Performing China on the London Stage

by Ashley Thorpe
Performing China on the London Stage
Author: Ashley Thorpe
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2016-09-21
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1137597860
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This book details the history of Chinese theatre, and British representations of Chinese theatre, on the London stage over a 250-year period. A wide range of performance case studies – from exhibitions and British Chinese opera inspired theatre, to translations of Chinese plays and visiting troupes – highlight the evolving nature of Sino-British trade, fashion, migration, the formation of diaspora, and international relations. Collectively, they outline the complex relationship between Britain and China – the rise and fall of the British Empire, and the fall and rise of China – as it was played out on the stages of London across three centuries. Drawing extensively upon archival materials and fieldwork research, the book offers new insights for intercultural British theatre in the 21st century – ‘the Asian century’.

Representing China on the Historical London Stage

by Dongshin Chang
Representing China on the Historical London Stage
Author: Dongshin Chang
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2015-02-11
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1135007519
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This book provides a critical study of how China was represented on the historical London stage in selected examples from the late seventeenth century to the early twentieth century—which corresponds with the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), China’s last monarchy. The examples show that during this historical period, the stage representations of the country were influenced in turn by Jesuit writings on China, Britain’s expanding material interest in China, the presence of British imperial power in Asia, and the establishment of diasporic Chinese communities abroad. While finding that many of these works may be read as gendered and feminized, Chang emphasizes that the Jesuits’ depiction of China as a country of high culture and in perennial conflict with the Tartars gradually lost prominence in dramatic imaginations to depictions of China’s material and visual attractions. Central to the book’s argument is that the stage representations of China were inherently intercultural and open to new influences, manifested by the evolving combinations of Chinese and English (British) traits. Through the dramatization of the Chinese Other, the representations questioned, satirized, and put in sharp relief the ontological and epistemological bases of the English (British) Self.

Representing China on the Historical London Stage

by Dongshin Chang
Representing China on the Historical London Stage
Author: Dongshin Chang
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2015-02-11
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1135007500
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This book provides a critical study of how China was represented on the historical London stage in selected examples from the late seventeenth century to the early twentieth century—which corresponds with the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), China’s last monarchy. The examples show that during this historical period, the stage representations of the country were influenced in turn by Jesuit writings on China, Britain’s expanding material interest in China, the presence of British imperial power in Asia, and the establishment of diasporic Chinese communities abroad. While finding that many of these works may be read as gendered and feminized, Chang emphasizes that the Jesuits’ depiction of China as a country of high culture and in perennial conflict with the Tartars gradually lost prominence in dramatic imaginations to depictions of China’s material and visual attractions. Central to the book’s argument is that the stage representations of China were inherently intercultural and open to new influences, manifested by the evolving combinations of Chinese and English (British) traits. Through the dramatization of the Chinese Other, the representations questioned, satirized, and put in sharp relief the ontological and epistemological bases of the English (British) Self.

Contemporary Chinese Queer Performance

by Hongwei Bao
Contemporary Chinese Queer Performance
Author: Hongwei Bao
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2022-08-19
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000635732
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In this ground-breaking study, Hongwei Bao analyses queer theatre and performance in contemporary China. This book documents various forms of queer performance – including music, film, theatre, and political activism – in the first two decades of the twenty first century. In doing so, Bao argues for the importance of performance for queer identity and community formation. This trailblazing work uses queer performance as an analytical lens to challenge heteronormative modes of social relations and hegemonic narratives of historiography. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of theatre and performance studies, gender and sexuality studies and Asian studies.

The Spectre of Tradition and the Aesthetic-Political Movement of Theatre and Performance

by Min Tian
The Spectre of Tradition and the Aesthetic-Political Movement of Theatre and Performance
Author: Min Tian
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2022-10-25
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1000737837
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This book interrogates anew the phenomenon of tradition in a dialogical debate with a host of Western thinkers and critical minds. In contrast to the predominantly Western approaches, which look at traditions (Western and non-Western) from a predominantly (Western) modernist perspective, this book interrogates, from an intercultural perspective, the transnational and transcultural consecration, translation, (re)invention, and displacement of traditions (theatrical and cultural) in the aesthetic-political movement of twentieth-century theatre and performance, as exemplified in the case studies of this book. It looks at the question of traditions and modernities at the centre of this aesthetic-political space, as modernities interculturally evoke and are haunted by traditions, and as traditions are interculturally refracted, reconstituted, refunctioned, and reinvented. It also looks at the applicability of its intercultural perspective on tradition to the historical avant-garde in general, postmodern, postcolonial, and postdramatic theatre and performance and to the twentieth-century "classical" intercultural theatre and the twenty-first-century "new interculturalisms" in theatre and performance. To conclude, it looks at the future of tradition in the ecology of our globalized theatrum mundi and considers two important interrelated concepts, future tradition and intercultural tradition. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars in performance studies.

