TIANANMEN REQUIEM to be Presented at The Players Theatre

Tiananmen Requiem, directed by Dennis Yueh Yeh Li, is the love story of a gay People's Liberation Army soldier and a protesting student against the backdrop of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. It will play March 10-27 at The Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal Street in New York City. Tickets are $57 and can be arranged through OvationTix.

The milieu of the play, 1980s China, was a time when the forces of liberalization reached their peak. Young people demanded freedom for self-expression, a movement which ultimately was ended by the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Tiananmen Requiem unearths this painful piece of history through the lens of a gay soldier.

Facing danger to their family in China, and fearing charges of subversion, the author of the play is forced to remain anonymous. "I hope to spotlight how gay rights - and all human rights - are so crucial and so limited in China," the playwright confided. "The brutality of the Tiananmen crackdown affected my family deeply, many of whom were educators. My uncle told me what he saw after the massacre: he'd walked into a lane lined with corpses that were flattened into color, it was a smear of flesh."

Wang Dan, human rights activist and the most visible face of the Tiananmen Student Protests will be the keynote speaker at the opening gala of the play. Wang Dan played an instrumental role in leading the 1989 student movement in Tiananmen Square. After the movement was squashed by the Communist regime, he occupied the top spot on China's Most Wanted List, was arrested twice, and spent years in prison before being exiled to the United States.

In his endorsement of the play, Wang Dan wrote in Chinese, "Seeing the younger generation dedicating themselves to preserving history and highlighting LGBT in China with this play, makes me incredibly thrilled [...] This is a powerfully courageous story that must be told."

The Tiananmen Protests were one of the most well-known student movements in world history. Armies were sent to remove students by force who were peacefully petitioning the government for dialog. No reliable account of deaths has been released. The Chinese government censors all mentions of the this event; citizens commemorating it face charges of subversion, which carry a penalty of up to life imprisonment.

"This play is more than a gay love story. It is a timely political act that seeks to commemorate Tiananmen and the loss of an entire generation of young Chinese," explained producer and LGBT activist Marc Levine. "At a time when memorials to Tiananmen are demolished by the Communist government, we're erecting a memorial that cannot be taken down."

Tiananmen Requiem, a subversive new play setting a gay romance against the horror of the Tiananmen Square Massacre comes to The Players Theatre (115 MacDougal Street) on March 10-13, 17-20; 24-27, 2022 (Thu-Sat at 7pm; Sun at 2pm). Tickets are $57 and can be booked at OvationTix.

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