'Shawshank' in China, like you've never seen it before

When a stage production of “The Shawshank Redemption” recently opened in China, it was cast entirely by Western actors who spoke fluent Mandarin Chinese. But that was perhaps the least surprising part of the show.

That the show – an adaptation of Stephen King's novella that became one of the most beloved films of all time – was staged at all seemingly flew in the face of several trends in China's cultural sphere.

Chinese audiences' interest in Hollywood films is waning and moviegoers are turning to homegrown productions. China's authoritarian government has fueled nationalism and portrayed Western influence as a political polluter. Censorship of the arts has tightened.

Still, the production reflects how some artists are trying to navigate the changing landscape of both what is allowed and what is marketable in China. And its success shows the hunger that many Chinese still have for cultural exchange.

“The Shawshank Redemption” – the story of a man wrongly convicted of murder who defies the tyranny of prison officials and ultimately makes a daring escape – has been a target for Chinese censors before. Mentions of it were briefly censored online in 2012, after a prominent Chinese dissident escaped house arrest and fled to the US embassy. In general, Chinese authorities have shown little tolerance for calls, artistic or otherwise, for freedom and resistance to injustice.

There were also logistical challenges. The production team wanted to use foreign actors to make the adaptation feel more authentic. But the number of expats in China has plummeted in recent years, making it even harder to find enough foreigners who can speak stage-worthy Mandarin – a small pool to begin with. The economic slowdown in China has also made audiences reluctant to spend money on theater performances.

All of this made the show's arrival in China perhaps not as tricky as a prison break, but certainly not a sure bet.

“I accepted the project thinking, 'This sounds like a great idea, if they can pull it off,'” says Mark Rowswell, a Canadian comedian and television personality who played Red, the prison smuggler immortalized in Morgan's film Freeman.

“But you have to be prepared, you just never know,” continued Mr Rowswell, who is widely known in China by his stage name Dashan. He has been performing in the country since the 1980s, when he was one of the few foreigners fluent enough. “You could rehearse for two months and then the whole thing gets canceled.”

After initially slow ticket sales in Shenzhen, the four-day show nearly sold out in Beijing last month in a 1,600-seat theater. The production received a 7.8 rating on Douban, a crowdsourced review site, and a national tour is planned for the spring.

Casts from overseas productions have long toured China, and Chinese actors have played Mandarin-language adaptations of roles that came from abroad. But this was billed as the first Mandarin production with an all-foreign cast.

The genesis of the idea, according to the production team, was simple: the film “Shawshank” was extremely popular in China, so theatergoers would definitely want to see it too. And since it was a foreign story, why not get foreign actors?

However, that seemingly simple analysis raised a host of questions about translation, both linguistic and cultural.

The director, Zhang Guoli, is a prominent Chinese actor and director trained in xiangsheng, a form of classical Chinese comedy. The eleven actors came from eight countries, including the United States, Finland and Russia. Fluency in Mandarin was more important than professional stage experience; the hero Andy Dufresne was played by James Clarke, a national director at the Australia China Business Council.

During rehearsals, actors had to reconcile a more local theater style, often found in the West, with Mr. Zhang.

There were also thornier issues of adaptation, especially what would make it through Chinese censors.

The script the Chinese production used was a translation of a 2009 stage adaptation by two writers from the United Kingdom, Owen O'Neill and Dave Johns. Both the 2009 script and the Hollywood film are full of profanity and contain explicit references to the sexual violence Andy suffers in prison.

The Chinese version used only mild profanity. One character used the word rape, but briefly. Unlike the film and original play, no mention of homosexuality was made.

During publicity interviews, the cast and crew leaned on the theme of hope without emphasizing freedom, said Yao Yi, the show's producer, knowing the latter could be considered sensitive.

Yet other parts that might have been difficult to include in a contemporary Chinese play remained intact. Characters recited Bible verses. The overall plot – and sympathetic portrayal of the prisoners – remained unchanged.

Stage productions are often less tightly regulated than films, given their smaller audiences. Copyright laws also limited how much the production team could change.

The use of foreign actors may also have reassured authorities that it was “a purely Western story” and “not an allegory after all,” Rowswell said.

Ms Yao said she was confident the public would also be receptive to the story.

“The Shawshank Redemption” is still the highest-rated film — of all films, not just the Chinese ones — about Douban, showing that Chinese audiences have not completely turned away from Hollywood, she said. And Chinese theatergoers in particular were a self-selecting group, hungry for more international perspectives, she said. “People who go to see plays,” she said, “are looking for some kind of spiritual fulfillment.”

But cast members also recognized the need to adapt to the changing tastes of Chinese audiences.

Ben Hubley, an American who played young prisoner Tommy, said he hoped the production would be a “subtle but important” bridge between the United States and China amid deteriorating relations. Still, he doubted the show would have been as popular if it had been performed only in English.

“It feels like the intent behind it is much clearer than just a big American production coming in,” Mr. Hubley said. “I think we're at a point where, if you want to get here, your intention behind the project is super important.”

After one of the shows in Beijing, the question of how to categorize the production seemed far from the minds of many spectators. As the crowd – including children, young adults and grandparents – filed into the lobby of the Beijing Tianqiao Performing Arts Center, taking photos with cardboard cutouts of the actors and posing with propped beer bottles, several theatergoers said they went simply because they loved the film. .

Li Zuyi, a recent university graduate, said he initially did not know the cast was foreign. He's seen “Shawshank” more than a dozen times — a still of Andy after his escape was his phone wallpaper — and he would have gone to see the play anyway.

But another audience member, Annie Dong, 28, said the novelty of seeing foreign actors speaking Mandarin had attracted her. She wanted to see the foreign stories “localized,” she said, adding that the integration of Chinese slang into the script made it more relatable.

She hoped that foreigners would eventually perform not only in adaptations of foreign plays, but also in Chinese ones. “This kind of cultural mixing and collision is something I look forward to,” she said.

But the factors that made this production hard-fought may remain an obstacle.

The number of Americans learning Mandarin has fallen in recent years, and the population of foreigners in cities like Beijing and Shanghai has not yet recovered from the crisis. drop during the pandemic. Many Westerners also remain hesitant to travel to China now that the country is inland.

Mr. Rowswell was in Canada when he was approached for this piece, and until then he did not know when he would return.

“Maybe it's something that will become harder in the future, not easier,” he said of similar productions.