Volume 12

From Home to Stage: Applied Theatre as Social Practice in a Residential Community

Shuangshuang Cai

UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK

INTRODUCTION

China’s period of reform, opening-up, and economic transformation has triggered nationwide urban expansion. By 2024, the official urbanization rate reached 67% (Urbanization rate). As populations shifted from villages with stable social ties into high-rise apartments, daily life transformed profoundly. The experience of greeting familiar neighbours and encountering childhood acquaintances gave way to a reality of pervasive anonymity. Returning daily to the same building often involves no greeting, let alone meaningful interaction. Chinese anthropologist Xiang Biao (2021) identifies this condition as the “vanishing nearby,” arguing that “the displacement of fujin (‘the nearby’) in public consciousness is partially responsible...particularly the neighborhood and the workplace where everyday interactions take place, the nearby—vanished in consciousness” (p. 148). Since the pandemic, this phenomenon has intensified. The rise of food delivery, on-demand services, and digital platforms enables urban residents to maintain daily routines without leaving home. Xiang observes that when physical coexistence no longer cultivates intimacy, we lose the very fulcrum upon which shared meaning is built (2021, p. 148). Therefore, revitalising the tangible connections of the neighbourhood has become an urgent task—one that requires reigniting interpersonal intimacy and reconstructing the anchors of human relationships in China.

This period of rapid urbanisation coincided with China’s historic property boom. As mid-to-high-end developments entered the market, targeting educated, professionally established middle and upper-middle-class families, it became clear that purchasing decisions involved more than securing shelter. These buyers sought lifestyles and social identity. As Miao Ying (2017) notes, certain segments of the middle class exercise considerable freedom in purchasing non-essential goods or adopting specific lifestyles to signal social status (p. 638). Indeed, potential buyers now approach property acquisition with more sophisticated criteria, evaluating developments through a multidimensional lens that extends far beyond physical structures. Their decision-making calculus increasingly incorporates cultural ecosystems, community vibrancy, and opportunities for meaningful engagement—precisely the elements that community-based theatre and related initiatives effectively cultivate. This evolution in consumer behavior simultaneously presents developers with both challenge and opportunity: the necessity to transcend conventional amenities and deliver truly distinctive living experiences that resonate with these elevated expectations. Thus, the inherent difficulty in cultivating genuine community became a critical challenge for developers aiming to attract this affluent demographic.

Within this context, a prime example is the Aranya project in Qinhuangdao, Hebei Province, which strategically integrated community-based theatre to achieve exceptional market resonance. From its initial community-based theatre production of Eight Women[1]  in 2015, through the musical Nine to Five[2] in 2016, to its ambitious staging of the Chinese classic Teahouse[3] in 2020, Aranya has systematically developed a distinctive brand identity rooted in real-estate-integrated community theatre (Li, 2021). When this demographic—predominantly professionals aged 35 to 45, established in their careers with stable incomes and a conscious pursuit of work-life balance—engaged in Aranya’s community activities, a cultural shift became visible. The community fostered what Wang (2022) terms a “return to family, self, nature, and spiritual life.” In this context, the vanishing nearby that concerned Xiang Biao has begun, quietly, to recede. Meanwhile, this was reflected not only in appreciating property values and sustained demand but also in the creation of its own cultural landmark: the Aranya Theatre Festival. The 2021 Aranya Theatre Festival featured 40 Chinese and international directors presenting 29 plays across 94 performances, including 16 overseas productions, achieving significant commercial and artistic impact (Cheng, 2025). The process of developing and performing community-based theatre, integrated with the theatre festival’s operations, directly facilitated the formation of a shared community identity. Participants in this creative process began identifying as “Aranya people,” finding a sense of belonging among like-minded residents (Li, 2021). This fostered a self-sustaining internal ecosystem where the brand and operational model could perpetuate themselves, ensuring the continuous production of cultural identity and the development of a stronger community alliance.

