it has been a weekend of meetings and rain, which means few pictures, but many words. it was also a time of unexpected insight into the importance of charisma. i’m not sure yet where this might lead me theoretically. nevertheless, it seems worth writing down how i came to this insight because that may allow me to track which of my assumptions are blinding me to something everyone around me is taking for granted.

the school i work for is changing its name and leadership. previously, the school was a branch of a famous beijing school. on sunday may 28, the school announced that it will be working with one of shenzhen’s most famous and successful principals to develop an elite program. throughout the speeches given both during the meeting and afterwards at lunch, it became clear that the school board understood previous failures to be failures of leadership. one of the board members summarized the situation as, “we didn’t have a shepherd, but we’ve always had high quality sheep. now that we’ve got a shepherd, everyone can relax” this sentence suddenly clarified for me what actually took place the day before, when yang qian and i met with tian qinxin, wang hanyi, and dai yu for lunch and three hours of conversation.

tian, wang, dai, yang, and i are not only involved in theatre production, but also friends of long standing. these friendships provide both companionship and the social matrix in which fat bird nests. this is important. the kind of charisma that seemed stressed this weekend was the ability to both nourish these relationships and use them to create theatre.

in the early 90s, tian qinxin worked in a shenzhen advertising agency and yang qian was a new functionary in the recently established nanshan district ministry of culture. both had escaped from beijing to shenzhen. yang qian had just given up on his first marriage and the possibility of doing journalism; he turned to playwriting to express through fiction truths that just-the-facts often missed. in 1994, tian qinxin’s ex directed yang qian’s play “intentional injury” for the chinese national experimental theatre. she was in shenzhen recovering from that break-up. for half a year, tian qinxin and yang qian got together to drink, smoke, and talk about theatre and lost opportunities. the two also worked with xiong yuanwei on one of shenzhen’s first theatrical productions, “i love mozart”. xiong yuanwei produced, tian qinxin directed, and yang qian played a “fat white hooligan”. (the expression “fat and white” refers to corrupt officials who do nothing but stay out of the sun and eat.) yang qian finally encouraged tian qinxin to quit her job and return to beijing. he decided to stay in shenzhen, however. tian qinxin is now the only woman director at the chinese national theatre and has won all of china’s top theatrical awards.

yang qian and i met dai yu in 1997, when zero sun moon produced “eternal return” as part of the hong kong handover celebrations organized by nanshan district. (i wrote about the szm years and “eternal return” in “Zero Sun Moon: The Cultural Politics of Seeing Performance,” Theatre InSight 10:1 (Spring 1999), 27-32.) that fall, dai yu left shenzhen to study playwriting at the chinese theatre academy, where tian qinxin has taught. today, dai yu is a functionary in the shenzhen ministry of culture. she was the one who helped yang qian register fat bird with the municipal government. most recently, she arranged for fat bird’s inclusion in the 2006 cultural industries fair.

wang hanyi is tian’s partner and collaborator. the two came to shenzhen because as part of the cultural industry fair, shenzhen municipality invited tian to stage her play 生死场 (place of life and death) at the shenzhen grand theatre.

so on the day that life and death premiered in shenzhen, the five of us gathered to discuss the possibility of making theatre in china. the conversation circled around the question of how to make theatre in an environment where “reforming” china’s main theatre troupes means “no longer providing financial support”. although she has not publically commented on the reforms, tian qinxin has an interesting position in this debate because her recent (very influential) kunqu production of “peach blossom fan (桃花扇) with the jiansu performance company (江苏省演艺集团) has been heralded as an examplar of why reform works. in this case, the head of the company invited her and other outside artists to nanjing to create a financially viable piece. and they did. so whatever she thinks about reform, her work is now offered as an example of the benefits of reforming state subsidized art institutions, specfically theatre troupes.

tian qinxin emphasized that by establishing fat bird, yang qian had opened a possible site for making theatre in this new environment. indeed, it was early in the reforms and so he had a chance to take advantage of new conditions in ways that other people didn’t. dai yu commented that for this to happen, yang qian would have to become more active. he couldn’t continue to keep himself aloof from society and pursue “pure art”. tian qinxin agreed, that in order to have the opportunity to do art, it was necessary for yang qian to pay his dues and create popular works.

