“One more light here…” At his new rehearsal space in San Dimas, Peter Jia directs technicians from the stage. Once a celebrated actor in China, he now builds stages for others.
More than two decades after winning Best New Actor at the Huabiao Film Awards for Silent River, Jia began again in America.
He founded Southern California’s Time Theatre so Chinese communities could tell their own stories, in their own language, and keep a shared cultural memory alive.
His work recently earned him the American Asian Culture and Arts Foundation’s “Distinguished Chinese Award.” for advancing Chinese-language theater and culture in North America.
Born to Act — Bound for Beijing
Born into a theater family in 1977, Peter Jia stepped onstage at three. Rehearsal calls, backstage footsteps, costumes, and greasepaint shaped his childhood. For others, acting was a choice; for him, it was his first language.
His father knew how uncertain an actor’s life could be. After four years at Hubei Art School, Jia joined the Wuhan Children’s Art Theatre, earning just over 120 yuan a month.
A television shoot opened his eyes. Though he earned 800 yuan per episode, actors with no greater roles or skill were paid far more simply because they had graduated from the Central Academy of Drama.
Jia saw that elite training meant more than a diploma—it meant credibility, discipline, and a path to a larger stage.
Still, Jia had no plans to continue his studies until a teacher confronted him: “Everyone else is taking the entrance exam. Why are you still here?”
Applications had closed, and auditions were already underway. Jia had never been to Beijing and had nowhere to stay.
Convinced of his talent, the teacher lent him travel money, arranged lodging, and sent him north. With borrowed fare and little else, Jia boarded the train to Beijing.
Stage-Honed — Screen-Renowned
Arriving in Beijing with little more than a teacher’s contact, Peter Jia followed a chain of introductions to the Central Academy of Drama.
Impressed by his talent, an instructor reopened registration for him and sent him straight to the second-round audition. Jia cleared every hurdle and entered the Acting Department.
Years later, he still remembers the teacher who sent him north. That unplanned journey carried him not only to Beijing, but onto a far larger stage.
While still a student, Jia starred in Silent River and won Best New Actor at the China Huabiao Film Awards—national recognition that put him on the industry’s radar and opened new doors.
After graduation, he joined leading national performing arts companies and moved between stage and screen.
From Chinese Style Divorce, Bing Feng, and The Rebel Princess to the stage play “Once upon a time in China”, he explored family, war, history, and contemporary life, becoming a familiar face to audiences.
On the set of Zuo Zhuang, he met Beijing Dance Academy alumna Xiaoyan Dong; they later married.
Leaving the Screen — Returning to Purpose
At the height of his fame, Peter Jia resisted back-to-back productions and commercial endorsements. “Everything comes at a price,” he said. He preferred roles he believed in over income he did not need.
At his busiest, he spent more than 300 days a year on set, moving from one production to the next. Home became a place to exchange winter clothes for summer ones. Scripts, hotels, and soundstages consumed his life.
He had reached the top of television, yet watched the market produce more scripts than meaningful roles. Some characters vanished from memory; lines from “Once upon a time in China” stayed with him for years.
So he began to ask why he acted at all. He did not leave because work disappeared, but because he still had the freedom to choose. He no longer wanted to spend himself on stories he did not believe in.
Film freezes a performance. Theater grows with the actor.
A line spoken at thirty carries a different weight at fifty, and no two nights are ever the same.
“Theater is more like life,” Jia said. That belief planted the seed for Time Theatre.
New Land — Cultural Roots
Around 2020, Peter Jia came to the United States for his child’s education. The pandemic unexpectedly kept the family here—and revealed a side of immigrant life rarely seen.
He met former engineers, teachers, actors, and other professionals forced to start over, not for lack of talent, but because language, licensing, and networks left years of experience unseen.
“Many stay for their children,” Jia said. Parents leave behind careers and familiar lives, while their children may never fully see the dreams, dignity, and identities they once carried.
To him, that cultural divide can cut deeper than professional loss.
“Fitting in does not mean becoming someone else.” Jia believes true integration begins with creating work of substance, then carrying one’s culture into the wider world.
