Feng Yuanzheng Can’t Find an Actor Under 1.7 Meters. That’s a Bigger Problem Than Height.

Feng Yuanzheng sat in his office at the Beijing People’s Art Theatre with a stack of actor résumés. In the height column, women clustered around 1.7 meters and men started at 1.8. He went through the pile once. Then he went through it again. Then he looked up and said the theatre needs actors for sheng, dan, jing and chou: male leads, female leads, painted-face roles and clown roles. What arrives looks like parts from one assembly line.

To outside ears, this sounds like a strange complaint. A national theatre saying its actors are too tall and too good-looking can sound like a chef complaining that the market only sells foie gras. But the People’s Art Theatre stage once held Yu Shizhi, Lan Tianye and Lin Liankun. Teahouse needs a Huang Pangzi, a character whose body and manner carry the greasy weight of an old era. Feng is not nitpicking. He cannot find the people he needs.

The problem is not too many tall people. The problem is a ruler that measures only one kind of actor.

The first ruler is applied in the exam hall

Actor homogenization starts before the stage. It starts in the audition room.

Every admissions season, long lines form outside preliminary rounds for acting programs. Most young women are 1.65 meters or taller. Most young men are around 1.8. Their faces look related. Their temperaments match. Even their haircuts look agreed in advance. Candidates who are short or whose faces are judged “not standard enough” often leave in the first round. They get no chance to show voice, movement or acting fundamentals. Examiners are not scheming. They have been trained by an invisible standard: camera-friendly, well-proportioned, possessing star quality. The film and television industry supplies that standard. The academies absorb it into a threshold that appears nowhere in the brochure and is understood by everyone.

So an acting department spends four years producing faces that fit the camera. It does not produce actors who can fill every kind of role. Feng says the theatre needs actresses around 1.6 meters. Women that height are screened out in the exam hall. He says the theatre needs actors under 1.7 meters. Men below that line are crossed off in the first round. The upstream pool holds one kind of fish. The theatre downstream cannot catch another.

The logic behind the standard is easy to trace. In film and television casting, “no male lead under 1.8 meters” and “no female lead under 1.65” have become hard thresholds in many productions. To protect employment numbers, the academies follow the market’s taste. The market sees standard faces from the academies and asks for more of the same. The acting schools and the screen industry complete an unspoken deal. People who do not fit the standard are shut out, even when they have the gift.

The result is strange. Screens and stages are full of beautiful people. The faces you remember grow fewer. Character recognizability falls not because actors are lazy, but because diversity is removed at the source. Feng says the theatre needs a Huang Pangzi. Huang Pangzi needs a distinctive body and temperament. He does not need a standardized leading-man face. When every actor grows toward one template, the stage is left with one kind of person: people who look good and cannot play ordinary human beings.

The theatre also holds a ruler

It is unfair and incomplete to blame only the academies. The theatres are not innocent.

When the Beijing People’s Art Theatre’s job notices specify “performing arts” or “drama and film studies” majors, it has already climbed into the same boat as the acting schools. The boat looks safe: professional training, reliable fundamentals, appearances that fit mainstream taste. It also steers the profession into a narrower channel.

Look at the theatre’s great artists. Lan Tianye studied oil painting at the National Beiping Art School. Yu Shizhi once studied in the Department of Western Languages at Peking University. Neither was an acting major. Both became towering figures in Chinese spoken drama. World theatre history is full of excellent performers who never attended an acting program. Professional training matters. The acting department is not the only channel for producing good actors, and it is not the most important one. Life experience, cultural depth and an understanding of people cannot be taught in an acting program. They are exactly what is needed to create Wang Lifa, Fanyi or Cyrano.

As the end user of the acting schools, a theatre can use its casting choices to push the academies to change admissions and training. In reality, complaints from theatre companies are easier to find than decisions to broaden hiring. There is a subtler problem. Even when an actor with a non-standard appearance is hired, can that actor get the same opportunities as the handsome men and beautiful women? The answer is not encouraging. In most cases, the theatre still gives Hamlet to the best-looking actor. Shakespeare wrote that Hamlet is not handsome. The theatre itself plays the safe market card. It complains about homogenization while selecting by homogenized standards. Complaints cannot break that cycle.

Where do the people measured out go?

Homogenization does not only leave theatres short of actors. It pushes many actors to the margins.

Actors without formal training already have limited opportunities. Film and television work rarely comes their way. The stage alone cannot support them. One young actor described earning a few hundred yuan per performance. A monthly income of 8,000 yuan is considered decent. Living on stage work alone is almost a luxury. Trained actors whose height or appearance does not fit mainstream taste face a harder situation. They receive marginal roles. Their range narrows. Many leave the profession.

The loop closes. Academies admit by one standard. The market casts by one standard. Theatres hire by one standard. Actors who are non-standard but capable have no plays and no path. The theatres then complain that they cannot find suitable actors. The complaint is real. The theatres also helped create it.

The ruler can be changed

The answer is not complicated. Is the acting department teaching acting, or running a beauty pageant? Should a theatre let market standards lead its hiring?

Art schools should shift admissions from an appearance template to role adaptability and professional fundamentals. Voice, diction, movement and acting are the baseline. Above that baseline, schools should keep candidates of different heights, body types and temperaments. A woman who is 1.55 meters tall may not play Fanyi. She may play Chen Naima in The Peking Man, Jiao’s mother in The Wilderness, and roles that standard-height actors cannot play. Acting creates human beings. Human beings come in all shapes and sizes. If only one kind of person remains onstage, the stage stops being a mirror of the world and becomes a beauty filter.

Theatres need the same courage. They should broaden hiring and seek talented people outside acting degrees. In casting, they should put role suitability above box-office safety. Their hiring logic should tell the academies: we need actors who can play all kinds of people, not only actors who look good. Feng has said an actor’s strength lies in culture and in solid voice, diction, movement and acting fundamentals. If the theatre believes that, it should apply those criteria in hiring instead of complaining about homogenization while hiring by homogenized standards.

Feng’s distress looks like a height question. At bottom, it is a question of artistic logic surrendering to market logic. When the acting department becomes a beauty pageant, when the theatre becomes a transit station for traffic, and when “looking like that and still getting into an acting program” becomes a joke, a stable contract forms among acting schools, theatres and audiences. That contract protects the safe bet and sacrifices the truth of the stage.

Breaking it is not difficult. Use one less ruler for measuring bodies. Use one more pair of eyes for watching performance. Trust ordinary people more than standard faces. The stage is large enough for a 1.8-meter Hamlet, a 1.6-meter Fanyi, and people who do not look standard but can bring a role to life.

Feng closed the résumés and sighed. Next admissions season, will the line outside the exam hall include a few more women around 1.5-something meters and men around 1.6-something? He does not know. He does know that if no one loosens the ruler first, the theatre will never see the next Huang Pangzi.