just a few notes on what “paying one’s dues” might mean in practice. in part it means doing things you don’t want to do, like creating popular pieces that don’t actually inspire you. it means garnering awards so that you can convince officials you are in fact legitimate. it also means, going from friend to friend and asking them to contribute some money for the production. wining and dining all the folks that you need to in order to get it up. going door to door to door in order to sell tickets (and tickets must be sold so that you can pay back your friends, otherwise you’re incompetant). going university to university arranging to have the play performed for students, who are the biggest and most receptive audience to new works. implicit in all this is that one pays dues in order to become big because only these people have the influence to make the kinds of work they want to make.

wang hanyi then pointed to the traditional model of chinese opera troupes, where all the members supported one main performer. that main performer was the star of any production by the troupe. she pointed to mei lanfang as an important example of that kind of star. when it was time to stage a large production, which had several main roles, several troupes would collaborate and then break up afterwards. it was the 个人魅力 (charisma) of the central character that enabled a particular troupe to both attract an audience and to keep the troupe together. tian qinxin agreed that individual charisma was fundamental to accomplishing anything in china, not just theatre. “after all,” she said, “we have idolized emperors for 5,000 years. the point is to use this to make theatre.”

at first, i didn’t follow the logic that jumped from making theatre through a critique of yang qian, who was called a little master, aloof, and lazy to a discussion of traditional chinese opera troupes. no one else seem lost, however. indeed, yang qian thanked them for their advise. but in retrospect, it now seems that for tian, wang, and dai, yang qian had a responsibility not simply to lead the troupe, but to make it happen. they believed that the troupe was yang qian, and his decisions would shape whether or not all other fat bird members could make theatre. in this context, each of their comments became reminders that if yang qian was to make theatre, he needed to take charge of the troupe in a direct and personal way; he needed to become a shepherd, so to speak.

perhaps i am working with a different folk conception of “individual” than are my friends and husband. for me, the individual is expressed through doing what he or she wants; cooperation is the practice that links individuals in creative activity. however, at lunch yesterday, there were two understandings of cooperation in play–one between friends and one between leaders and troupe members. both forms of cooperation were important. my idea of the individual tends to preclude consideration of groups, but dai yu reiterated several times that yang qian needed others to accomplish his goals; he was too “independent” or perhaps too willing to maintain his independence vis-a-vis others. i also tend to downplay the importance of charisma in these forms of cooperation. yet, according to tian qinxin 个人魅力 (geren meili) was fundamental to the success or failure of theatre specifically, and social projects more generally.

it now occurs to me that “force of one’s personality” might be a more colloquial translation of what was at stake in her comments. she assumed that collective activity could only be achieved through the force of an individual’s personality, including the ability to pay dues, endure, and inspire others to follow one. she also assumed it was desirable to become this kind of a person. is that the difference between how i was hearing and they were speaking? not so much a cultural difference as individual preference? i don’t want all the responsibility that such a position would entail.

another discription of what makes a good core person/leader: 三个硬 (the three hards). a leader should have hard earlobes, so they know when to listen and when not to; a leader should have hard shoulders to shoulder responsibility; and a leader should have hard hands, so they can take charge and not let go.

yet another example: a friend told me that if there was a fire, leaders would leave first and then everyone else. if the leaders didn’t escape, no one else would. i asked if this was policy. no, my friend replied, it would just happen naturally. we chinese would wait for the leaders to go and then follow.

questions to think about: how might these descriptions fit into the category of “natural leader” that americans throw around? and should i go back to my weber?

an after-the-fact update. sunday night, tian, yang, and i had dinner with wei ping, a functionary still working in the nanshan district ministry of culture. wei ping lived in the same dormitory as yang qian in the early 1990s. she also participated in the “i love mozart” production. during dinner, tian qinxin reiterated many of the points she had made before. wei ping echoed these thoughts and than added it would be relatively easy for yang qian to make fat bird fly because he had “人缘 (renyuan)”. renyuan also belongs to the set of ideas/words/assumptions that make up a good leader. basically, i understand it to mean that if you have 人缘 your life is smoother because people like you and therefore are willing to help you. tian qinxin concurred and then told us about how many dinners she had to host in order to coax the jiangsu artists to work with her. yang qian, she concluded, shouldn’t be so aloof from other people. he wasn’t willing to pay his dues. if you did this work with sincerity, she emphasized, even relationships that start out with instrumental intentions might become happy collaborations. renyuan could transform awkward situations into opportunities; this capacity was in fact a pre-equisite for doing collaborative art like theatre.

shenzhen