He came to see that Chinese communities abroad need more than festival symbols. They need a stage where they can speak their own language, tell their own stories, and help generations understand one another again.
A Troupe Born — A Stage Built
At Chinese community events across Southern California, Peter Jia saw no shortage of spectacle—lion dances, songs, qipao, and hanfu.
But when culture becomes little more than festival entertainment, he believed, younger generations lose sight of its history, humanity, and meaning.
“Culture should be carried forward, not consumed.”
In 2020, Jia founded Time Theatre with his wife and friends. They had no venue, funding, or crew—only a determination to begin.
Their first production was Cao Yu’s The Wilderness. Most actors rehearsed after work.
After contacting dozens of venues, the troupe found a gymnasium at the South Coast Chinese Cultural Center, where they had to build—and later dismantle—the entire stage.
Jia shipped lighting equipment from Beijing and helped haul, install, and test it. Once, crews prepared everything for him. Now, he built the stage himself.
Small Start — Full House
In April 2025, Time Theatre staged The Field of Life and Death, adapted from Xiao Hong’s novel. Barely 100 people filled the 450-seat opening performance.
Jia was disappointed—but once the lights came up, the standard could not fall.
All stayed through the three-hour play. Word spread, audiences grew, and the final show sold beyond capacity, forcing the theater to add chairs in the aisles.
The turnaround confirmed Jia’s belief: Chinese audiences in North America do want theater—they simply need work worth showing up for.
Most of the cast were not trained actors. By day, they led different lives; by night, they gathered to tell a shared Chinese story. The theater became more than a stage—it became a place to reconnect through language, emotion, and memory.
Classics Reborn — Chinese Stories Retold
After The Wilderness and The Field of Life and Death, Peter Jia began asking: Must Chinese stories always be told through Western dramatic forms?
Chinese theater, he believed, already had a language of its own—poetic, episodic, emotional, and suggestive. Characters could speak directly to the audience, while fate unfolded scene by scene. His next choice was Tang Xianzu’s classic, The Peony Pavilion.
Jia spent seven months reshaping the work for contemporary North American audiences. He streamlined its language, characters, and structure while preserving the poetry and spirit of traditional Chinese theater.
With more than 30 roles, the adaptation blends symbolic staging, classical verse, and accessible language. Jia sought neither to reproduce traditional opera nor repackage it in a Western mold, but to tell a Chinese story through the soul of Chinese theater.
He compares his vision to Bruce Lee, who won the world over by first revealing the power of Chinese martial arts.
Jia hopes The Peony Pavilion can open a similar door—showing that the world stage belongs not only to Shakespeare, but also to China’s rich and distinctive theatrical tradition.
Training Talent — Creating Originals
Time Theatre remains largely volunteer-run, with two training programs serving students from 13 to their 60s.
Jia wants young people not only to watch theater, but to step onstage—learning language, expression, and teamwork while discovering history through character.
The troupe recently secured a rehearsal space in San Dimas. Jia hopes to build it into a lasting theater hub, training actors, writers, directors, and backstage artists while bringing drama into Chinese schools, summer camps, and community programs.
He is also developing original stories of Chinese life in North America—from railroad workers and Angel Island immigrants to today’s struggles with language, family, identity, and work.
Rather than dwell only on hardship and discrimination, he wants to show how people caught between cultures reclaim dignity, agency, and selfhood.
For Jia, theater must do more than reenact history. It must look through the past—and illuminate the present.
Uniting Forces — Building the Future
Time Theatre was founded to preserve Chinese culture through drama, unite Chinese communities abroad, and carry cultural memory forward.
Jia hopes to connect theater, music, dance, martial arts, and other cultural groups—sharing talent, audiences, and resources to build a larger stage together.
A performance vanishes when the curtain falls, yet its echo remains. Jia envisions more than a theater: an ecosystem where art, education, and community sustain one another, allowing language, memory, and culture to take root far from home.
His journey—from an actor once illuminated by the spotlight to a founder who now lights the stage for others—is more than a career change. It is a renewed choice about theater, culture, and the meaning of life.
“One more light here…”
This time, Jia hopes to illuminate not only a stage, but a path for Chinese communities in North America to move forward together—and for Chinese culture to keep growing.