Aranya’s strategic adoption of community-based theatre—a distinct branch of applied theatre—stemmed from its unique capacity to address two fundamental challenges in upscale community development: the need for distinctive cultural branding and the imperative to overcome social fragmentation. Unlike conventional marketing approaches or temporary cultural events, community-based theatre provides an embodied, participatory framework that simultaneously cultivates cultural capital and fosters organic social bonds. It’s worth noting that applied theatre is a distinct form of theatre that emerged and evolved during the 1950s and 1960s, characterized by its strong applied dimension. Unlike traditional theatre, which often catered to elite or middle-class audiences and prioritized art for art’s sake (Shaughnessy, 2012, p. 16; Nicholson, 2014, p. 8), applied theatre extends its reach into non-traditional spaces such as orphanages, refugee camps, schools, nursing homes, prisons, and other community-based venues. Its core focus lies in cultural engagement, educational innovation, and social change (Nicholson, 2008, p. 273), with an emphasis on marginalized populations, political expression, and interdisciplinary collaboration (Shaughnessy, 2012, p. XVII; Balfour, 2009, p. 349). In these unconventional settings, applied theatre practitioners engage with diverse groups through ethnographic observation, interviews, and theatre workshops, etc., they listen to participants’ stories, co-create content tailored to their experiences, and use performances to amplify the voices and narratives of the communities themselves (Denzin, 2003, p. 202; Reason & Rowe, 2017, p. 14; Duffy & Vettraino, 2010).

The Aranya case reveals a complex dynamic between resident-participants and the artistic team, a relationship complicated by the property developer’s dual role as funding provider (Freebody et al., 2018, p. 10). But it does demonstrate how applied theatre can activate social dynamics within an exclusive residential community. It connects neighbours who, despite being strangers, share fundamental aspirations for quality of life. In this context, theatre ceases to be a scheduled event and becomes an organic social process—emerging spontaneously within shared spaces and transforming anonymous co-residents into collaborative creators. This represents a significant evolution from applied theatre’s traditional role in marginalized communities to its new function in affluent environments: no longer filling social voids but rather reconstituting meaningful connection within contexts of material abundance.

At its core, applied theatre practice is an act of human encounter. Through the lens of Toni Ross’s (2006) response to Nicolas Bourriaud’s relational aesthetics, it constitutes a collaborative process where “artists and members of the public, or art and diverse disciplines, converge as equals to form a unified whole” (p. 171). When neighbours enter a theatrical space together, deepen understanding through dialogue, and collectively embody characters’ experiences on stage—witnessing the glistening tears and laughter lines in each other’s eyes—they enact what Xiang Biao (2021) describes as the “First Mile Movement”: a commitment to attentively observing all people and things within one’s immediate surroundings (p. 159). This aligns with John Dewey’s (1939/1976) assertion that “For every way of life that fails in its democracy limits the contacts, the exchanges, the communications, the interactions by which experience is steadied while it is also enlarged and enriched” (pp. 229-230).

It is also worth noting that the development of applied theatre in China is a relatively recent phenomenon. Its professionalisation is often marked by the establishment of the Art Education programme (later renamed Drama Education) at the Shanghai Theatre Academy in 2005 (Shanghai Theatre Academy), which began supplying graduates to disseminate knowledge and practice. By 2025, the field will have existed for merely two decades.

This study focuses on one specific branch—community-based theatre—and its integration with real estate development to unlock unique social potential. This fusion of real estate with cultural content generated significant added brand value. Similarly, in 2012, the Jiuzhou and Greentown Groups launched the Lakewood Hills (翠湖香山, cuì hú xiāng shān) project in Zhuhai—an integrated international community featuring residences, a golf course, hotels, and commercial spaces. By 2019, with residents settled, the project team collaborated with the researcher to pilot a community-based theatre model, establishing the Lakewood Hills Theatre Festival. A second edition in 2021, post-pandemic, saw qualitative growth in participation, live attendance, and online viewership.

Notably, Lakewood Hills is an upscale community attracting educators, officials, entrepreneurs, and residents from Hong Kong and Macau, China. Yet, like many new urban developments, it faces the challenge of uniting diverse residents into a cohesive community. Limited shared experiences and weak identity formation among new neighbours are common issues. From the outset, this project defined its theatre festival not as “professionals performing for residents,” but as “residents creating and performing their own stories for themselves and their community.” This practice directly embodies Denzin’s (2003) conception of applied theatre as a democratic art form—for the people, by the people, and with the people (p. 201). It functions as a powerful instrument for fostering social participation and driving tangible change, bringing both hope and substantive transformation to communities. The stage is thus viewed not as an end goal, but as a ritualised space for consolidating and elevating community bonds—merely the opening act of a longer-term relational process.

