Dora Yuemin Cheng

Dora Yuemin Cheng is a playwright and theatre maker working across languages, cultures, and political contexts. Her work explores feminism, disappearance, migration, and intimacy under social, technological, and ideological pressure. She is particularly interested in how women’s bodies, emotions, and vocabularies are shaped—and erased—by power structures, and how love can function as a form of resistance.

At Saari Residence, she is developing a new multilingual play titled Barbaric Female Poets. The project brings together voices of women from different times, places, and cultural traditions, weaving correspondence between historical, mythical, and contemporary figures. Drawing on epic literature such as ancient Chinese mythology, Middle Eastern storytelling, Germanic and Nordic epics, the play asks how female figures have been represented, distorted, or silenced—and how new languages might emerge from these gaps. The work combines documentary theatre, speculative fiction, and multilingual writing, incorporating Chinese, Persian, English, German, and elements of Finnish.

During the residency, Cheng plans to research Finnish epic literature, study the Finnish language, and engage in conversations with local women around the themes of love and disappearance. She will also continue long-term online writing workshops with young female theatre practitioners in Iran and China. Saari’s quiet, reflective environment offers her an essential space to write the first full draft of the play and to test its performative potential through readings and exchanges with fellow residents.

Dora Yuemin Cheng, playwright and theatre worker, lives and works in Berlin and Nanjing. Born and raised in China, she completed her Bachelor in Dramatic Writing at Shanghai Theatre Academy and gained her Master degree in the visual Language of Performance at Wimbledon College of Art in University of Arts London. Now she writes in German, English and Chinese, and her plays have been read or performed in China, UK, Germany, Austria and Denmark.

She’s working on the first draft of a new multilingual sci-fi play named Barbaric Female Poets at Saari Residence. The project brings together voices of women from different times, places, and situations, weaving correspondence between historical, mythical, and contemporary figures. Drawing on the epic literature, the establishment of the languages and the application of AI technology, the play asks how female figures have been represented, distorted, or silenced- and how a new language of love might emerge from this departure.

During the residency, Dora will lay her focus on the research of world-wide epic literature including the Finnish myth and as well engage in conversations with local women about the themes of love and disappearance. She will also continue the online writing workshops with young female theatre practitioners in Iran and China.