Global Theatre Anthologies

The power of theatrical performance is universal, but the style and concerns of theatre are specific to individual cultures.

The third volume in the Global Theatre Anthologies series presents six of the most iconic classical and modern plays from China. By exploring the older works alongside important pieces from across the modern period, students gain insight to the theatrical and cultural values that seem to be foundational to Chinese drama.

The volume makes use of a range of rich dramatic literature available to English language readers to show the many different ways theatre is conceived and operates around the world. Together the plays reveal how techniques and themes play out through particular theatrical cultures, stimulating students’ critical thinking and untapped imagination.

With introductions to each play and an overall contextual essay, this volume can serve as the primary text for an intensive semester-long investigation of Chinese drama and culture. It is also possible to use the collection alongside others in the series as texts for a single course on global theatre and theatre-in-translation.

The global perspectives approach of letting classical and modern works resonate with each other encourages thinking across boundaries and connective human understanding.

Xiaomei Chen is Chair Professor at the Hang Seng University of Hong Kong and Distinguished Professor Emerita of Chinese Literature at the University of California at Davis, USA. A pioneer in the cultural and comparative studies of modern Chinese drama, she is the author of Occidentalism (1995; revised, expanded, and second edition, 2002), Acting the Right Part (2002), Staging Chinese Revolution (2016), and Performing the Socialist State (2023). She is the editor of Reading the Right Text (2003) and Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama (2010) and co-editor, with Claire Sponsler, of East of West: Cross-Cultural Performances and the Staging of Difference (2000); with Julia Andrew, of Visual Culture in Contemporary China (2001), and with Steven Siyuan Liu, Hong Shen and the Modern Mediasphere in Republican-Era China (2016). She is co-editor with Tarryn Chun and Siyuan Liu of Rethinking Socialist Theater Reform (2021), which won Excellence in Editing Award by the Association of Theatre for Higher Education (ATHE).

R. N. Sandberg is an award-winning playwright and teacher. His plays have been seen in Australia, Canada, England, Japan, Panama, and South Korea as well at theaters throughout the US. In addition to his playwriting, Sandberg has directed Greek tragedy, comic opera, Brecht, Chekhov, and contemporary plays by writers as different as Lewis Black, Philip Kan Gotanda, Anna Deavere Smith and Wendy Wasserstein. A long time Princeton University faculty member, Sandberg has taught playwriting, acting and a wide range of dramatic literature, including classical and modern drama from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. He has received Princeton’s President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching.

Ayling Wang received her PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale and specializes in Chinese Classical drama and literary theory. After being a senior researcher at the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy of Academia Sinica for 20 years, Wang has been a professor and Chair of the Department of Theater Arts at National Sun Yat-sen University in Taiwan since 2013. She has won the Academic Award for Outstanding Young Scholar of Academia Sinica, and several Outstanding Research Project Awards of the National Science Council in Taiwan. Having presided over more than 25 research projects on Chinese drama sponsored by National Science Council, Wang was also the chief investigator of quite a few group projects of Academia Sinica, National Science Council and Ministry of Education in Taiwan. Wang is the author of The Artistry of Characterization in the Masterpieces of Ming Qing Chuanqi Drama, The Aesthetic Construction and Artistic Presentation of the Classical Drama in the Late Ming and Early Qing Dynasties, and more than ten other books. Recently she has completed four other manuscripts on Ming Qing Drama, which will be published in the near future.