Show and tell

"The more people I talked to, the more I realized that I should leave behind the approaches to acting and the rules about theater, which I learned at school," says Li. "Those amateur actors are powerful in their performances, and they deserve the applause."

Li interviewed about 100 people, choosing 17 for the play, of different ages, occupations and diversified stories of their associations with the theater. To fully display the relationship between theater and the ordinary people, Li also screened some of the conversations he had with the interviewees, who couldn't make it onstage, including a Beijing-based taxi driver, who, during his conversation with Li, read the script of the famous Chinese play, Teahouse, based on the original play by novelist and playwright Lao She (1899-1966).

"What impressed me is not their ability to act but their commitment onstage. The performances were staged outdoors and it was cold. But the actors performed well. Each of them invented their own scenery. They dressed up for the show, although they had to wear raincoats during the last day's performance," recalls Li. "Some of the audiences were confused about the play while the others related to it. I was standing at the back observing the audience's reaction."

The director also notes that the title of the play, Popular Mechanics, was borrowed from American writer Raymond Carver's short story with the same title.

"When I read the short story, there are different themes in it, like conflict, struggle and communication, which I felt related to the play I was working on," he adds.

In his 40s, Li made his directorial debut in 2007 and directs about one original play a year. It was not the first time that the director has worked with amateur actors. In 2011, he directed a play, entitled A Madman's Diary, adapted from Lu Xun's first major short story that had the same title. His actors were 20 university students from Beijing. The play was well received critically and it was staged in other Chinese cities, including Hangzhou and Shanghai. The same year, Li founded his own theater troupe, New Youth Theater, which offers workshops for amateur actors.

In 2013, he brought 19 ordinary young Chinese people, who left their hometowns to work in bigger cities, to share their stories about the cities where they grew up and the cities where they work and live now.

If you go

Inside-Out Theater.

Xingshikou Road, Haidian district, Beijing. 3 pm, Dec 8 and 9. 010-6285-8257