Her work explores allegorical writing for the contemporary stage, reshaping social news, personal experience, and historical trauma into timeless allegories.
Explore selected works ↗
2026 · Selected for the “Kulturen in Kontakt – artists-in-residence” programme, University of Göttingen.
Chu Xia (born in 1989) is a playwright based in Nanjing, China. She received both her B.A. and M.F.A. in Theatre and Film Arts from Nanjing University and currently works at the Nanjing Academy of Arts. Nearly ten of her plays, including dramas, musicals, and contemporary Xiqu, have been professionally staged in Berlin, Heidelberg, Yokohama, Shanghai, Beijing, and Nanjing.
She is focusing on people who struggle to fit into their surroundings. Her work explores allegorical writing for the contemporary stage, reshaping social news, personal experience, and historical trauma into timeless allegories.
An original work of poetic theatre by Chu Xia, exploring connections between people in the quantum age. The play is currently in development.
“Please let me inside your skin.”
This short film is based on one of the stories in Part of it is you.
Watch the short film ↗
In an ancient kingdom of shadows, the king possesses the shadows of all his subjects. When a shadow puppeteer accidentally enters the kingdom, he is forced to perform for the king. As he uncovers the king's dark secret, he eventually takes the king's place—only to find that he can never return to the world of shadow puppetry……
Selected as a commissioned artist for the Rising Artists' Works (R.A.W.) program of Shanghai International Arts Festival, where the play premiered in Oct.2019.
SCHATTENFANGEN was nominated for the International Author's Award at the 2025 Heidelberger Stückemarkt.
Translated into German by Johannes Fiederling, the play was presented in a staged reading in May 2025, with dramaturgy by Deborah Raulin.
Inspired by Puccini's Turandot, the play reimagines the princess's untold past through an allegory of the body, exploring the timeless theme of love. The production was selected for the First National Showcase of Experimental Peking Opera. The performance was attended by writers-in-residence of the UNESCO in November 2024.
Princess Turandot lost her mother as a child. Her Eyes, Ears, and Mouth each have a voice, but her Heart remains silent. Longing for love, she turns courtship into a deadly game of riddles. When a wandering swordsman risks his life to solve her three riddles, her heart begins to open……
Set in the late 19 century, Black Flag Order follows General Liu Yongfu and the Black Flag Army, a mercenary force searching for a home. As war and exile unfold, they confront a timeless question: what does it mean to return home?
Blending animal allegory with local traditions, the musical uses images of the black tiger, the wolf pack, and the crocodile to explore belonging, identity, and the relationship between individuals and a changing world.
It premiered in Beijing in June 2026 and is on tour now.
Inspired by two news stories from 2016, this absurdist play follows an elderly man searching for a burial plot beside his late wife. His journey leads him into a world of cemetery speculation, ghost marriages, and capital-driven transactions, where personal loss, social change, and traditional Chinese funeral culture collide.
The play premiered in Beijing (2017) and was later presented in Berlin (2019).
Set in 1930s Nanjing, the play follows a female narrator who secretly passes intelligence through her live narration of a Buster Keaton silent film.
Blending live performance with projection, it reimagines silent cinema as a new theatrical language.
The play premiered in a historic cinema in 2023 and has been performed 15 times to date.
Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty was a renowned painter and calligrapher, best known for his paintings of cranes.
This Kunqu play imagines a night that may—or may not—have happened. On the eve of the fall of the Song capital, a thief enters the Song imperial palace to steal Emperor Huizong's beloved crane……
Through drumbeats and the actors' bodies, the play evokes the allegory of a crane that may never have existed.
From 2016 to 2017, Chu Xia was selected in the Royal Court Theatre's international playwright program, where she developed the play Release the Vixen.
Under the mentorship of Elyse Dodgson, Chu Xia began to explore how personal experience connect with wider social realities. Over the following decade of writing, this process gradually led her to identify the central themes that continue to shape her work today.
22–25 July 2025 One public lecture and a three-day workshop led by CHU XIA.
·Participants revised a play from draft to staged reading. ·Introduced Sarah Kane Exercise, a writing practice from the Royal Court Theatre's New Writing. ·Connecting personal experience with broader social realities.
The workshop expanded CHU XIA’s understanding of theatre beyond playwriting, introduced her to cross-disciplinary collaboration, and Networks of artists.
