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Safeguarding traditional theatre amid trauma: career shock among cultural heritage professionals in Cantonese opera

ABSTRACT Cantonese opera was inscribed as a Human Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO in 2009. The closure of world heritage properties and performance venues due to the global pandemic has resulted in a global employment crisis and the subsequent departure of many seasoned Cantonese opera artists, inarguably threatening the sustainability of cultural heritage development and disrupting the transmission process. This paper investigates the intertwined relationship between transmission, traumatic crisis, and cultural heritage professionals (CHPs) through the lens of 56 Cantonese opera artists in Hong Kong. Utilising the transactional theory of stress and coping, this paper critically examines the role, psychological responses, and subsequent actions of Cantonese opera artists amid traumatic crisis. The findings contribute to the scholarship on cultural transmission by documenting the impact of social mobilisation, paradigm shifts on tradition, career crisis, vocational behavioural changes, and digital transformation on safeguarding intangible cultural heritage amid trauma. This paper argues that positive coping is related to post-traumatic growth and industrial transformation, highlighting the urgency for Hong Kong and the world to develop preparedness for a road map of cultural heritage transmission to coexist with the pandemic or other traumatic crises in this age of global challenges.