Gao Xingjian

Gao Xingjian was born January 4, 1940, and spent his early career breaking ground in Chinese experimental theatre with works like Absolute Signal in 1982. But The Bus Stop in 1983 and The Other Shore in 1986 were shut down by the state, and after Wild Man in 1985 — his last publicly performed work in China — he left in 1987. His later plays moved away from Chinese themes toward universal ones, though Exile in 1989 managed to anger both Beijing and the overseas democracy movement at once. By 1997 he'd taken French citizenship, and in 2000 the Nobel committee awarded him the prize for literature…