Musicals are a type of dramatic performance that combines music, songs, dance, drama, juggling, stunts, and variety shows. They use humor, satire, sentimentality, love, anger, and other emotions to trigger the plot and then convey it to the audience through the actors’ language, music, movements, and fixed interpretations.

According to the recruitment details of many Chinese musical actor recruitment websites, to become a musical actor in China, you need to have a foundation in singing, dancing, and acting, and one of them must be particularly outstanding. According to the information, most crews will mention in the recruitment details that they hope the actors will graduate from a professional music school or a professional acting school. Although many crews only require actors to have a specific foundation in singing, dancing, and acting, looking at the outstanding actors in the global musical market, they have mastered these three skills at the same time. For example, China’s most famous musical actor, A Yunga has played the Phantom in the Chinese version of “The Phantom of the Opera” and is the co-producer of this play, Edmund in the Chinese version of “The Count of Monte Cristo,” and Mark in “Rent.” He first performed professionally in the art troupe in his hometown. After his dancing skills matured, he quit the art troupe and went to Beijing, the capital of China. He successfully studied singing and acting in Beijing and was admitted to the Beijing Dance Academy’s musical theater major with the first place in his major. He was later admitted to the Juilliard School and went to the United States to continue studying musical theater performance. He has a very high level of dance skills, and after successfully entering the school, he continued to hone his vocal and performance skills. He relied on his own efforts to hone his dancing, singing, and performance skills to a position that everyone knows among Chinese musical actors. So, although the current Chinese market does not have requirements that are too high for those who want to become musical actors, actors who really want to succeed in this market do need to have exceptionally high requirements for themselves.

The responsibility of musical actors on stage is to convey the thoughts and feelings of the characters in the musical to the audience through singing and performance, according to an article titled “The Responsibilities and Skills of Musical Actors” published by Shanghai iStage Academy Musical on the Chinese social media platform “Little Red Book”, musical actors on stage need to have good singing skills, which requires voice control. Actors need to have good vocal skills to be able to sing clearly and loudly on stage and convey the emotions that the characters want to express to the audience. Not only that, musical actors must have a variety of styles. There are many styles of songs and dances in musicals, and actors need to have a variety of expressions. In addition, physical fitness and endurance are also the responsibilities of musical actors. For long performances and complex dances, if actors want to present a good performance, physical fitness, and endurance are some of the skills they must have.

According to Sun Shengkai, the director of the Hong Kong Chinese Music Troupe, the producer of the Chinese musical “Famous World”, and an actor of the Chinese Music Troupe, the remuneration of Chinese musical actors comes from performance fees and rehearsal fees. The performance fee is the corresponding number of performances per month, and the crew settles according to the number of performances. The performance fee of ordinary actors when they first enter the industry is 800 to 1,500 yuan, and the rehearsal fee is the cost of rehearsing with the crew every day. The rehearsal fee for ordinary actors is 200 yuan per day. In comparison, the salary of experienced musical actors who perform frequently and have audience support is generally 3,000 to 5,000 yuan per performance. He said that the highest-paid musical actors he has seen will cooperate with the investors and distribute wages according to the audience attendance rate of each performance. Generally, those who distribute wages in this way are very well-known domestic or international musical actors. The above is the most common salary division in Chinese musicals. Data shows that so far, there has been basically no conflict between Chinese musical actors and crews over the issue of salary distribution, but the legal disputes caused by the crew’s withholding of wages are the most common. Since 2018, the Chinese musical market has attracted a large number of consumers due to the participation of many musical actors in online variety shows. Data shows that the box office of Chinese musicals reached 428 million yuan in 2018, a year-on-year increase of 92.8%, and reached ** billion yuan in 2019; the market size in 2019 reached 721 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 60.94%.

(Box office revenue of Chinese musicals from 2014 to 2019)

(Statistics of the size of China’s musical market from 2017 to 2019)

As a large number of consumers poured in, many investors and producers also saw business opportunities. They unthinkingly set up project teams and carried out performances without any experience in musical production, and the final result ended in losses. On May 23, 2024, the deputy director of the Chinese musical “Dionysus” repeatedly spoke on Chinese social media, saying that the relevant company and project team had repeatedly defaulted on the wages of the crew and actors. To this day, this matter has not been resolved, but fortunately, in China, you can appeal according to labor laws to get the wages owed back.