Based on this foundation, this study investigates how theatre functions as social practice within an affluent community—a context not typically associated with social intervention. Through practical experimentation and analysis, it examines the mechanisms through which applied theatre exerts influence. The research shares these operational processes to expand applied theatre’s theoretical framework, proposing a shift from traditional therapeutic/empowerment models toward well-being/community-building paradigms in developed urban contexts. Ultimately, it seeks to construct imaginable lifestyles through Chinese applied theatre practice, thereby enriching domestic community case studies while providing property developers, community workers, and cultural institutions with replicable models for cultural revitalization.

LAKEWOOD HILLS THEATRE FESTIVAL IN 2019 AND 2021

Process of Community-Based Theatre: The Unfold[4]

The 2019 Lakewood Hills Theatre Festival drew inspiration from the Arayna model, establishing a primary objective for its inaugural two-month program: to position residents—with no prior stage experience—as the central performers. The festival’s core mission became enabling these residents to narrate authentic stories reflecting their lived experiences and local culture. Through extensive consultation between the creative and community operations teams, the festival committed to developing an original production rooted in community life rather than staging existing works. The resulting play, The Unfold, employed a metatheatrical play-within-a-play structure requiring actors to portray dual roles. Its framework depicts the fictional Xiangshan[5] Theatre Troupe, an amateur ensemble facing dissolution due to financial pressures. The narrative reveals each member’s personal struggles and their perceived insignificance within broader historical currents, culminating in a climactic rehearsal argument that paradoxically enables their final successful performance and secures renewed funding. To embed the production within Zhuhai’s local cultural context, the inner play adapts the local legend the Zhuhai Fisher Girl, in which a celestial being falls in love with a mortal fisherman. Their romance provokes opposition from her divine family, ultimately leading to their tragic joint demise.

While this paper does not focus on dramaturgical analysis, examining the creative process behind the 2019 festival’s final production reveals the operational logic of Lakewood Hills’ community-based theatre model. The production’s framework strategically mirrors the participants’ own realities: the amateur actors—teachers, students, and professionals in their daily lives—portray characters whose struggles with compromise and passion directly echo their own commitment to the theatre project. Their fictional troupe’s impending dissolution parallels the real-world challenges of sustaining community art, while their fictional perseverance reflects the participants’ actual dedication. The play-within-a-play structure, incorporating the local Zhuhai Fisher Girl legend, serves dual purposes. For the performers, it provides an emotional conduit to express themselves through archetypal roles, fulfilling collective artistic aspirations. For the audience, it creates immediate cultural recognition through familiar folklore. The legendary characters’ unwavering devotion forms a thematic parallel to the actors’ fictional—and actual—determination to persevere despite adversity, completing a powerful narrative cycle that blurs the lines between performed fiction and community reality. This process echoes the “integration of the actual and the imaginary” inherent in dramatic creation (Norris, 2017, Introduction).

Indeed, the participants’ engagement in The Unfold embodied the same collective spirit as the fictional Xiangshan Theatre Troupe they portrayed. Throughout the creative process, residents contributed essential authenticity by refining dialogue based on their professional and personal experiences. They provided nuanced insights into character depiction—from an investor’s demeanor and a migrant worker’s living conditions to contemporary intergenerational relationships. Furthermore, participants actively sourced practical production elements, bringing brooms, tables, school uniforms, and work attire from their own homes. These real-life props and costumes significantly enhanced the performance’s textual and visual credibility, strengthening its connection with local audiences through immediately recognizable details.

Educational Theatre for Families

The two-month theatre festival confronted a fundamental challenge of applied practice: how to achieve broad community impact when the final production involved only 13 resident performers. Restricting participation to this select group would have contradicted applied theatre’s core democratic principle of inclusive engagement. Indeed, participation limited to thirteen individuals inherently contradicts the core objective of fostering community cohesion and alleviating social isolation (Ashleya & Wookey, 2024, p. 4). This limitation was strategically addressed through parallel educational theatre workshops. Simultaneously, it fulfils parents' desire for activities that integrate engagement with educational value. Scheduled weekly throughout the festival, these two-hour sessions invited parent-child dyads to explore picture books through drama games and interactive dramatic techniques. The workshops created an accessible entry point to theatrical experience, allowing families to encounter drama’s expressive potential while deepening their understanding of narrative through “embodied learning” (Trowsdale & Hayhow, 2014). This auxiliary programming effectively expanded the festival’s reach beyond performing participants to engage the wider community as active spectators and learners. As Baumol William J and Bowen William G (1968/1973) acknowledge, “[o]bviously much remains to be done before the performing arts can truly be said to belong to the people” (p. 470). Nevertheless, when such activities become habitual over time, they cultivate a future audience for theatre. Participants cease to view the festival as separate from their lives; rather, they recognize that each element is interconnected—and that without an audience, no performance can be truly complete.

