters." As Cui Ning, a vice president of the Beijing People's Art Theater explained, these mini theater plays are not defined by their size but their content, which should be cutting-edge and experimental.

The report did not stipulate why these mini theaters are being subject to increased scrutiny - especially given the fact that theoretically, all plays should already have provided scripts to cultural authorities for screening.

Mini theaters have long been in the spotlight, and accused by the authorities of being out of touch with community standards. Wang Xiaoying, a vice president of the National Theater of China, said in a seminar on mini theaters in 2012 that statistics show that more than 50 percent of some 350 plays performed in Beijing in 2010 and 2011 were considered to have had insufficient investment, be of poor quality or be vulgar, the People's Daily reported.

At the end of that year, 33 mini theaters and production teams in Beijing issued a code of conduct for the industry, which emphasized self-discipline in resisting vulgarity, according to a report in qianlong.com, which pointed out that this was the first code of its kind in the city.

This is not the first time the bureau has organized volunteer inspectors to investigate mini theaters. In May 2012, the bureau organized 60 inspectors, consisting of college students and officials, to inspect mini theaters after they had been given a few weeks of training. A public hotline was also established to report on improper performances. However, the outcome, if any, of these inspections remains mysterious.

Ren Yuan, the manager of Fengchao Theater in Beijing, told the Global Times on Sunday that he was informed by the bureau at that time that the inspectors would visit his theaters, but he did not know when they came.

"We don't know which drama they watched because no one told us. All I know is that they didn't communicate with our theater, playwright or any of our actors. I guess most of them bought tickets themselves. Government officials tend to inspect our theater about once a month," Ren said.

Ren's theater was then told by the bureau to remove certain examples of "vulgar" plays as well as remove some examples of coarse language.

Ren said that on recent occasions he had told script writers to modify certain radical lines, but he insisted that some "impolite words" are necessary to present the stories in the manner they deserve, and to provide leeway for improvisation.

Though Ren said he is not sure what the inspectors reported to the bureau, he guessed based upon his experiences that the inspectors write reports on the performance then local cultural authorities collate them then deliver orders to mini theaters.

At present, both the departments that are expected to carry out the program, along with the theaters that will be inspected, have received little word of what the inspections will entail.

A staff member from the cultural department of the neighborhood administration office of Zuojiazhuang in the Chaoyang district of Beijing on Thursday told the Global Times that their office had received no notice about the order. Similarly, an employee from a neighborhood administration office in Bajiao in Shijingshan district said she was not certain about the policy and refused to comment.

In the second half of 2012, almost all mini theaters in Beijing installed cameras as required by the bureau to ensure the script did not deviate from the version approved by the authorities, according to Ren.

Creativity in the spotlight

Ren said that he had some doubts as to the ability of inspectors to evaluate performances. "I hope that the supervisors are able to watch our performance without bias and don't misunderstand them. They should communicate with the makers of the plays to get a better understanding of them," he said.

Liang Dandan, president of the Penghao Theater in Beijing, said that she had concerns. "I welcome them (the inspectors), but I hope our communication is operation-oriented instead of opposing each other. In the long run, I think the policy is ill-advised because free creativity should be encouraged in drama."

Cui, however, said that supervision was necessary as mini theaters were sometimes prone to lapses in quality. He said that mini theaters, unlike other theaters, could often start turning a profit after just 20 or 30 performances, and they sometimes pursued profit via vulgar jokes.
"The policy is necessary to guide mini theaters to develop in the correct way, but not to place restrictions on them," Cui said. "I feel relaxed when supervisors come to our mini theater. I hope they can communicate with mini theaters in a skillful manner in a bid to help the development of mini theaters according to the rules of artistic markets."

Wang Xiaoyu, a cultural criticism professor with the Shanghai-based Tongji University, told the Global Times that it would be tough for the government to implement the policy, because the public lacked confidence in their censorship choices.

"The policy is spying on culture. It's not good and will produce more problems," he said. "No one is against mini theaters, and the policy encourages people to oppose restrictions placed on mini theaters."