The main characters of Grave Robbers' Chronicles open a coffin. Photo: Courtesy of Shanghai Jinhui Communication Co Ltd

Digging holes outside of ancient graves, crawling through narrow tunnels filled with danger, decoding messages on antiques and fighting with the zombies - these aren't the types of scenes easily portrayed on the stage, yet a drama version of The Grave Robbers' Chronicles manages to tackle them all in a magnificent way.

Adapted from the first of a nine-book series by Xu Lei, the play is showing in Beijing through December 8. It's just one stop on a nationwide tour which started on October 25 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. The cities of the tour were chosen by fans of the book series on damai.cn, which also is selling the tickets.

The Grave Robbers' Chronicles has made 31-year-old author Xu No.2 on the 2011 China's Richest Writers list (compiled annually by Huaxi Metropolitan Daily). After Xu announced he would stop writing in March of this year, the book series again became one of the most heated topics among media. This new stage production has been met with great excitement from fans thirsty for more.

"Supported by the strong fan base surrounding the books, the drama gained great applause from the readers after its premiere, which I predicted with confidence. Actually, the play is more popular than I imagined," said producer Cheng Yu.

All-male drama

Except the female zombies, all the characters in the first story of The Grave Robbers' Chronicles are male. The entire cast of the play is composed of men under 30.

The original stories are made up with individual adventures in each of the books, and the characters are driven by a series of mysteries and connected with complicated clues to link them together.

"This one is only the start," Cheng told the Global Times, adding that he hopes to make these theater adaptations a long series just like Harry Potter. "We are planning to make the drama as a series of five. Chinese people have never before tried this with theatrical performances."

Cheng recalled the first contact with the author Xu as a friendly and easy encounter. The author was very glad to see his work on stage.

The whole story is pure adventure - no romantic subplots - and the mystery threaded throughout remains unclear as some answers to the puzzles are not revealed in the first book.

"So we decided to present the fantastic visual effects of the story rather than focusing on the mystery," said Cheng.

A large, round, rotating stage and 3D projections (no glasses needed) bring the adventure straight to audiences. Martial arts are performed in the fighting scenes with zombies and the acrobatics add to the excitement of the adventure.

"We tested many new elements in our play. It's a risk, especially for traditional audiences," said Liu Fangyu, the show's director. "We are ready to accept the criticism from fans of traditional drama."

Especially for fans

Different from the silent audiences usually attending plays, those who come to see The Grave Robbers' Chronicles tend to be so passionate that the performance feels more like a pop star's concert: The play is often interrupted by screaming and applause.

"We did not predict that before the premiere," Liu said. "People scream and laugh at some points that seem quite ordinary for us. They are so excited when their favorite characters come to the stage, and they applaud when some of the classic dialogs take place."

Though both the author of the book and the creative team behind the stage drama deny that the play hints at any homosexuality, some interactions between the male characters still drive fans crazy. These audiences are females born after 1990 and many of them had no experience watching theater productions before.

"They are younger than the main audiences for our previous dramas, who were mostly born in the 1970s and 1980s," Liu said. "We are so glad to attract more audiences to the theater. They have different ways of watching and judging the show."

Cheng told the Global Times that they communicated with fans when they first started planning the play.

"Xu has already created the characters in a very vivid way," Cheng said. "So most of the fans have their strong views on the elements of the characters. For example, Zhang Qi­ling should be cool and handsome while Wu Xie should be innocent and cute. We want to present these characters for them in the way they like."

Some audience members sent their suggestions about the dialogs and characters through messages on social media to the creative team after watching the show. "We took the advice and changed some of them immediately in the next show. And this makes the fans feel that they are very close to us," said Liu.

"Why not?" Liu continued. "They are obsessed fans who know the books and characters so well, and we did make it for them."

Audiences choose

The play made its debut in Shanghai in July. After receiving supportive feedback from fans of the book, damai.cn organized crowdfunding for the nationwide tour online. Audiences voted for the cities they wanted for tour stops, and the places with the highest votes were selected as the first legs of the tour, including Hangzhou and Ningbo in Zhejiang Province and Wuhan in Hubei Province.

"All the promotions are organized online through the websites and social media," said Liu. "As the book series was first published online, these places are where the real fans of the books are active."

Passionate audiences gave a strong boost of confidence to the creative team of the stage drama.

"It is hard to turn a profit from plays, especially for private small studios, but we have already gained most of the investment back," Cheng commented. "It will be easier to get more support for the following chapters of this series."

The creative team is currently working on the second drama of the series, which is slated to premiere next summer.