Zhang Xian, theater director, social choreographer, liminal situationist, live art and dissidential reality maker. He is one of the earliest independent Chinese playwrights of the Post-Mao era. From the very beginning of his career, he has engaged in the underground art movement to cope with the societal pressures of his time. Following a long period of editing and writing for the press, magazines, screenplays and film scripts, he founded several non-governmental art organizations and theatre work spaces.

As a playwright, director, and producer, Zhang Xian has more than ten plays and dances performed in as many cities around China, Europe and America. The first dance performance of Tongue’s Memory of Home won the ZKB Patronage Prize of the Zurich Theatre Spektake1in 2006.
As a film script writer, his film Those Left Behind won the Best Film of the Golden Pyramid Award at the 16th Cairo International Film Festival, while Jasmine Woman won the Judges’ Prize of the 7th Shanghai International Film Festival and became a highly acclaimed blockbuster movie in China.

He has also acted as a judge at 18th Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theater and DEON Fund’s Young Choreographer Project.
In his capacity as an art organizer and curator, Zhang Xian initiated the independent drama group Z and the dance group Zuhe Niao and established the Hard Han Cafe Theatre. He co-organized the first Chinese non-profit art and performance base, Down Steam Garage, in Shanghai, as well as several of the earliest independent Chinese art festivals, such as the Fringe Festival, Idea Festival, and the Free Cinema Festival.

In recent years, he has also taken inspiration from live art and has since incorporated “Liminal Situations” into his social theatre experiments, bringing to fruition his concept of Everyday Life as a Festival.