China，South Africa

Live Art/Installation/Performance Art/Theatre-making

Zhao Chuan, born in 1967, works across theatre, literature, and visual art. He creates alternative and socially engaged theatre
and is the founding member and mastermind of the Shanghai-based theatre collective GrassStage (established in 2005). For over a decade, as a theatremaker and writer, he has created a number of theater works across China together with his collective Grass Stage. However, they are often unable to present these works in conventional theatres because of the issues addressed and because of their non-professional set-up. The group encourages people from different backgrounds to consider human living conditions and historical issues and stimulates participators and audiences to respond to those issues through the creative process， rehearsals, performances, and post-talks. Given its strong interest in social practice, the group’s theatre activities have often been considered too rough, ideological, marginal and undefined by the mainstream. In recent years, Grass Stage has supported industry, workers to make their own theatre pieces. through dialogues with young people from diverse backgrounds, the group has developed stage plays on youth issues in today’s China. His theatre works include Wild Seeds(2018-2019) and Scoial Theater Trilogy(2006-2017), comprising World Factory, The Little Society, and Madmen’s Stories. Theatre of Contagion is the new start of a series of works since the pandemic era in early 2020.

Zhao Chuan has been awarded several international literature awards, including the Unita Prize for New Novelists (Taiwan2001). His publications include fiction, essays, and art criticism: On RadicalArt: the 80s Scene in Shanghai (author, 2014), and The Bodyat Stake: Experiments in Chinese Contemporary Art and Theatre(co-editor, author, 2013). He is also the producer of an independent documentary titled Shanghai Youth (2015). He curated per-formative projects independently or for Museums, has been involved in many international art residencies, collaboration
projects and teaching

Qondiswa James is a freelance cultural worker living between Cape Town and Johannesburg. She is an award-winning writer and theatre-maker, performance artist, film and theatre performer, installation artist, arts facilitator, and activist. She has received her Masters in Live Art, Interdisciplinary and Public Art, and Public Spheres at the Institute of Creative Arts. Her work engages the socio-political imagination toward mobilizing transgression.