This groundbreaking monologue theatre piece A Flexitarian serves up a raw, darkly comic feast of feminist storytelling - think Bridget Jones meets Kafka in a Shanghai walk-up. After touring major festivals from Beijing to Hong Kong, the upgraded 2.0 version brings sharper teeth to its exploration of divorced millennial womanhood, using ingenious multimedia staging to turn a lonely apartment into the whole city.

Synopsis

Meet Hu Douzi—a woman who’s "withered into a lonely ghost" in her Shanghai apartment. At the crossroads of divorce-born financial independence and emotional void, she gropes for uncharted forms of spiritual autonomy. Onstage, she oscillates between protagonist and narrator, sliding across mediums and timelines. Through her memories and musings emerge snapshots of womanhood: those forced to internalize transactional dynamics in every sphere, "middle-aged women" battling societal stigma and self-doubt, and souls perpetually torn between freedom, duty, and kinship. Wrapped in dark humor and unflinching honesty, A Flexitarian howls—quietly but ferociously—against the banal tyrannies of aging, emotional PTSD, and the messy, mottled traps of femininity.

About the Production

Conceived in 2022 by Jiang Fan and Zhuang Jiayun (Three Bowls Collective), A Flexitarian premiered that December at YOUNG Theatre’s GOAT Festival. This semi-autobiographical work hybridizes physicality and language, performance and documentation, forging a distinctive monologue-theatre style. The 2023 iteration deepened its feminist explorations while refining the interplay between body and voice.

This is an open-seating performance. Seating areas are indicated as follows: