ABSTRACT
Maoism established everyday theatricality as part of its politics of presence to both display and mold socialist subjects. Staging a circular ventriloquy between the masses and the Party, the public performance of revolutionary songs instituted theatrical presence as a representation of the performers’ actual feelings. As participatory forms of officially organized performances have survived the demise of Maoism, structurally induced shifts have made demands for emotional authenticity and intensity irrelevant. This chapter nonetheless argues that parkgoers’ self-organized singing activities have played an active role in the transformations of everyday theatricality, paradoxically through the very transposition, in public space, of an embodied Maoist aesthetics of overinvolvement now reframed as wan’r.