Contesting British Chinese Culture

by Ashley Thorpe
Contesting British Chinese Culture
Author: Ashley Thorpe
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2018-09-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3319711598
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This is the first text to address British Chinese culture. It explores British Chinese cultural politics in terms of national and international debates on the Chinese diaspora, race, multiculture, identity and belonging, and transnational ‘Chineseness’. Collectively, the essays look at how notions of ‘British Chinese culture’ have been constructed and challenged in the visual arts, theatre and performance, and film, since the mid-1980s. They contest British Chinese invisibility, showing how practice is not only heterogeneous, but is forged through shifting historical and political contexts; continued racialization, the currency of Orientalist stereotypes and the possibility of their subversion; the policies of institutions and their funding strategies; and dynamic relationships with transnationalisms. The book brings a fresh perspective that makes both an empirical and theoretical contribution to the study of race and cultural production, whilst critically interrogating the very notion of British Chineseness.

Asian City Crossings

by Rossella Ferrari
Asian City Crossings
Author: Rossella Ferrari
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2021-05-17
Genre: Art
ISBN: 100038120X
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Asian City Crossings is the first volume to examine the relationship between the city and performance from an Asian perspective. This collection introduces "city as method" as a new conceptual framework for the investigation of practices of city-based performing arts collaboration and city-to-city performance networks across East- and Southeast Asia and beyond. The shared and yet divergent histories of the global cities of Hong Kong and Singapore as postcolonial, multiethnic, multicultural, and multilingual sites, are taken as points of departure to demonstrate how "city as method" facilitates a comparative analytical space that foregrounds in-betweenness and fluid positionalities. It situates inter-Asian relationality and inter-city referencing as centrally significant dynamics in the exploration of the material and ideological conditions of contemporary performance and performance exchange in Asia. This study captures creative dialogue that travels city-based pathways along the Hong Kong-Singapore route, as well as between Hong Kong and Singapore and other cities, through scholarly analyses and practitioner reflections drawn from the fields of theatre, performance, and music. This book combines essays by scholars of Asian studies, theatre studies, ethnomusicology, and human geography with reflective accounts by Hong Kong and Singapore-based performing arts practitioners to highlight the diversity, vibrancy, and complexity of creative projects that destabilise notions of identity, belonging, and nationhood through strategies of collaborative conviviality and transnational mobility across multi-sited networks of cities in Asia. In doing so, this volume fills a considerable gap in global scholarly discourse on performance and the city and on the production and circulation of the performing arts in Asia.

Performing China

by Chi-ming Yang
Performing China
Author: Chi-ming Yang
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2011-11-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1421404419
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China in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was a model of economic and political strength, viewed by many as the greatest empire in the world. While the importance of China to eighteenth-century English consumer culture is well documented, less so is its influence on English values. Through a careful study of the literature, drama, philosophy, and material culture of the period, this book articulates how Chinese culture influenced English ideas about virtue. Discourses of virtue were significantly shaped by the intensified trade with the East Indies. Chi-ming Yang focuses on key forms of virtue—heroism, sincerity, piety, moderation, sensibility, and patriotism—whose meanings and social importance developed in the changing economic climate of the period. She highlights the ways in which English understandings of Eastern values transformed these morals. The book is organized by type of performance—theatrical, ethnographic, and literary—and by performances of gender, identity fraud, and religious conversion. In her analysis of these works, Yang brings to light surprising connections between figures as disparate as Confucius and a Chinese Amazon and between cultural norms as far removed as Hindu reincarnation and London coffeehouse culture. Part of a new wave of cross-disciplinary scholarship, where Chinese studies meets the British eighteenth century, this novel work will appeal to scholars in a number of fields, including performance studies, East Asian studies, British literature, cultural history, gender studies, and postcolonial studies.

Theatre Histories

by Daphne P. Lei
Theatre Histories
Author: Daphne P. Lei
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 1069
Release: 2024-07-30
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1040046312
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This updated fourth edition of Theatre Histories offers a critical overview of global theatre, drama, and performance, spanning a broad wealth of world cultures and periods, integrating them chronologically or thematically, and showing how they have often interacted. Bringing together a group of scholars from a diverse range of backgrounds and approaches to the history of global theater, this introduction to theatre history places theatre into its larger historical contexts and attends to communication’s role in shaping theatre. Its case studies provide deeper knowledge of selected topics in theater and drama, and its “Thinking Through Theatre Histories” boxes discuss important concepts and approaches used in the book. Features of the fully updated fourth edition include: Deeper coverage of East Asian and Latin American theater. Richer treatment of popular culture. More illustrations, photographs, and information about online resources. New case studies, include several written by authoritative scholars on the topic. Pronunciation guidance, both in the text and as audio files online. Timelines. An introduction on historiography. A website with additional case studies, a glossary, recordings of the pronunciation of important non-English terms, and instructor resources. A case studies library listing, including both those in print and online, for greater instructor choice and flexibility. This is an essential textbook for undergraduate courses in theatre history, world theatre and introduction to theatre, and anyone looking for a full and diverse account of the emergence, development, and continuing relevance of theatre to cultures and societies across the world.