{"id":4930,"date":"2011-12-02T07:05:49","date_gmt":"2011-12-02T07:05:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/?p=4930\/"},"modified":"2017-08-29T01:53:32","modified_gmt":"2017-08-29T01:53:32","slug":"chinese-allow-play-on-pentagon-papers-but-not-a-talk-about-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/chinese-allow-play-on-pentagon-papers-but-not-a-talk-about-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinese Allow Play on Pentagon Papers, but Not a Talk About It"},"content":{"rendered":"

Check out the full New York Times article at this link.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

BEIJING \u2014 As far as dramatic timing goes, the text message from the powers that be announcing the sudden cancellation of a post-performance discussion of \u201cTop Secret: Battle for the Pentagon Papers\u201d<\/a> was, well, perfectly timed.<\/p>\n

The message, sent to the cellphone of the play\u2019s producer on Friday night, warned of \u201cunforeseen consequences spreading beyond the theater,\u201d should the audience at Peking University be allowed to openly discuss the work, which delves into delicate matters like press freedom, power-hungry political leaders and the Nixon administration\u2019s desire to quash information it deemed embarrassing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was rather ironic but it drove home the issues in the play,\u201d the producer, Alison Friedman, said moments after the house lights came up, and the crowd, many of them students at Peking, China\u2019s most prestigious university, drifted away. \u201cI can\u2019t say we were surprised.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps the bigger surprise was that this spare, fast-paced docudrama, performed in English and financed partly by the American Embassy, was even staged in a country whose skittish cultural czars regularly block movies, books and plays they find objectionable.<\/p>\n

In late August, for example, the authorities canceled \u201cDr. Sun Yat-sen,\u201d a sumptuous new opera about that Chinese revolutionary that was weeks away from opening at the National Center for Performing Arts. Officials described the action as a \u201cpostponement,\u201d but they told its producers that the opera was politically problematic.<\/p>\n

Susan Albert Loewenberg, the producing director of L.A. Theater Works, which shepherded \u201cTop Secret\u201d to China through a thicket of logistical, financial and bureaucratic obstacles, said there were many times during the two-and-a-half-year odyssey when she thought the production was dead.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrankly, I\u2019m amazed we got this far,\u201d she said. \u201cThen again, we still have two nights to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the journey of \u201cTop Secret\u201d holds any lessons for Western theater producers seeking to reach Chinese audiences, it is this: Have a seasoned guide, avoid the country\u2019s most high-profile performance spaces and be prepared for countless frustrations and disappointments. American companies that had supported L.A. Theater Works in the past refused to back its China production; permits did not materialize until the last moment; and an earlier panel discussion planned for Guangzhou was also scotched.<\/p>\n

But the rewards, as Ms. Loewenberg and Geoffrey Cowan, an author of the play, tell it, have been immense. During its 10-day run \u201cTop Secret\u201d has played to sold-out audiences in Shanghai and Guangzhou, with many performances punctuated by shouts of approval from the audience and standing ovations.<\/p>\n

Perhaps most gratifying for the producers was that those audiences were almost entirely Chinese and young, many of whom learned about the production through weibo, the Twitter-like microblog service that has revolutionized the way Chinese communicate with one another \u2014 including expressions of displeasure over government malfeasance.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a refreshing contrast to the U.S., where you\u2019re always playing to 60-year-olds and struggling to reach younger audiences,\u201d Ms. Loewenberg said.<\/p>\n

\"From

From left, Josh Stamberg, Amy Pietz and Peter Van Norden in \u201cTop Secret,\u201d at Peking University. The play, from L.A. Theater Works, is performed in English.<\/p><\/div>\n

Communist Party officials could be forgiven for viewing the play through their gimlet eyes as an unalloyed slice of American propaganda, even if the creators of \u201cTop Secret\u201d had no such intentions. Written by Mr. Cowan and Leroy Aarons, who died in 2004, it was first produced by L.A. Theater Works in 1991 as a radio play. Spanning several days, it dramatizes the showdown between the White House and The Washington Post as that paper balanced the threat of criminal prosecution against its desire to burnish its journalistic chops by publishing the Pentagon\u2019s secret history of United States\u2019 involvement in the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n

The story begins on June 17, 1971, after a federal court has enjoined The New York Times \u2014 which had already published three installments based on the documents \u2014 from publishing any more. The Post promptly gets its hands on copies of the papers, and what follows is an exploration of the role of the press in keeping a secretive and manipulative government in check.<\/p>\n

After a judge rules in the paper\u2019s favor, a reporter gives a rousing valedictory about press freedom as a hedge against tyranny as John Lennon\u2019s rousing anthem \u201cPower to the People\u201d bathes the house.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve played in a lot of theaters, but to have 1,400 people in China cheering for the little guy is subversive,\u201d said Josh Stamberg, who plays Ben Bradlee, the Post\u2019s hard-charging editor.<\/p>\n

To get as far as it has, L.A. Theater Works relied on Ms. Friedman, whose company, Ping Pong Productions, specializes in taking international performing arts to China and Chinese troupes to the West. After nearly a decade living and working here, she has learned how to navigate a maze of permits and egos, when to massage cultural bureaucrats and, perhaps most important, whom to call when roadblocks suddenly appear.<\/p>\n

Even though the unmistakable message of \u201cTop Secret\u201d is the importance of a free press and an independent judiciary in the face of a bullying government, the producers gingerly pitched their production as a Vietnam War-era contretemps between President Nixon and the press.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey put the play in the \u2018American history\u2019 box,\u201d Ms. Friedman said of the many officials who gave the production a green light. \u201cWe also chose low-profile partners. We didn\u2019t want the government to think too heavily about the play.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the end it was low-level bureaucrats who stood in their way, especially when it came to the troupe\u2019s final performances in Beijing, which end on Sunday. Although arranged months in advance, the Peking University show did not receive its required permit until the day before showtime.<\/p>\n

Even then, the producers were stunned to learn they could not sell tickets. The permit, they were told, also limited the audience to 1,000, ensuring the theater was less than half full.<\/p>\n

Although she had been told to steer clear of \u201csensitive topics,\u201d Ms. Friedman said she was assured that the post-performance discussion would go ahead as planned, as it had in Shanghai. It was just after intermission when she received the disappointing text message. Later, as the cast was taking its bow and she was announcing the cancellation of the discussion, she could hear a university official exhorting a technician to kill her microphone.<\/p>\n

It was too late. A sigh rose through the members of the crowd, but as they filed out of the theater, few expressed surprise.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought the play was very meaningful,\u201d Yin Wenhong, 27, a book editor, said with some hesitation as she left the building. \u201cIt would be nice if our government could open their minds and learn something from this play.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Check out the full New York Times article at this [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4911,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized-cn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/SiteFiller3.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4930"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4930"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6378,"href":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4930\/revisions\/6378"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pingpongarts.org\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}