According to the paper “Analysis of Problems in Domestic Musical Marketing and Suggestions for Improvement,” published in September 2022 by Ye Tanglin, Executive Vice President of the Institute of Economic and Social Development of Megacities, Capital University of Economics and Business, China. At present, the marketing strategy of Chinese musicals can be analyzed from the perspective of 4Ps. The 4P marketing theory is summarized as a combination of four basic strategies, namely product, price, promotion, and place. Since the English initials of these four words are P, plus strategy, they are referred to as “4P’s”. First of all, in terms of product strategy, while introducing Western musicals, Chinese musicals are also creating localized repertoires, such as “The Art Shop on Xingji Road”, which tells the story of two people supporting each other in an orphanage because of art, and “In the Distance,” which tells the life of a courier. There is a unique emotional resonance and sense of identity between Chinese local musicals and the audience. Second, in terms of price strategy, the price strategy of the Chinese musical industry is mainly reflected in the setting of performance ticket prices, but the current audience consumption levels are different. Therefore, ticket prices need to take into account the consumption levels of different consumer groups in order to attract and retain audiences with different consumption levels. Third, in terms of channel strategy, the channels for marketing in the musical industry are often hierarchical. In order to make a profit, teams that provide performance services, theaters that provide venues for rent, online and offline ticket agents, and investing companies will all conduct different forms of marketing on social platforms. Theaters will be promoted in public places with significant traffic, such as surrounding areas and subway stations; ticket agents and musical creation teams usually promote them online. Fourth, the current primary promotional strategy for Chinese musicals focuses on adapting famous works and recruiting well-known actors in the industry or cross-border celebrities to perform in order to increase the popularity of the show.

This profession requires much physical fitness from the actors themselves, so many musical actors will fall into illness under high-intensity training pressure every day. For example, Chinese musical actor Liu Lingfei is one of the phantoms in the Chinese version of “The Phantom of the Opera” and the male lead of “No Longer Human.” Because he sang too hard before, he now has to nebulize his throat before every performance to ensure that his throat can be stable on stage. Musical actor A Yunga also said in an interview that he has many injuries on his body due to years of dancing, such as waist injuries, knees, meniscus, and other injuries. Most actresses will tell the audience at the stage door that they are not in the best condition to perform because of their menstrual period because the throats of girls are congested during their menstrual period, so the performance during this period requires the actresses to have extreme physical fitness and a grasp of singing skills to make a performance perfect. In addition to illness, accepting the love and abuse of the audience is also a big challenge for musical actors. At present, everyone has social media, and the audience will also write their feelings about watching the play on social media to share with everyone. Although there is more praise, there is also abuse. Many times, actors need to adjust their mindset to face the blame and abuse and make improvements.

According to the musical actor Sun Shengkai during the live broadcast, the most straightforward role to get in this industry is the actor of the small theater, because the profit of the small theater depends on daily performances. Because there are many performance opportunities, naturally, there are many actors, and an actor will get tired of it when he plays the same play many times. In many cases, it will be challenging to get the state when he first plays the play, so the production team will usually discuss with the actor to temporarily let the actor “graduate” and wait for one or two years to return to the theater to perform the play. Most of China’s small theaters rent a venue and perform here for a long time. Similar to many musicals in London’s West End, although the salary is low and there are many performances, being able to stand on the stage and interact closely with the audience is the best place for young actors to train, in Sun Shengkai’s words. When the actor’s performance in the small theater is very mature, he will have the opportunity to be selected by the drama director of the big theater to perform. It is generally difficult for China’s big theaters to achieve long-term performances. It can only be a few performances a year or a national tour. In addition, the musicals of the big theaters are generally prepared with investment and sufficient funds, so the actor’s salary is relatively higher. Many actors plan to become musical producers after they succeed in their performances. Many young actors are selected by directors who come to watch performances to star in movies and TV series. For example, A Yunga, as mentioned above, is a typical example of a person who went from university theater to big theater and now became a musical producer and movie actor.