A brave enterprise(3)

Photo provided to China Daily]

Bigger budget

Yang's second production is a Chinese version of Avenue Q, with a much higher budget. The story contains risque elements that she feared might run into trouble. Surprisingly, everything went well when it opened in Shanghai in 2013, with a very healthy run of 50 shows and 95 percent audience turnout. It was revived a year later in Beijing, with a total of 141 shows for the two runs.

Avenue Q resonates with the Chinese audience for its humor and self-deprecation, especially for its portrayal of the underachiever, a demographic currently making tidal waves in Chinese pop culture. Yang's version incorporates loads of Chinese online memes, "drawing parallels between demographics in Brooklyn and Shanghai", as Gao Xiaosong, a popular talking head, puts it.

"Seven years earlier, I was watching a student production of the show, thinking of all the possibilities that youth might present," ruminates Yang. "Now I've produced a professional version. This is the stage of life one has to reconcile with oneself. We cannot go back to the college campus, but have to come to terms with reality. Avenue Q chronicles that moment in life with truthfulness and a light touch. It shows you are not alone."

Youthful enthusiasm is contagious. Yang's team comes from young people in other lines of work who share her dream. Some are media professionals she had earlier contacted for publicity.

"My father is a civil servant and my mother an entrepreneur. I can detect their differences. She is like someone of my generation: She encourages me to do what I want to do and she gives me a lot of freedom," adds Yang. That includes the freedom to venture into a part of showbiz that is far from mature yet.

"When Jack Ma first launched Alibaba, people suspected he was a crook. We're in a much better position now." Her company had got another capital injection of 30 million yuan before the opening of How to Succeed, she announces. "We have successful productions to show the world."

If you go

7:30 pm for most shows, 2:30 pm on Sundays, no show on Mondays. Through Feb 8.

Century Theater, 40 Liangma-qiao Road, Chaoyang district, Beijing.

Tickets also available online.