LONDON — At a theatre here, the characters and elements of a serendipitous meeting came together: A play about a dissident Chinese artist starring a British-born Chinese man and reviewed by an American whose father defected from a repressive communist nation.
Howard Brenton's #aiww: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei debuted here Thursday, with the hashtag title an homage to Twitter's significance for the Chinese artist who uses the platform and his 200,000 followers to promote digital rights and avoid censorship from the Great Wall of communism. Mr. Ai uses social media as a tool for political dissent, challenging the state's control with acts like publishing the names of 5,335 student victims who died in the magnitude 7.9 Sichuan earthquake in 2008 (which he attributes to the collapse of poorly built government housing).
Read more at: http://mashable.com/2013/04/12/arrest-of-ai-weiwei/