Using the picture book As Red As Rose[6] in an educational drama workshop on 24 August 2019, we engaged twelve families (twenty-five participants). The session began with a fundamental question: How many are experiencing drama for the first time? Nearly universal hand-raising confirmed the group’s novice status. When invited to voice their concerns, participants revealed telling assumptions:

• Participant A (parent) asked if Chinese opera singing would be required.

• Participant B (child) inquired about performance expectations and audience.

• Participant C (parent) expressed immediate anxiety: “We have to perform on stage? I’m completely unprepared. Can I quit now?”

• Participant D (child) referenced their school recitation experience instead.

Rather than addressing these individually, the facilitator reframed the context: “We’ll spend two hours together in this level space—no stage, just chairs and simple props. Your presence alone makes this workshop possible. Let’s experience first, and return to your questions afterward.” This approach immediately established the workshop’s participatory, non-performance-based nature while validating participants’ contributions through simple presence. The process never seeks to provide definitive answers but arrives at meaning through shared exploration. Indeed, such participatory programmes “reflect and reproduce a more inclusive and democratic use of space within theatres” (Ashley & Wookey, 2024, p. 5). This democratic and inclusive environment fosters a profound sense of safety and belonging among participants. In turn, this security deepens their commitment to active participation, establishing a positive feedback loop between facilitators and attendees that elevates the entire workshop dynamic.

The workshop began with spatial immersion, establishing the narrative world of the White Cat Clan residing on White Wind Mountain in the picture book. The facilitator transformed a simple white cloth into a three-dimensional mountain range through theatrical staging, eliciting spontaneous awe from participants as they witnessed theatre’s transformative potential. Participants then organized into family units to explore the story through two core educational theatre techniques. First is still image: each family collaboratively created physical tableaux depicting moments from the white cats’ daily lives—enjoying meals, sunbathing, or mountain climbing—establishing both character relationships and narrative normality. When the story introduced the disruptive arrival of a red cat, families created new still images revealing diverse responses: some huddling in suspicion, others expressing fear or hostility, while several showed openness through concerned or welcoming gestures. Second is thought tracking: this foundation of physical expression naturally transitioned to thought tracking, where participants vocalized their characters’ inner monologues, deepening emotional investment and narrative comprehension.

The integration of educational theatre workshops fundamentally transformed the festival’s scope and impact. While the final staged production involved only 13 performers, the parallel workshop series engaged dozens of families, expanding participation across generations—from preschoolers to parents in their fifties. This strategic expansion addressed applied theatre’s core democratic imperative while creating multiple access points for community engagement. Through techniques like still image and thought tracking, participants experienced theatre not as a predetermined script but as spontaneous co-creation. As Michael Kimmel and Dayana Hristova (2021) observe, such improvisation enables free-spirited exploration, inviting families into novel territories, and within a framework of safety and mutual respect, this space holds infinite potential, allowing participants to be drawn toward the unexpected and willingly embrace the unknown (p. 354). Meanwhile, each engagement undoubtedly transforms participants’ perspectives, demonstrating how theatre’s unique capacity extends far beyond the narrow conception of drama as merely a vehicle for transmitting information or moral lessons (O’Toole, 1977).

The workshops demonstrated that meaningful theatrical expression could emerge in ordinary spaces without professional staging, effectively demystifying theatre’s perceived elitism. Community-based theatre not only continues its established work in specialized settings like prisons and orphanages but also proactively enters ordinary households and neighborhoods, thereby becoming a binding agent within communities (Johnston, 1998). This approach revealed theatre’s dual capacity: as both a polished performance art and an immediate educational tool. Most significantly, the program enabled residents to recognize theatrical potential within their daily interactions—something to be created with family and neighbors rather than merely consumed as distant entertainment. This paradigm shift, from spectator to co-creator, represents the essential transformation that sustains community cultural development.

