Australian journalist Cheng Lei will bring her extraordinary personal story to the stage this month with 1154 Days, a live performance premiering at Arts House from 28 to 31 May.
Combining storytelling with live-cinematic theatre, the production explores Lei’s experience of detention in China after she was taken by state security officers in Beijing in August 2020.
Within hours of being called into work, Lei was blindfolded and transported to a secret location. She would spend the next 1154 days separated from her children, family and the outside world.
For the first six months, Lei was held under Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location, known as RSDL, a detention system marked by isolation, surveillance and silence. Through live performance, projection and documentary-style staging, 1154 Days offers audiences a rare insight into what life inside those facilities can feel like.
Performed by Lei herself, the production focuses not only on survival but on the strange and deeply human ways people adapt under pressure. During her detention, Lei created television programs in her mind, invented memory games and found moments of connection and humour in unlikely places.
“1154 Days asks what freedom really means and how easily it can be reshaped. This isn’t about recounting the suffering, it’s an exploration of something more universal,” said Lei.
“While in detention, small acts sustained us like sharing sunlight, singing on Christmas Day, crafting gifts from scraps, knocking coded messages through walls. These moments defied the system,” Lei explained.
Directed by Emma Valente and Clyde White, the production uses multi-camera projection and live staging to move between Beijing, detention facilities and Lei’s eventual return to Melbourne.
Valente described the work as “lived testimony on stage” that explores power, resilience and the fragility of freedoms often taken for granted.
1154 Days runs from 28 to 31 May at Arts House in North Melbourne Town Hall.
For tickets and more information, visit artshouse.com.au
