Our Expectations
We welcome all creative projects that engage with the concept of the “Sinophone” and result in theatrical performances. Whether it is a play, a puppet show, a musical, an opera (traditional Chinese or European), a live media art performance, a poetry recital, or anything that could be performed on stage, the only requirement in form is the main submission must be text-based, while supplemental materials like musical scores, illustrations, or videos could be submitted separately. We encourage and admire creative ways to translate your vision for the stage on the page.
We define “Sinophone” as very broadly “Chinese-speaking,” denoting any community that recognizes a Sinitic language or dialect as one of its media of expressing itself culturally, orally, and/or literarily, whether it is in places where such languages and the culture they stand for are dominant, as in the Greater China region, or in areas where they are marginalized, like the diasporic Chinese communities in Malaysia or the U.S. We encourage our participants to think about the concept of “Sinophone” critically, creatively, and globally through theater-making. We accept submissions in both Chinese and English, for the lack of expertise in other languages in our committee, as we recognize that modern Chinese theater has always been transcultural and multilingual. Written forms of Chinese dialects, such as Cantonese, Hokkien, and Hakka, are welcome, but we do ask for a translation in standard modern literary Chinese to be included in the footnotes.
The negotiation among Chinese theater’s cultural heritage, that is, traditional forms of Xiqu (Chinese Opera), its 20th-century informant, that is, Euro-American theatrical traditions, and its globalizing ambition is still an ongoing process. Therefore, we encourage our participants to reflect on these issues in their creative projects. However, there is no fixed theme or requirement in the subject matter of the performance, and our participants can interpret “Sinophone” liberally. At the same time, we identify the promotion of traditional Xiqu (Chinese Opera) as one of our core missions, and we designate a special category for submissions that use a Xiqu form or have Xiqu as their subject matter.