Forum: Theatre Makes Life Better

The festival further cultivated interdisciplinary dialogue through its public forum entitled Theatre: Making Life Better, which convened theatre scholars, directors, and a psychologist. Following keynote presentations connecting their expertise to the festival themes, a roundtable discussion examined rehearsal anecdotes and family workshop experiences, concluding with audience interaction. Audience composition revealed meaningful patterns: alongside returning community-based theatre participants, many new attendees appeared—some engaging deeply during Q&A sessions about balancing humanistic and academic education, while more reserved individuals absorbed content as listeners. Notably, elderly residents who initially attended for casual participation reported unexpected enjoyment, and the psychologist’s dual role as both expert and community member tangibly embodied the festival’s commitment to amplifying local voices.

Performance Night

Following extensive preparations and six weeks of collaborative rehearsals, the 90-minute production premiered at Hong Kong Baptist University (Zhuhai)’s UIC Theatre. The 250-seat venue reached full capacity, with an audience comprising almost exclusively community stakeholders beyond the essential property management staff. For most attendees, this represented not only their first theatrical experience but their inaugural encounter with a professionally staged production created and performed by their neighbours.

The performance featured comprehensive production design—including lighting, costumes, multimedia, and direction—meeting professional theatrical standards. Backstage, as artistic director, I observed both performers and audience throughout the show. Notably, the auditorium remained devoid of phone illumination, with spectators completely engaged in the dual narratives: the fictional troupe’s struggles and the embedded folk legend’s romance. Audience members watched with palpable anticipation, witnessing their neighbours’ transformation through the intensive creative process.

The production’s emotional authenticity clearly resonated. From the butterfly metamorphosis sequence symbolizing sacrificial love to the troupe's perseverance through financial hardship, the performance culminated in both artistic success and personal fulfillment for the participants. Post-performance, social media platforms—particularly WeChat Moments—flooded with documentation, generating community-wide celebration and regional media attention.

Selected audience responses captured the impact:

• “I never imagined a neighbours' performance could move me to tears.”

• “Their emotional authenticity rivaled professional actors.”

• “I deeply regret not participating—when is the next festival?”

• “Seeing my ordinarily reserved neighbour transformed on stage revealed incredible human potential.”

• “This wasn't just acting—they were telling their own journey.”

To maximize accessibility, the performance was live-streamed, unexpectedly attracting over 110,000 online viewers and significantly extending the project’s community impact.

As Table 1 illustrates, the 2019 Lakewood Hills Theatre Festival achieved unprecedented audience reach. The digital broadcast fundamentally transformed the event’s scope, enabling over 110,000 online viewers to participate beyond physical and temporal limitations. While the stream attracted some local residents prevented from attending, its primary viewership consisted of national audiences drawn through social sharing within community networks. This digital expansion not only demonstrated the project’s inclusive ethos but effectively repositioned a local community initiative as a shared cultural experience with national resonance. The overwhelming predominance of viewers with no prior connection to the development reveals a crucial dynamic: the production’s appeal lay precisely in its authentic representation of ordinary experience. Audiences engaged not for professional spectacle or celebrity appeal, but to witness people like themselves articulating shared human experiences through art. This demonstrates community-based theatre’s unique capacity to transcend its immediate context and achieve universal resonance when it foregrounds authentic collective expression rather than theatrical virtuosity.

Table 1: Distribution of Participant Types

2019 TO 2021: IN THE POST-PANDEMIC ERA, THEATRE BREATHED NEW LIFE INTO EVERYDAY EXISTENCE

The second theatre festival, postponed from 2020 to 2021, inherently carried a profoundly different significance. It emerged after over a year of pandemic restrictions—a period marked by health code monitoring, suspended live performances, and diminished collective celebration. Against this backdrop of cultural deprivation and emotional isolation, the festival answered an urgent communal need. For Lakewood Hills, the question was not whether to proceed, but how essential this gathering had become. The resounding affirmation to stage the production represented more than artistic programming; it became a vital act of cultural reaffirmation, offering participants and audiences alike the long-denied gifts of shared artistic immersion and collective hope.

The 2021 festival retained its core structure of community performances, family workshops, forums, and staged productions, but introduced a significant innovation in its play source material. The community-based theatre production drew from Ba Jin’s[7] novel Home and Cao Yu’s[8] dramatic adaptation, recontextualizing this Republican-era narrative for the post-pandemic reality.

This choice resonated deeply with audiences who had spent the pandemic reevaluating the meaning of family and human connection. While maintaining the original plot concerning the Gao family’s conflicts and romantic entanglements, the adaptation emphasized the youthful idealism of May Fourth intellectuals (五四青年, wǔ sì qīng nián) striving for personal and national transformation. The production’s climax featured performers advocating for social change through physical theatre set to The Internationale, creating an electric moment of collective catharsis.

