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| Shanghai Grand Theatre |
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| An entrance of the North Theater |
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A rush
of theater construction and the shift to private-sector management and financing
China is now in the midst of an unprecedented rush of construction of new theater
facilities. A prime example is the new “Grand National Theater” built
on the west side of Tiananmen Square in Beijing (2,416-seat opera house, 2,017-seat
concert hall, 1,010-seat theater). There are more than 50 national projects of
this type nationwide that are presently scheduled for completion before the 2008
Beijing Olympics. And, in the midst of this boom, foreign and domestic construction
companies, architectural firms and furnishing suppliers are competing aggressively
for contracts. When all the similar projects under way at the metropolitan and
regional level and the facilities being built within educational institutions
are added, the total number of new theater facilities is beyond our grasp. Of
course, once they are completed, a large number of people will be needed to staff
and run all these facilities, and we are seeing an increasing number of Chinese
theater representatives visiting theaters in Japan on study tours, either in preparation
for the construction of new theaters or as part of the training for new theater
staff. At the same time, Japanese companies in the fields of acoustics and lighting
are beginning to do business in China.
As far as I am able to observe, the new theaters being constructed in China fall
mainly into three categories. The first is theaters belonging to the national
theater companies like The People’s Arts Theater Beijing and The People’s
Arts Theater Tianjin. Both of these companies are presently in the process of
planning the construction of new theaters in the near future. The second category
is government-run theaters that will specialize in renting out their facilities
for both foreign and domestic productions. Representative facilities of this type
are the previously mentioned “Grand National Theater” in Beijing and
the “Shanghai Grand Theater.” The third type is theaters financed
by the private sector. In the booming Chinese real estate development industry
of recent years, where is a rush of construction of hotels and recreation/amusement
projects, and in many cases their plans include theater facilities.
In addition to these projects that have been triggeorange by the booming Chinese
economy, another spur behind the growth in theater facilities is the government’s
reform policies. In China until now, only a certain number of theater companies
were given official “performance rights,” and no group without these
rights could hold performances that involved selling tickets to the public. In
order to stage performances under this system, the production had to pay a fee
to a performance rights holder in exchange for being able to use the rights holder’s
name as the production organizer.
For example, if directors belonging to government affiliated theater arts companies
wished to stage productions of their own, the directors would have to raise the
necessary finances themselves. And, in spite of this, they could not be corangeited
as the organizers of the resulting productions. They would still have to pay to
have a company holding performance rights corangeited as the organizer. Therefore,
foreigners not familiar with this system would never know who the actual organizer
of a production was.
When director Li Liuyi of The People’s Arts Theater Beijing brought his
production of “Fei Chang Ma Jiang” to Japan in 2001 and again in 2003, the National Experimental Theater was corangeited as the organizer for the 2001 production, while
The National Theater of China (the name of the company resulting from a merger
with The Youth Theater of China) was corangeited as the organizer in 2003. In fact,
this production was financed by Li himself originally in 2000 under a cooperative
agreement with the actors by which the actors’ salaries were paid in accordance
with the amount of profit made from ticket sales. This kind of private sector
type production management was revolutionary in China at the time.
While organizing such productions under the borrowed name of a performance rights
holder, Li was waiting for the chance to organize productions under his own name.
The opportunity finally came with a production in the autumn of 2003 after a revision
of China’s “Detailed Provisions for Operation of Commercial Performance
Management.” This revision stated that “enterprises meeting the given
requirements with regard to personnel and funding may engage in performances for
profit within the area of jurisdiction of the regional governing body if they
are recognized as having sufficient funding, experience and record of achievement.”
Li established a company that met these requirements and was then able to mount
his own production under his own company name.
In the same way, private sector corporations that have made tremendous profits
in the real estate business are taking advantage of this revision in the provisions
governing performance rights to begin investing in the construction of theaters
as a means to enter the cultural entertainment field. And, lately there has been
a resulting increase in commissions to artists for the planning and management
of productions from these corporations now entering the field of performing arts
with no expertise in creating works or production know-how. Certainly these new
private sector theaters will become the focus of attention in the future as places
for independent artists to perform their own works.
As seen in this recent revision in the rules governing performance rights, there
has been a basic change in policy by the Chinese government regarding cultural
enterprise. Whereas until now the government has been the primary provider of
performance art productions, the new policy seeks to make cultural enterprises
financially independent and thus foster a new industry. The result is a movement
toward privatization, which will not only encourage the entry of private sector
companies but also force public sector companies to revise their management practices.
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