A collective livestream by 57 state-owned performing arts troupes, accumulating over 16,000 live broadcasts and reaching an audience of 320 million—this is the impressive report card so far for the regularized troupe livestreams by state-owned troupes on the Douyin platform. On June 25th, another milestone was added. Guided by the Market Management Department of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Douyin Live, in collaboration with the China Association of Performing Arts, launched the "Grand Productions on Troupe Streams" Classic Repertoire Support Plan (hereinafter referred to as the "Support Plan"). Building upon the "Art Broadcast Plan - Douyin Live Troupe Special Project," it aims to provide audiences across regions with online viewing pathways and expand the supply of high-quality content for troupe livestreams.
On the day of the launch event, the China Oriental Performing Arts Group brought excerpts from renowned stage works, including "The Journey of a Legendary Landscape Painting," into the vertical-screen livestreaming room, marking the first broadcast under the Support Plan. With the formal initiation of the Support Plan, classic productions that have been active in theaters in recent years, such as "Awakening Lion," will successively grace the stage of the livestreaming rooms.
When "grand productions" representing highbrow aesthetics collide with livestreams that pursue instant interaction, many instinctively wonder: Is this a dilution of art or a breakthrough for culture? The Support Plan is attempting to offer a new answer: "Grand productions" step down from their "pedestal" to "sow seeds" in broader soil; meanwhile, the traffic from livestreams will ultimately nourish the theaters, completing a value loop of "online seeding and offline consumption."
Not a 'Screen Transfer' but a 'Re-staging'
At the launch event, a relevant Douyin Live official introduced that the Support Plan will provide cooperating troupes with support across five dimensions: cash incentives, traffic support, exclusive program creation, operational guidance, and diversified revenue models. "The core goal is to help classic repertoire find new pathways to reach the masses while safeguarding artistic quality, enabling high-quality performances to balance theater presentation with daily dissemination, and allowing more artistic creators to receive due returns on this new stage."
It is undeniable that launching the Support Plan is an inevitable development in the livestreaming industry. Between traditional theaters and livestreams, there seems to lie a seemingly insurmountable chasm. In the perception of some audiences, the theater is a "sanctuary"—lights dim, music swells, the audience sits attentively, their gaze fixed on the stage, completing a ritualistic viewing experience. Livestreams, however, are a "public square"—people might stumble upon them during their commute, on a lunch break at their desk, or while scrolling on their phones before bed, and they might swipe away at any moment.
This chasm dictates that professional troupes cannot simply transplant their theater content onto the vertical screen of a mobile phone. The online stage is not a porter for offline performances; it is a new form of content that requires re-creation and respect for the laws of online dissemination.
So, how can the refined art from the "sanctuary" make people stop and listen amidst the noise of the "public square"? The answer from the China Oriental Performing Arts Group is: do not lower standards, but transcode. In April 2026, the China Oriental Performing Arts Group initiated regularized livestreams, becoming the first national-level dance troupe to systematically open a livestreaming stage, having broadcast 49 sessions to date.
For the inaugural broadcast under the Support Plan, the China Oriental Performing Arts Group did not opt for simply airing an excerpt from "The Journey of a Legendary Landscape Painting." Instead, they meticulously planned a special program centered around classic repertoire. They selected representative works spanning the Song and Yuan dynasties and covering various mediums like painting, artifacts, murals, and literature, such as "The Journey of a Legendary Landscape Painting," "Only My Green and White," "Eternal Yongle," and "The Great River Flows East." Through re-choreography, they preserved iconic segments from the theater versions, magnified details like sleeve dances, fingertips, and eye expressions to lower the comprehension barrier.
Simultaneously, leveraging the advantages of close-ups and extreme close-ups on vertical screens, they designed new narrative and sequencing logic, allowing the small screen of a phone to also carry the Eastern aesthetics of a "grand production." This livestream attracted 1.894 million online viewers. Some audience members commented that they had never been to a theater before and this was their first online exposure to professional dance drama.
For the China Oriental Performing Arts Group, regularized livestreaming is about managing a new stage, transforming the "one-time" theater experience into a digital asset that can be rebroadcast, interacted with, and shared. Therefore, the group does not engage in dilution; instead, it brings the high standards of a "national team" to the online stage. In their regular livestreams, everything from actors, lighting, and stage design to camera work involves seasoned teams, adjusting the presentation method without sacrificing artistic quality.
