Artists in exile or in transit have produced some of the most exciting works, which is why intercultural theatre thrives in the contact zones among different ethnic, cultural, and performance traditions. Snow in August, a Buddhist-inflected play by Chinese French Nobel laureate Gao Xingjian, is a case in point. Why would a secular artist bring the religious rhetoric to bear on his philosophical investment in the idea of exile? The act of fleeing and constant search for a personal space through art carries important symbolic meanings for a playwright struggling with the contemporary tendency to politicize theatre works.