Robert Wilson's staging of Krapp's Last Tap. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Of the three biggest markets for stage entertainment, i.e. Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, 15 percent of the residents have been exposed to comedy, making up for 40 percent of those who go to plays.

The latest available figures show that in 2013, there were 11,200 performances of plays nationwide, accounting for 15 percent of all live shows. The total box-office tally was 1.594 billion yuan ($257 million) and the average ticket price was 252 yuan.

Occasionally, the more dramatic stories happened offstage.

In April, Jin Han, an actor with The Beijing People's Art Theater, was stabbed when he literally went to rescue a damsel in distress in a dark alley. The real-life hero, though wounded, was back onstage shortly afterward.

Later in the year, the same company was threatened with a lawsuit when it presented Citizen, based on the story of China's last emperor. It adopted the version of a biographer, which His Majesty's descendents claimed to be inaccurate.

An apt coda to 2014 in Chinese theater may be Lisa Lu's year-end appearance in Stan Lai's eight-hour epic, A Dream Like a Dream. Lu played the role in a 2005 Taipei production, and now, aged 88, she commands the stage by her crowning silvery glory alone.

Theater in China is very old, yet it is energized every year.