Staging China

"Originating as a foreign import, the Chinese spoken drama huaju has become in the twenty-first century not only a major Chinese dramatic form, but an important part of modern world drama. Staging China provides the reader with an important insight into this form through a detailed analysis of a series of key productions; it also discusses both the dynamics of these productions and their reflection of and placement within their social and cultural milieu. This is a ground-breaking and much needed project." - Marvin Carlson, Sidney E. Cohn Distinguished Professor of Theatre, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA

"Drama studies has not been popular with scholars of modern Chinese literature, despite the fact the genre exerted tremendous impact on Chinese culture and politics, from the May Fourth period through the Cultural Revolution. Gao Xingjian, the Nobel Prize winner for 2000 and the first Chinese ever to win the Prize, is best known for his career as a playwright.

Ruru Li's new edited book Staging China is the first comprehensive English-language study of Chinese drama in the new Millennium. Through rich historical surveys and case studies, the book maps out the complex of trajectories in which Chinese drama re-modernized itself amid political dynamics, artistic innovations, and intellectual debates. Historically engaged and theoretically provocative, Staging China will become a required reader for anyone interested in Chinese performing arts, cultural politics, and theatre studies. I give the volume my strongest recommendation." - David Wang, Edward C. Henderson Professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature, Harvard University, USA

"In Staging China, leading international scholars of Chinese theatre introduce the work of the most important contemporary Chinese playwrights, directors, and theatre companies. This outstanding volume considers together in English for the first time significant theatre productions of the past fifteen years in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Through performance reconstruction and historiography, these essays track the economic, social, and political conditions that have prompted seismic shifts in the Chinese theatre industry, making this collection compulsory reading for anyone seeking to understand Chinese culture in the twenty-first century." - Claire Conceison, Professor of Theatre Studies, Duke University, USA