The ReJU Plan marks a new era of collaboration between Swiss and Chinese theatre, engaging playwrights, translators, directors, and actresses/actors and positioning itself as an international incubator for emerging theatre makers.
Moving beyond pandemic-era fixes, the ReJU Plan has established a new model for international theatre defined by sustained artistic presence. This approach keeps creators and audiences continuously engaged through remote collaboration, transforming cultural exchange into a deep, shared creative process.
What began as an emergency response has matured into a robust framework for international co-creation. Over four years, the ReJU Plan has evolved into a platform defined not by short-term mobility, but by sustained artistic presence.
For Swiss playwrights and theatre makers, this initiative offers an opportunity to engage in an extended, remote ‘residency’ within one of the world’s most dynamic theatrical contexts. Influence here is shaped not only by physical travel but also by continuous participation as a core collaborator in an evolving artistic conversation.
This article is an observation by Si’an Chen, playwright, director, and translator; founder and Artistic Director of the Sound and Fury Festival.
From crisis to connection
When the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the globe in 2020, the performing arts — a discipline deeply rooted in physical presence and collective gathering — faced an unprecedented challenge to its very foundations. Theatres dimmed their lights, productions were cancelled, and international mobility came to an abrupt halt. Yet, within this global stillness, the theatre community began to reimagine how artistic creation and connection might continue under radically altered conditions.
In response to these challenges, Pro Helvetia launched Folding the Axis in 2020, a programme designed to rethink cultural exchange at a moment when physical travel was no longer possible. Sound and Fury Festival, a new-writing incubation platform where I serve as Artistic Director, was honored to be selected as a partner for the 2020–2021 cycle. Together, we initiated a text-centred journey aimed at connecting theatre practitioners in Switzerland and China through sustained artistic dialogue rather than physical proximity.
Breaking new ground (2020–2022)
Prior to this initiative, contemporary Swiss playwrights had limited visibility among Chinese audiences and theatre practitioners. One of our core ambitions was therefore to introduce a selection of vital, representative voices from the Swiss theatre into the Chinese theatrical landscape.
Following extensive research and curatorial discussion, five plays by four established Swiss playwrights—Sibylle Berg, Katja Brunner, Mathieu Bertholet, and Antoinette Rychner—were translated into Chinese in 2021. In 2022, these play texts were presented through public staged readings in Beijing and Shanghai, marking the first sustained encounter between Chinese audiences and these works.
Our approach went far beyond simple translation. Translation was understood not as a final product, but as the starting point of an ongoing artistic conversation. Throughout the process, the playwrights remained actively involved through virtual participation. They joined translation workshops with over forty translators working from German- and French-language backgrounds, collaboratively refining tone, rhythm, and cultural nuance. During the staged readings, the playwrights also engaged directly with Chinese audiences online, opening a space for immediate feedback and dialogue that bridged geographical distance.
A new model of ‘presence’
What emerged from this process was not merely a temporary solution to pandemic restrictions, but the foundation of a new model for international collaboration.
Traditionally, cross-border theatre projects often follow a transactional structure: a script is delivered, translated, and staged abroad with limited authorial involvement. Our project proposed a different approach—one based on sustained presence rather than physical co-location. Playwrights, translators, directors, and audiences remained continuously ‘present’ in the creative process through dialogue, workshops, and shared reflection.
This deeper mode of co-creation fostered a level of artistic exchange rarely achieved through short-term residencies or touring models. It demonstrated that meaningful collaboration can be built through long-term commitment, even in the absence of shared physical space. This model has since become the conceptual foundation for our ongoing international work.
The ReJU Plan: expansion and evolution (2023–present)
What proved most encouraging was that the collaboration initiated between 2020 and 2022 did not end with the easing of travel restrictions. Instead, it marked the beginning of a renewed and expanding exchange between Swiss and Chinese theatre practitioners.
In 2023, the ReJU Plan was officially launched by the Goethe-Institut China, with joint support from Pro Helvetia Shanghai. Expanding its scope to the broader DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), ReJU Plan positions itself as an international incubator for emerging theatre makers. The project prioritises process over product, inviting playwrights and directors to participate in forums, workshops, and public presentations centred on textual development and dramaturgical exploration.
The inaugural year in 2023 featured Chinese translations and presentations of Die toten Freunde by Ariane Koch and Die Hand ist ein einsamer Jäger by Katja Brunner. In 2024, this exchange continued with Der Chor by Dominik Busch and the collaborative work Alice verschwindet by Selma Kay Matter and Marie Lucienne Verse. In 2025, the dialogue further expanded with the introduction of brennendes Haus by Anaïs Clerc to Chinese audiences.
Across these years, ReJU has evolved into a sustained platform rather than a one-off programme, allowing artistic relationships to develop over time and across multiple encounters.
ReJU 2025 spotlight: from ruins to reconstruction
Stepping into the worlds created for the 2025 ReJU Plan, we are first confronted by two distinct landscapes of ruin: one depicting the collapse of external ecology and human civilization, the other revealing the wreckage of intergenerational trauma within a family. Standing atop these ruins, two playwrights engage in a profound dialogue—not merely to reflect on the origins of destruction, but to interrogate the very future we are bequeathing to the next generation.
Neometropolis, the latest work by Hong Kong playwright Yan Pat To, premiered at the Stadttheater Gießen in January 2024. Set in a near-future, hyper-technological city, the play constructs a sci-fi allegory of ecological collapse and social stratification. In contrast, brennendes Haus by Anaïs Clerc is rooted in the historical Swiss Verdingung system, excavating the silent violence embedded in family structures and inherited trauma.
Despite their differing aesthetics and contexts, both works revolve around a shared thematic core: a desperate search for ‘home’ and ‘origin’ under conditions of systemic oppression and enforced silence. In 2025, these plays function as two sides of the same coin. Neometropolis examines the disintegration and reconfiguration of our external environment, while brennendes Haus confronts the slow collapse and rebuilding of the inner self.
This double collapse — of world and of home — is no longer merely allegorical. Against the backdrop of burning forests and burning houses, these works invite audiences to reflect on a pressing question: if the traditional idea of home can no longer hold, what new forms of belonging must we imagine for ourselves and for future generations?
Working across distance: a long-term collaborative practice
Over the past four years, this project has demonstrated that geographical distance need not be a barrier to artistic depth. Instead, distance has prompted us to develop new working methods grounded in continuity, trust, and shared authorship.
For Swiss theatre practitioners, participation in this platform offers more than the presentation of a finished script. It offers a long-term engagement with a rapidly evolving Chinese theatre ecology—one in which translation, rehearsal, public discussion, and audience feedback are deeply interconnected. Playwrights are invited to accompany their work across borders, remaining actively involved through workshops, forums, and ongoing dialogue.
This exchange is not unidirectional. Working within a Chinese context — where contemporary Swiss texts often arrive without pre-existing reference frames — has also challenged us to rethink dramaturgy, authorship, and audience engagement from a non-European perspective. In this sense, the project functions as a shared learning process rather than a model of cultural export.
The ReJU Plan (2023-Present)
Through this project, plays written in German by Swiss authors were translated into Chinese for the first time and presented to the Chinese audience through staged readings by local theater-makers. The Swiss plays are selected by invitation. The directors have been recruited through an open call since 2025.
Organised by Goethe-Institut China. Supported by Pro Helvetia Shanghai, the Swiss Arts Council. Presented at Goethe-Institut, Beijing, and Theatre YOUNG, Shanghai.