From the lighting booth of Zhuhai Grand Theatre, I witnessed the complete dissolution of theatrical boundaries as the audience spontaneously joined the chorus. The fourth wall vanished entirely—spectators became participants, actors became witnesses, and the space transformed into a communal forum where complex emotions flowed freely. In that transcendent moment, theatre fulfilled its highest purpose: not as spectacle to be observed, but as a medium for shared human experience and collective meaning-making.

The 2021 festival marked a substantial expansion in both scale and impact. Actors participation more than doubled compared to 2019, while maintaining consistent workshop attendance. The relocation to the thousand-seat Zhuhai Grand Theatre created a significantly more ambitious production scale. A strategic decision to offer free nationwide streaming proved transformative, attracting over 300,000 online viewers and establishing new benchmarks for audience reach, public engagement, and cultural influence.

Table 2: Distribution of Participant Types

• Actor A reflected: “Portraying how our predecessors broke feudal constraints created dialogue not just with my character, but with the original authors themselves.”

• Actor B observed: “My character’s tragedy reflects how individuals become insignificant within historical currents—a resonance with the upheavals we all face today. Classics continue enlightening us through contemporary relevance.”

• Actor C noted: “Despite my minor role, contributing to this inspiring classic felt profoundly meaningful for both performers and audience.”

• Audience Member A shared: “This sophisticated adaptation made classic themes accessible, revealing our neighbors as hidden artists.”

• Audience Member B recalled: “The collective singing and applause from a thousand people created a rare, precious communal moment.”

• Audience Member C inquired: “Will this be recorded? I’d re-watch it repeatedly. Will the theatre festival continue next year?”

As both a researcher and a practitioner, I found out that these authentic responses reaffirm community-based theatre’s transformative capacity. The 2021 Lakewood Hills Theatre Festival represented a qualitative evolution from its 2019 predecessor. While the initial festival emerged during China’s final property market surge—emulating models like Aranya by partnering professionals with residents—the 2021 festival demonstrated a matured ecosystem. The original vision of cultivating internal community creativity had materialized: residents now cyclically assumed roles as directors, performers, and visual artists, with each production attracting new participants. This established a self-renewing cultural mechanism where residents became the primary agents of their own aesthetic and social fulfillment.

This transformation begins with cultivating aesthetic awareness among participants and organized groups. As community-based theatre establishes itself at Lakewood Hills, it generates a cultural ripple effect: Tai Chi clubs, painting societies, photography groups, and other artistic initiatives gradually emerge. Residents spontaneously organize activities and document their work through WeChat platforms, creating digital archives and virtual exhibitions to a wider range of audience. This visibility enables broader audiences to recognize Lakewood Hills’ organic cultural ecosystem, demonstrating how every resident possesses the potential to become an artist of daily life. Through this process, the cumulative development of aesthetic sensibility progressively guides individuals toward their personal ideal of fulfilled living.

Secondly, these initiatives directly address the “neighbourhood relations” central to this study. The pandemic and subsequent years of hardship have intensified the fragmentation of civil society in China, with the struggles of ordinary people permeating daily existence (Lems et al., 2025, p. 774). This accumulated weariness fuels a withdrawal from reality, creating a self-perpetuating cycle characterized by interpersonal alienation and a deep-seated loss of belonging. In the wake of pervasive social exclusion, community-based theatre serves to focus on those small and seemingly ordinary acts of repair undertaken by people to reclaim this world. While such initiatives neither seek therapeutic solutions nor offer comprehensive remedies, their very existence represents a conscious refusal to accept alienated existence as inevitable (Lems et al., 2025, pp. 775–776).

Community-based theatre and associated cultural activities function as relational bridges, drawing residents from isolated digital existences—characterized by phone-based shopping, food delivery, and private entertainment—into collaborative creation with neighbors within their immediate physical environment. This engagement represents not forced socialization, but purposeful collaboration through shared artistic projects. Participants temporarily adopt new identities, creating constructive distance from daily routines. This collective endeavor fundamentally repositions individuals within a social fabric, transforming vertical co-existence (“neighbors upstairs/downstairs”) into horizontal collaboration (“fellow performers”). Through character interpretation, residents articulate emotions and perspectives otherwise inaccessible in daily interaction, while dramatic conflicts prompt reconsideration of real-world relationships. Supported by professional staging and training, many experience theatrical expression for the first time, incorporating “drama,” “performance,” and “art” into their personal lexicons. This expansion of expressive capacity and social connection represents a fundamental form of adult growth—not merely artistic skill acquisition, but the development of new modes of being and relating.

