The cultural policy of a place is influenced by the cultural imagination of its policymakers and local artists. But “imagination” is an open window from which everyone can see a different view. Take Macao as an example. Nowadays, many world-class hotel and casinos are operated in Macao. As cultural workers in the drama category, should they aim to create large-scale entertainment performances? In the perspective of market development, such a view is certainly worthy of attention of practitioners and investors. In the previous article, I have proposed the concept of “cultural outlook” and “the history of culture”, which will affect our imagination of our own culture. For producers or official organisations who are eager to industrialise their local performing arts, after seeing many large musicals shining in downtown areas such as Broadway, West End from the window of “cultural outlook”, which creates a contemporary legend, while attracting many tourists, it is natural to think that Macao, as a world tourism and leisure centre, should bring more entertainment programmes to tourists (whether it is the creation in Macao by foreign theatrical troupe or the performance of a nearby area). It is much better to have a local performing team, which can fully highlight the cultural strength of local art groups. 

As a resident writer in Macao, I was inevitably asked many times by my friends in the hotel and cultural industry about the possibility of performing a large stage play for tourists in Macao. In small talk, I can’t explain in two or three words the development path of performance art that I think is different from this. If you try to see it from the window of “the history of culture”, you will see that the local theatre creation has never been affected by the trend of marketisation (the box office is not the main source of production funding). Many local creations target the community (including friends and family) as the audiences. After years of development, a creative mode with personal expression as the main aesthetic content has emerged. As to achieve an industrial goal, packaging the creation in our usual mode into a long-term performance in a tourist place is certainly like a record company that has put the great songwriters and lyricists behind the scenes, out on the market as icons who can sing and dance. In the end, they were ignored by the market and questioned whether they had the strength to pursue a music career. 

To admit the lack of market-oriented in local creative thinking, and then jump out of the impact of this thinking limitation and create more works that maximise creativity is a development belief that I have gained from observation. Of course, it is more important to continue in-depth practical exploration and summary, to break the inherent concepts into the next stage of exploration. 

The third source of imagination is the courage to “find new ways”. Once we are trapped by our limited imagination in an inherent success model, it will be difficult to find a suitable pace for our development. What limits our imagination is sometimes the very first imagination. Although full-time troupe, performing company and profitable industrial creation are not unrealistic to imagine, looking back at the boom in tourism over the past decade, Macao has not developed a stage show that can operate solely on the box office. Our development path still needs to seek more possibilities, instead of just relying on industrialisation as the target. 

At the same time, I think it is time for a more imaginative dialogue between local artists and their cultural counterparts on the definition of the term “development of performing arts”. 

What are performing arts? Is it the creation published on the art festival platform every year, the experimental work in the small theatre, or the project funded by the cultural and creative institute? 

What is development? Make the industrialisation of performance projects self-sufficient? More opportunities for works to be exhibited in Chinese or overseas areas? Better local employment environment for local artists? 

After understanding these concepts, maybe we can no longer let Macao perform the same as Las Vegas. We should make Macao become a place where young artists love to reside. What we need more is not a large stage in entertainment field, but more spaces to accommodate our imaginations.