Yidan Hu is a PhD candidate in Theatre Studies at the University of Glasgow. Her research focuses on theatrical representations of China on the historical London stage between 1895 and 1940, reanimating the corpus of several groups in/and empire by foregrounding historicity, that is, particular moments in their contexts, and through those instances, revealing certain key refractions that the members negotiated. This project was developed in collaboration with the University’s Peking Opera Society as a creative extension of her academic engagement with intercultural performance.
To engage with Peking Opera is not merely to revisit a dramatic language but to enter a space where time is layered, and cultural memory becomes tangible. This project – a multi-sensory exhibition and interactive drop-in event – was not designed simply to show Peking Opera, but to unsettle the dichotomy between observer and participant, past and present, East and West.
The exhibition unfolded as a kind of palimpsest, a site of overlapping voices and embodied gestures. Costumes, props, vocal recordings and archival fragments did not serve as static relics but as provocations: What does it mean to preserve without ossifying? To perform without exoticising? As visitors moved between image and text, voice and silence, they were invited to encounter the artform not as a fossilised spectacle, but as a porous, evolving grammar of identity.
The drop-in event transformed the space into a living theatre of encounters, which prioritised immersion over instruction, and direct engagement over distant observation. The aim was to create an environment where theatre could be accessed not only through sight, but through touch, sound, smell, and movement – shifting spectatorship from interpretation to participation.
For example, participants painted traditional opera masks, each brushstroke becoming a quiet gesture of cultural reactivation.
Additionally, the tea corner invited moments of stillness and reflection, where the act of drinking became a sensory entry point into Chinese ritual aesthetics.
Moreover, The Tai Chi session introduced mindful movement as cultural practice, reminding participants that slowness, balance, and breath are themselves aesthetic forms, and in doing so, it offered a contemplative space where motion became meditation, and tradition could be felt not as performance, but as presence.
The event constructed a shared theatrical space, one in which form could be explored without flattening its complexity, and where participants could encounter Peking Opera not as highly stylised form of theatre, but as an evolving mode of embodied play, interaction, and aesthetic expression. In this context, Peking Opera was no longer an object to be display, but a medium of dialogue: between performance and participation, between art and the everyday, between embodied memory and new imaginaries.
This project would not have been possible without the generous support of Thinking Culture and the School of Culture & Creative Arts. I am especially grateful to Dr Kevin Leomo, whose thoughtful advice and constant encouragement have helped shape this work both intellectually and practically.