The 2021 festival demonstrated how community-based theatre facilitates social reconnection after collective trauma. Beyond its artistic function, it created a vital space for processing pandemic experiences. When engaging new participants, conversations naturally began with shared pandemic experiences—quarantine frustrations, canceled plans, and bureaucratic challenges. These exchanges became raw material for artistic creation. In rehearsal circles, participants openly discussed pandemic-induced stresses—family dynamics, work pressures, and personal struggles. As facilitator, I encouraged channeling these authentic emotions into the Republican-era production of Home. Though temporally distant from the characters’ feudal constraints, performers discovered profound parallels in experiences of confinement, powerlessness, and yearning for freedom. This emotional transference enabled genuine portrayal of characters resisting oppression.

Through this process, theatre revealed its enduring capacity for collective catharsis. The shared emotional journey—from personal storytelling to artistic expression—created what ancient Greeks termed katharsis: not merely emotional release, but transformative understanding through shared experience. The performance’s climax, achieved through integrated ensemble dance and music, extended this healing potential to audience members, completing the cycle of artistic empathy and demonstrating theatre’s unique power to address contemporary trauma through timeless dramatic frameworks. As John Casson (1997/2018) depicts:

The first theatre audiences who attended shamanic ceremonies, Greek tragedies, mystery plays and dramatic rituals did so for more than entertainment: these theatres were for healing purposes, for spiritual uplift, fertility, catharsis and community benefit. Entertainment was important but these events also contained symbolic processes that spoke to deeper aspects of the individual and collective consciousness of the audience with the intent of providing relief from psychological and social tensions. (p. 43)

The 2021 community-based theatre project particularly demonstrated how theatre embodies the enduring aesthetic and social power inherent to the form since its origins. Such initiatives remind practitioners to consistently honour theatre’s innate capacity for healing. By upholding this legacy and strategically amplifying community voices through artistic practice, the field moves progressively closer to realizing its highest potential for social transformation.

SHORTCOMINGS AND FINDINGS

It must be acknowledged that despite the documented successes of the Lakewood Hills community-based theatre, its long-term sustainability proved unattainable. As The New York Times reported: “Evergrande’s collapse, with $300 billion in debt, mirrors the slow and painful unwinding of China's property sector” (Wakabayashi & Dong, 2025). While the 2021 property market decline directly impacted the festival’s viability, the fundamental challenge lay in its developmental stage: two years of programming had merely cultivated initial community interest without establishing institutional resilience. The model remained dependent on real estate subsidies and professional mentorship. Without ongoing financial support and specialized training in directing, design, and technical production, the initiative lacked the foundation for autonomous operation. While participants gained basic theatrical understanding, comprehensive artistic development requires sustained incubation far exceeding the project's timeline. Ultimately, China’s abrupt property market collapse eliminated the necessary conditions for nurturing this emerging cultural ecosystem, demonstrating how vulnerable community arts initiatives remain when tethered to volatile economic sectors.

Nevertheless, the Lakewood Hills Theatre Festival established a valuable operational paradigm. Its “community-based theatre creation—educational family workshops—interdisciplinary theatre forums—public performances” model provides a transferable framework for producing complete theatrical works with novice participants while expanding public engagement. This demonstrates how to make theatre accessible within Chinese urban contexts. Regarding sustainability, the key insight lies in transitioning from developer-dependent funding to cultivating endogenous community capacity. Since Chinese residential communities already maintain property management structures and neighborhood centers that offer subsidized courses, these existing platforms provide ideal incubation spaces. By integrating theatre courses—acting, directing, design—into existing community education programs at accessible fees, three critical objectives are achieved: creating sustainable operational funding, building foundational skills through progressive learning, and naturally forming creative teams from course participants.

This approach enables experienced community members to mentor newcomers while allowing specialized roles to emerge organically. When these groups eventually produce performances, they operate from established skills and relationships rather than temporary professional support. This model offers Chinese property managers, community centres, and even local governments a practical pathway for nurturing self-sustaining cultural ecosystems where theatre becomes rooted in—rather than temporarily grafted onto—community life.

