New Company Aims to Bolster Musicals Industry in Beijing, Provide Better Mandarin Adaptations of Broadway Classics

What's the major factor preventing the musical industry from settling down in China, the world's largest economy? Experts in the country believe that it's because productions carried out in China are always done so with Western fashion and language, which makes it difficult for Chinese audiences to latch on.

However the newly formed Ovation Cultural Development company is aiming to adapt Western productions to better suit them to Chinese audiences and create a budding theatre market in the process. OCD will cover the province of Langfeng, Hebei, which surrounds the Beijing area. The company will receive yearly investments of around $323 million to build new theaters and develop production in the surrounding areas.

The first production, an adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's Into The Woods, will take place during 2014 and is scheduled to tour during 2015. Chinese adaptations of American musicals, which is sometimes as simple as translating the text into proper Mandarin, has shown promise recently. A 2011 Mandarin version of Mamma Mia! brought in more than 300,000 attendees. Musicals brought in around 239 million yuan during 2013, a 20 percent increase from 2012.

"Mamma Mia! and Cats made a great step to introduce musicals in Chinese to audiences here," said Li Xiaofei, general manager of OCD. "But apart from the singing, everything else has been done in a Western way by Western production companies, costumes and body language included. We want to further localize the Western art form."