Hot Pot: a new play by Hongwei Bao

We are delighted to be supporting the following event, which will take place on campus, at Stage@Leeds, in the evening of the Leeds Staff Festival 2026. The play is written by Hongwei Bao, whom we featured in our bookclub last month and you can read a new interview with Hongwei about the play also on Adventures in Theatreland.

Join us in Leeds for Hot Pot, a powerful and moving play written by Dr Hongwei Bao, whose internationally recognised research in East Asian Queer Studies has inspired this deeply human performance.

In this tale of friendship, love, and authenticity, four friends reunite at a hot pot restaurant after the pandemic, reminiscing about their past while navigating the realities of their diverging life paths.

Hot Pot is a tender examination of friendship and the small betrayals of adulthood. It traces the heartache of lost love, the friction between dreams and pragmatism, and the work it takes to remain authentic when the world insists otherwise. Warm, inquisitive and rooted in East Asian perspectives, Hot Pot serves up a single night of conversation that explores gay identity with honesty and nuance, questioning what it means to belong to a place, society, partner, and one's true self amidst a queer-unfriendly environment.

Running time: 70-minute performance followed by a 20-minute Q&A with the playwright and crew members

Tickets are free but must be booked in advance and are going fast. Please book on this site

This special Leeds performance is generously sponsored by the Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing and the MA Global Performance and Cultural Industries and Stage@Leeds at the School of Performance and Cultural Industries.