CONCLUSION

The sustainable development of community-based theatre in China will inevitably be a gradual process requiring sustained commitment. While the Aranya model demonstrates successful localization, having just one exemplar remains insufficient. As Xiang Biao observes, the global phenomenon of the “vanishing nearby” creates a paradoxical reality where physical neighbors remain strangers while digital connections simulate intimacy. A common critique of applied theatre such as community-based theatre is its occasionally naïve discourse, which posits that art inherently benefits the mind and body, transforms groups, and empowers participants without clearly defining the nature of this empowerment (Balfour & Freebody, 2018, p. 20). This research, however, provides compelling evidence within this very framework of critique. The evidence does not seek to claim moral superiority but to validate the essential space in which applied theatre operates and realises its value.

In an increasingly AI-dominated world, our engagement with technology intensifies as authentic human interaction diminishes—evident in subway headphones isolating commuters and phones interrupting family meals. Community-based theatre offers crucial counterbalance. It creates protected spaces where people temporarily disconnect from digital saturation to rebuild tangible human connections. While we cannot reject technological progress, we can consciously cultivate complementary realms of meaningful interaction. Through collective artistic creation, participants rediscover the profound significance of physical presence, shared vulnerability, and collaborative meaning-making. This represents not nostalgia for pre-digital eras, but active construction of necessary counterweights to technological immersion.

The ultimate value of community-based theatre may lie in this reparative function: restoring the “nearby” as the fundamental arena where life acquires depth and meaning through direct human encounter. Its careful cultivation across Chinese communities could help rebalance our relationship with technology while strengthening the social fabric one neighborhood at a time.

Can community-based theatre help people rediscover lost neighbourhood connections and reduce interpersonal alienation? While this research cannot offer definitive answers—just as theatre itself resists standardized solutions—it reveals significant potential. Carl Marx theorized alienation as a condition where individuals become estranged from their productive capacities and creative outputs (Øversveen, 2022, p. 446), losing substantive identity formation through labour (Lems et al., 2025, p. 767). Community-based theatre directly counteracts this by creating spaces where participants reclaim agency through collective creation. As Christopher B. Balme (2015) notes, engaged participants naturally evolve into audiences, sustaining theatre’s ecosystem. More crucially, Reason Matthew and Nick Rowe (2017) identifies how theatrical narrative cultivates empathy—a quality that dissolves barriers between self and other, transcending differences to uncover universal truths (p. 149).

This practice heightens awareness of what Lems et al. (2025) term our “entanglement with the world” (p. 770), preventing the complacency of self-forgetfulness. While not a panacea, community-based theatre functions as that invisible hand guiding participants toward recognizing human interconnectedness, potentially opening pathways to more hopeful futures through shared creative practice.

SUGGESTED CITATION

Cai, S. (2025). From home to stage: Applied theatre as social practice in a residential community—A case study of the Lakewood Hills Theatre Festival in Zhuhai, Guangdong, China. ArtsPraxis, 12 (2), pp. 67-90.

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NOTES

[1] Eight Women is a suspenseful stage adaptation of the French film Huit Femmes. Set in an isolated French country villa, the narrative unfolds after the male host is found murdered, trapping eight women together as mutual suspects. The characters gradually expose one another’s hidden transgressions—including infidelity, fraud, and betrayal. The plot culminates in the host, who has witnessed the entire confrontation, taking his own life.

[2] The classic Broadway musical adapted from the eponymous film, is set in a 1970s American workplace. It follows three female employees who, confronting systemic gender discrimination and professional marginalization, orchestrate the kidnapping of their managing director to fundamentally reform company policies.

[3] Lao She’s 1956 dramatic masterpiece, traces nearly fifty years of Chinese social transformation through the lens of the Yutai Teahouse in old Beijing. Spanning the late Qing dynasty, the Beiyang warlord period, and the post-war era, the play captures the evolving social fabric of Beijing by tracing the intersecting lives of diverse characters who frequent the establishment.

[4] 破茧, pò jiǎn

[5]香山, Xiāng Shān

[6]像玫瑰那样红, Xiàng méigui nàyàng hóng

[7] 巴金, Bā Jīn (1904-2005) is one of the most important and influential Chinese writers of the 20th century.

[8]曹禺, Cáo Yǔ (1910-1996) is a seminal figure in 20th-century Chinese theatre.

Shuangshuang Cai is a PhD student in the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies, the University of Warwick. Since 2022, she has been a part-time lecturer at ShanghaiTech University. As a playwright, director, and producer, she also produces and hosts the podcast Moments·片刻.

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