Zombies scratch at the door. Inside: a mother, her son, and a drag queen who came for dinner. Seven years of silence between the mother and son. No calls. No talks. Just two strangers sharing a roof.
Then the virus hits.
The play “Alien” (外人) flips a simple question: who doesn’t belong? The guest? Or the woman who gave birth but never listened? The son points a camera at the drag queen—still an Alien. Then she hands him an axe. That exchange changes everything.
Not blood. Not years of living together. An axe.
Director Liu Tianqi (刘添祺) has done this before. In “Chicken and Rabbit in the Same Cage” (鸡兔同笼), a father and daughter talk through prison glass. Here, the barrier is a door, a mute mother, and a rotting world outside. Both stories trap people in small rooms. Both ask: can you reach someone when everything normal is gone?
The drag queen wants to be let in. The son wants to prove he’s not a stranger. The mother wants to care but forgot how. By the second act, “Alien” becomes a useless word. The one who hands you a weapon when the dead rise—that’s your people.
Two shows only. April 30 and May 1, 2026. Quanzhou Grand Theatre. Go see who hands over the axe. You might recognize your own front door.