Understanding Reality Through Science Fiction and Digitalization: The Hybrid Theatrical Space in Sun Xiaoxing’s Rhinoceros (2020)

Abstract: This essay looks into theatre director Sun Xiaoxing’s play Rhinoceros (2020) to explore the reflective potentials of theatre at historical moments of uncertainty with the facilitation of technology. An adaptation of Eugène Ionesco’s Rhinoceros (1959), Sun’s Rhinoceros inherits the discursive power of the original script as the latter circulates across time and space. Through the use of digital technology, this contemporary Chinese adaptation particularly carves out a hybrid theatrical space that represents the “mediated presence” of the audience. As this “mediated presence” engages surreal elements to mediate the representation of reality, it utters the historical moment of “post-truth.” Such theatrical theory and practice of the “re-theatre” redefines the idea of liveness, reinventing the audience as active audience-actors and making the virtual realm a new proscenium stage that penetrates the boundaries between onstage and offstage.