Between resistance and regulation: the changing field of small theater festivals in contemporary China

Small-theater festivals have played a pivotal role in shaping the landscape of contemporary Chinese theater, functioning as key platforms through which artistic innovation, market forces, and cultural governance intersect. Since the inaugural Nanjing Small-Theater Festival in 1989, these festivals have undergone a discernible evolution that reflects broader shifts within China’s cultural field. To uncover the structural logic behind this transformation, this study applies Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory and examines the changing configurations of cultural, economic, and social capital. The analysis draws on festival brochures, cultural policy documents, and publicly available performance records from 1989 to 2024, supported by comparative textual analysis. The findings identify three distinct stages in the development of small-theater festivals: (1) 1989–1997, when cultural capital dominated and festivals were marked by artistic autonomy, decentralized operation, and avant-garde experimentation; (2) 1998–2010, when economic capital became central, as private theaters, producer systems, and box-office logic reshaped organizational mechanisms; and (3) 2011–2024, when social capital emerged as the primary force, incorporating festivals into national and local cultural governance frameworks and producing more standardized evaluative structures.This periodization illustrates how shifting capital configurations redefined both institutional arrangements and aesthetic priorities, repositioning small theater from a marginal experimental space to an increasingly institutionalized component of China’s cultural ecosystem.