Beijing Renyi, as the People’s Theatre was popularly known, was the country’s most prestigious modern-drama institution, but, all the same, sound effects and music had to be produced with a decades-old East German tape recorder, the set designer was obliged to make a cardboard box stand in for a refrigerator, and the lights would go dim during daytime rehearsals, because the whole city’s voltage dropped when factories were in operation.
Opening night was six weeks away and his thoughts were crowded with technical and ideological uncertainties.
In March, 1983, Arthur Miller arrived in Beijing to direct a Chinese staging of “Death of a Salesman” at the Beijing People’s Art Theatre.
