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Beijing Kunqu Opera－Two Belles in Love

Date: April 8-29－7:30 pm every Saturday

Venue: Zhengyici Theater

Price: 280-880 yuan

Two Belles in Love is a lesbian-themed Chinese opera based on a 350-year-old play by Li Yu. The 2010 production was headed by Stanley Kwan, the first openly gay film director in the Chinese cinema scene. The premiere marked a shift in representations of homosexuality in contemporary China which did not remove homosexuality from the list of official mental illnesses until 2001. Publicity for the production plastered the city with imagistic challenges to the heteronormative visual landscape. The premier coincided a wider trend reviving the practice of male performers portraying female roles, discouraged since Communist victory in 1949. I analyze the production and its reception as examples of Chinese opera receiving comparatively more official and cultural leeway than other modes of cultural production to portray sexual diversity on the post-Mao Chinese stage.