Theatre Journal 72 (2020) 197–218 © 2020 by Johns Hopkins University Press Architecture, Infrastructure, and Urban Performance in Hong Kong Joanna Mansbridge I am alive. Vibrant with possibility. A magnet for young creative talent. The engine for a knowledge economy. A river runs through me. There are many tributaries to my capital fows. I am an urban regenerator, a start-up incubator, a creator of new opportunities. The catalyst for technological innovation. A laboratory for creative ideas. I am ever evolving, fusing the ancient with the modern. A transforming digital infrastructure. My social networks as diverse as my population. I am a host to opportunity, a home to establishment, a seat of academic learning, a cultural hub, a tech city. A de-zoned, mixed-use melting pot of people and ideas. I am the future of millennial possibility. A corporate HQ. A growing business idea. An Olympic destination. An investment opportunity. I am a global city. —Global Cities report (2017) 1 The problem is to make space speak, to feed and furnish it; like mines laid in a wall of rock which all of a sudden turn into geysers and bouquets of stone. —Antonin Artaud 2 Introduction Global cities perform. Their performances range from the ostentatious, such as the light shows illuminating the skylines of Hong Kong and Dubai, to the less visible, such as the low-wage labor that keeps global cities running or the digital technologies enlivening “smart cities.” The incorporation of data-collecting sensors into urban in- frastructure, the replication of a recognizable “global city” architectural signature, and the dense accumulation of corporate wealth have invested global cities with a powerful sentience. Cast by developers, governments, and corporations as creative hubs, idea incubators, unfettered marketplaces, engines of innovation, and evolving organisms, global cities are not only alive, they also generate life. Like demi-gods of the economy they embody, global cities appear, at once, inaccessible, invincible, timeless, and end- Joanna Mansbridge is an assistant professor in the Department of English at the City University of Hong Kong. Her research and teaching interests span contemporary US drama, transnational performance, feminism, film, and visual culture. Her current research focuses on performance, ecology, urbanism, and intermediality. Her articles appear in Theatre Topics, Theatre Research International, Modern Drama, Canadian Theatre Review, Genre, and Journal of Popular Culture, along with chapters in edited collections. Her monograph Paula Vogel (2014) is the first book-length study of the playwright. She is on the international advisory board for the performance studies journal Performance Matters. 1 UK-based real estate developer Knight Frank’s 2017 Global Cities report, available on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inAxc7L54UM. 2 Antonin Artaud, The Theatre and Its Double, trans. Mary Caroline Richards (New York: Grove Press, 1958 [1938]), 98.