Professional artistic direction ensures visual aesthetics, rigorous arrangement guarantees content integrity, and solid performance skills allow audiences in front of small screens to feel the overwhelming artistic tension. From an industry perspective, this is a wisdom of "not sacrificing quality, only changing the grammar," and it is also a decoding of cultural inclusivity.
"The deep integration of high-quality cultural content with new livestreaming models can break through the spatial and temporal limitations of theaters, broaden the boundaries of artistic dissemination, guide online performances towards professionalization and quality enhancement, build online-offline linkage models, and help troupes achieve a unity of social and economic benefits," a guest speaker stated at the launch event.
"The online stage and the offline theater complement each other; the offline theater safeguards the essence of art, while the online stage expands the breadth of dissemination," a relevant official from the China Oriental Performing Arts Group expressed at the event. As high art enters ordinary households in a more approachable manner, a complementary bridge is formed between offline theaters and online stages: if a young person who has never been to a theater can be struck by a glimpse of green from "The Journey of a Legendary Landscape Painting" while scrolling on their phone, then a seed of Chinese aesthetics and traditional culture can be quietly planted.
Turning Vertical-Screen Traffic into Applause and Box Office in Theaters
However, if cultural inclusivity is merely a one-way output lacking a feedback mechanism, it remains unsustainable. It is precisely the "re-creation" style investment by state-owned troupes that opens the door to the experience economy—after being moved by a dance or a performance in the livestream, the audience's next desire is to step into a real theater to feel the immersive experience.
Take the Jiangsu Song and Dance Theater as an example. Starting in May 2026, the Jiangsu Song and Dance Theater officially launched its livestreams. Within just 20 days of broadcasting, its follower count increased by over 70,000, single-session viewership broke one million, and the average concurrent online viewership stabilized above 2,000. The impact of the livestreams also radiated offline. Each time offline performance schedules were announced via scrolling text during broadcasts, it attracted many viewers, directly leading to sold-out tickets for offline performances during the May Day holiday. Furthermore, tickets for the dance drama "Ink Wash Jiangnan" for the May 9th offline performance in Taicang also sold out quickly, with some viewers specifically returning to the livestream to share their purchase records.
A similar phenomenon occurred with the Guangzhou Song and Dance Theater. Known for its "Lingnan Trilogy" of dance dramas—"Awakening Lion," "Dragon Boat," and "Yingge"—this troupe began experimenting with livestreams in December 2025. They assembled a 100-member livestreaming team, determined to promote Lingnan culture, including Cantonese, Teochew, and Hakka cultures, from the livestreaming room. After launching livestreams, the Guangzhou Song and Dance Theater's Douyin account followers grew from an initial 1,000+ to 110,000, with peak concurrent viewership surpassing 20,000 on the fifth day of broadcasting.
The massive exposure brought not only direct revenue from virtual gifts but also nourished offline business, converting livestream followers into ticket-buying audiences. Conservatively estimated, livestreaming is expected to bring an additional 20% revenue growth for the Guangzhou Song and Dance Theater.
The growth in offline theaters is not accidental. Cultural consumption often begins with free "cloud experiences" and culminates in paid "sense of presence." For state-owned troupes to proactively "attract customers" through livestreaming is itself a profound reform. The dual-wheel drive of online and offline channels has enabled performing arts troupes to find a self-sustaining mechanism in the digital age, also allowing traditional art to radiate new vitality.
Looking back, cultural inclusivity and the experience economy are two sides of the same coin. The former is about sentiment and responsibility, sowing the seeds for art; the latter is about survival and development, injecting vitality into art. Of course, launching the Support Plan is just a beginning. The next step for the Support Plan will involve continuously introducing more classic repertoire, promoting the upgrade of livestream content towards professionalization, quality enhancement, and IP development. As more "grand productions" like "Striving Meal" from the Chengdu Art Theater and "The Dream of Dunhuang" from the Lanzhou Grand Theater are seen and loved in livestreaming rooms, ultimately bringing audiences back to theaters, a cultural ecosystem that is inheritable, interactive, growing, and consumable will gradually take shape. This, perhaps, is the grander "production" of the livestreaming era.
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