human condition.

This book contains unique information about Bertolt Brecht and East Asian theatre. It focuses in particular on China and offers first and detailed accounts of important Brecht productions from those directly involved. Hence it grants remarkable insight into the problems of modern Chinese theatre and its relationship to Western theatre and into possible future developments. The book also throws light on Brecht's work and suggests ways of 're-producing' Brecht in the West. It consists of papers presented at a Hong Kong conference by distinguished Western critics (John Willett, Klaus Volker) and prominent practitioners of the theatre in China - directors (Huang Zuolin, Chen Yong), stage designers, translators and scholars. There are also accounts of Brecht productions in Japan and India, which form a stimulating contrast with the Chinese experience. With a wealth of practical examples, the book enables us to appreciate how theatre develops within different social structures. Presenting examples of cultural affinity and cultural disjunction, it also makes a useful contribution to intercultural study.

This book traces the transformation of traditional Chinese theatre’s (xiqu) aesthetics during its encounters with Western drama and theatrical forms in both mainland China and Taiwan since 1978. Through analyzing both the text and performances of eight adapted plays from William Shakespeare, Bertolt Brecht, and Samuel Beckett, this book elaborates on significant changes taking place in playwriting, acting, scenography, and stage-audience relations stemming from intercultural appropriation. As exemplified by each chapter, during the intercultural dialogue of Chinese and foreign elements there exists one-sided dominance by either culture, fusion, and hybridity, which corresponds to the various facets of China’s pursuit of modernity between its traditional and Western influences.

This is the first book ever published in the West on drama in the People's Republic of China. The plays, playwrights, theories, and performances range from the play that inflamed the Cultural Revolution to a post-Mao satiric drama that upset party leaders; from Jiang Qing's drama theory for her model plays to the discovery of Bertolt Brecht; from the problems and dilemmas that confront theater reform in the post-Mao era to the performance of Ibsen's Peer Gynt and Viennese operettas; and from a historical play glorifying Mao's supremacy to a playwright calling for individualism and women's rights. This book not only depicts aspects of drama in the People's Republic of China, it also provides analyses of the political and social conditions that shaped and are represented in this drama.

This book examines the two-way impacts between Brecht and Chinese culture and drama/theatre, focusing on Chinese theatrical productions since the end of the Cultural Revolution all the way to the first decades of the twenty-first century. Wei Zhang considers how Brecht’s plays have been adapted/appropriated by Chinese theatre artists to speak to the sociopolitical, economic, and cultural developments in China and how such endeavors reflect and result from dynamic interactions between Chinese philosophy, ethics, and aesthetics, especially as embodied in traditional xiqu and the Brechtian concepts of estrangement (Verfremdungseffekt) and political theatre. In examining these Brecht adaptations, Zhang offers an interdisciplinary study that contributes to the fields of comparative drama/theatre studies, intercultural studies, and performance studies.

A reclusive painter living in exile in Paris, Gao Xingjian found himself instantly famous when he became the first Chinese language writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature (2000). The author of the novel Soul Mountain, Gao is best known in his native country not as a visual artist or novelist, but as a playwright and theater director. This important yet rarely studied figure is the focus of Sy Ren Quah’s rich account appraising his contributions to contemporary Chinese and World Theater over the past two decades. A playwright himself, Quah provides an in-depth analysis of the literary, dramatic, intellectual, and technical aspects of Gao’s plays and theatrical concepts, treating Gao’s theater not only as an art form but, with Gao himself, as a significant cultural phenomenon. The Bus Stop, Wild Man, and other early works are examined in the context of 1980s China. Influenced by Stanislavsky, Brecht, and Beckett, as well as traditional Chinese theater arts and philosophies, Gao refused to conform to the dominant realist conventions of the time and made a conscious effort to renovate Chinese theater. The young playwright sought to create a "Modern Eastern Theater" that was neither a vague generalization nor a nationalistic declaration, but a challenge to orthodox ideologies. After fleeing China, Gao was free to experiment openly with theatrical forms. Quah examines his post-exile plays in a context of performance theory and philosophical concerns, such as the real versus the unreal, and the Self versus the Other. The image conveyed of Gao is not of an activist but of an intellectual committed to maintaining his artistic independence who continues to voice his opinion on political matters.

Women in Traditional Chinese Theatre seeks to introduce Western readers to Chinese classical drama as well as investigate how women have traditionally been portrayed on stage by presenting original translations of six plays from the fourteenth to twentieth centuries. Framed with a comprehensive introduction to the Chinese theatre and its representation of women, each play is preceded by an interpretative summary of the plot, and an analysis of each play's theme and significance. The selections in this volume feature women representing the most popular female archetypes in Chinese literature: the paragon of virtue, the stoic sufferer, the faithful wife, the femme fatal, and others. Appealing to both scholars and general enthusiasts of theatre, literature, and women's studies, this book reveals how the cultural constructs of Chinese women are represented in dramatic literature, and how the theatre, in turn, shapes this representation into the cultural perception of women.