27th May 2026
This workshop is part of the SCCJR’s Social Analysis of Penalities Across Boundaries series which is co-organised by Professor Richard Sparks and Professor Máximo Sozzo.
Dr Xiaoye Zhang, Senior Lecturer in Criminology at De Montfort University.
This talk examines prison theatre as a window into the governance of incarceration in contemporary China. Drawing on ethnographic research with a prison theatre programme in a Chinese men’s prison, it explores how performance functions not only as a rehabilitative or cultural activity, but also as a practical and symbolic technology of penal governance.
The talk argues that prison theatre helps make ‘reform’ visible. Through rehearsals, scripted performances, institutional ceremonies, and encounters between prisoners, officers, artists, visitors, and media audiences, theatre becomes a means through which the prison organises bodies, emotions, moral narratives, and institutional order. Rather than treating prisoner participation as straightforward empowerment, the talk considers its ambivalent role within what I call a participatory model of control: a mode of governance that works by inviting, managing, rewarding, and displaying participation.
The title, ‘The Rule of Wonder’, draws from the phrase hua fuxiu wei shenqi — “turning the decayed into the wondrous” — a recurring expression in Chinese penal discourse and official accounts of prison work. It captures the exemplary logic through which the prison presents itself as capable of transforming morally damaged subjects into visible signs of reform. By analysing theatre as both practice and spectacle, the talk reflects on what prison performance reveals about the affective, participatory, and performative dimensions of penal power in China.