The Hundred Flowers Project

Cristopher Chen’s plays explore history, technology, and the nature of performance. For our Windham-Campbell issue, we asked Chen to annotate two excerpts from The Hundred Flowers Project, his meta-play about a contemporary theater company creating a show about Chinese leader Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution. The Hundred Flowers Project had its world premiere in 2012 at Crowded Fire Theater in San Francisco, where Chen was born and raised. In the excerpts linked below, Chen shares his thoughts on the play’s use of technical theater in production, the spectacle of Mao’s reign, and the parallels between social media and Mao’s mass manipulation tactics.

Click here to read the annotated excerpt of The Hundred Flowers Project.