What’s troubling Feng Yuanzheng, president of the Beijing People’s Art Theatre, most these days is that he can’t find any actresses who are in the 160-centimeter range.
Everyone who comes to audition is in the 170-centimeter range; the men are in the 180s. But not one of the people the theatre actually needs has shown up. The theatre is preparing to stage Teahouse, and the character Fat Huang is short and stocky, with a real streetwise air about him. They searched art schools across the country, from Beijing all the way to Shanghai, but in the end they still couldn’t find a young actor who could take on the role. Feng Yuanzheng put it plainly: everyone’s out looking for tall, rich, handsome types.
A lot of people assume this generation of kids has simply grown taller. I don’t see it that way. Girls around 160 centimeters haven’t disappeared. They never even made it to the Beijing People’s Art Theatre’s door. At the arts-school entrance exams, shorter candidates are screened out first; film and TV casting filters them again. By the time résumés reach the theatre, only one body type is left in the pool. The filter changed; the people didn’t.
The Beijing People’s Art Theatre has an old rule: no microphones on stage. If your delivery isn’t up to scratch, no matter how good-looking you are, you don’t get onstage. That takes real skill. And that’s where the awkwardness lies: the theatre sticks to the most uncompromising standards of craft, yet finds itself with no one to choose from. No one to choose from. The show has to go on, and someone has to take the roles. Wang Lifa needs a shrewd little face; Qin Er’ye needs a strong, clear voice; Fanyi has to command the stage. Without those wrinkles, the play just floats onstage. That’s true.
The theatre has never said how long the role of Fat Huang has been vacant, and there’s no reliable account online either. If you’re determined to look it up, you won’t find an answer.
I know how this works. Whenever a set of selection criteria is applied uniformly, the supply side will naturally converge toward that standard. Hire for one thing, and that’s what the market will produce. Keep going, and you’re left with just one thing. Just one.
I’ve seen this happen far too often in crypto. Projects have only a handful of templates to choose from: a white paper dozens of pages long, a fixed total supply, and a three-stage unlock schedule. The marketing pitch has to include whatever buzzword is in fashion—proof of work this year, modularity last year. When everyone uses the same filter, the results are bound to be the same. Flip through ten new projects at random and their token models look like they were written by the same person, because they really were run through the same filter. During the 2017 ICO boom, there were thousands of projects, and even the words “decentralization” appeared in roughly the same place in their white papers. All cut from the same mold.
The ones that survived to this day, on the other hand, were the few that didn’t fill in the template back then. Not many.
Back to Fat Huang. He doesn’t have many lines in Teahouse, but he’s the play’s very breath. In an old Beijing teahouse, all sorts of people would have gathered. If everyone had long legs and small faces, would it still be a teahouse? It wouldn’t feel like one.
If you’ve ever interviewed for a job, you’ll understand: “overall qualifications” is the filter’s most polite wording. It doesn’t say you’re short, and it doesn’t mention that you’re fat. It just says you’re “not a good fit.” Four words. They keep you outside the door while making you feel like it’s your own fault.
Feng Yuanzheng also cleared up another rumor: that you have to spend ten years playing bit parts before you can get into the Beijing People’s Art Theatre. He said he acted in Beijingren, playing a man in his forties, before he’d even graduated, at the age of twenty-three. I’ve thought about this, and it really isn’t about putting in the years. Some people stay on the sidelines because their temperament, height, or skills don’t match the roles already available.
Those people have been there all along. They really have. It’s just that the filter doesn’t recognize them. If you truly want to see an ordinary face onstage, someone has to be willing to loosen the filter at the first audition.
$BTC $ETH $CHZ #北京人艺 #冯远征 #ActorHomogenization
Everyone who comes to audition is in the 170-centimeter range; the men are in the 180s. But not one of the people the theatre actually needs has shown up. The theatre is preparing to stage Teahouse, and the character Fat Huang is short and stocky, with a real streetwise air about him. They searched art schools across the country, from Beijing all the way to Shanghai, but in the end they still couldn’t find a young actor who could take on the role. Feng Yuanzheng put it plainly: everyone’s out looking for tall, rich, handsome types.
A lot of people assume this generation of kids has simply grown taller. I don’t see it that way. Girls around 160 centimeters haven’t disappeared. They never even made it to the Beijing People’s Art Theatre’s door. At the arts-school entrance exams, shorter candidates are screened out first; film and TV casting filters them again. By the time résumés reach the theatre, only one body type is left in the pool. The filter changed; the people didn’t.
The Beijing People’s Art Theatre has an old rule: no microphones on stage. If your delivery isn’t up to scratch, no matter how good-looking you are, you don’t get onstage. That takes real skill. And that’s where the awkwardness lies: the theatre sticks to the most uncompromising standards of craft, yet finds itself with no one to choose from. No one to choose from. The show has to go on, and someone has to take the roles. Wang Lifa needs a shrewd little face; Qin Er’ye needs a strong, clear voice; Fanyi has to command the stage. Without those wrinkles, the play just floats onstage. That’s true.
The theatre has never said how long the role of Fat Huang has been vacant, and there’s no reliable account online either. If you’re determined to look it up, you won’t find an answer.
I know how this works. Whenever a set of selection criteria is applied uniformly, the supply side will naturally converge toward that standard. Hire for one thing, and that’s what the market will produce. Keep going, and you’re left with just one thing. Just one.
I’ve seen this happen far too often in crypto. Projects have only a handful of templates to choose from: a white paper dozens of pages long, a fixed total supply, and a three-stage unlock schedule. The marketing pitch has to include whatever buzzword is in fashion—proof of work this year, modularity last year. When everyone uses the same filter, the results are bound to be the same. Flip through ten new projects at random and their token models look like they were written by the same person, because they really were run through the same filter. During the 2017 ICO boom, there were thousands of projects, and even the words “decentralization” appeared in roughly the same place in their white papers. All cut from the same mold.
The ones that survived to this day, on the other hand, were the few that didn’t fill in the template back then. Not many.
Back to Fat Huang. He doesn’t have many lines in Teahouse, but he’s the play’s very breath. In an old Beijing teahouse, all sorts of people would have gathered. If everyone had long legs and small faces, would it still be a teahouse? It wouldn’t feel like one.
If you’ve ever interviewed for a job, you’ll understand: “overall qualifications” is the filter’s most polite wording. It doesn’t say you’re short, and it doesn’t mention that you’re fat. It just says you’re “not a good fit.” Four words. They keep you outside the door while making you feel like it’s your own fault.
Feng Yuanzheng also cleared up another rumor: that you have to spend ten years playing bit parts before you can get into the Beijing People’s Art Theatre. He said he acted in Beijingren, playing a man in his forties, before he’d even graduated, at the age of twenty-three. I’ve thought about this, and it really isn’t about putting in the years. Some people stay on the sidelines because their temperament, height, or skills don’t match the roles already available.
Those people have been there all along. They really have. It’s just that the filter doesn’t recognize them. If you truly want to see an ordinary face onstage, someone has to be willing to loosen the filter at the first audition.
$BTC $ETH $CHZ #北京人艺 #冯远征 #ActorHomogenization