Chinese Theater Collaborative new modules

NEW PUBLICATION: Additional Modules Released on Chinese Theater Collaborative

The Chinese Theater Collaborative (CTC) (https://chinesetheatercollaborative.org/ctc/index) has released three new modules about modern adaptations of three different traditional Chinese plays: The Orphan of Zhao 赵氏孤儿 (2005), a Yueju opera performance, by Susanna Sun; Crimson 红娘 (1976), a Beijing opera film, by Olivia Bobak; and The Peony Pavilion 牡丹亭 (1986), a Kunqu opera film, by Jason Wang. Enjoy!

Patricia Sieber <sieber.6@osu.edu>

Performing Postsocialism–cfp

CALL FOR PAPERS
Symposium Performing Postsocialism: Cultures of Performance-Making in Twenty-First-Century China

Symposium Dates: 9-10 April 2026
Venue: University of Vienna (Jura Soyfer-Saal, Hofburg)
Deadline: 30 May 2025
Submission guidelines: See below and here

Organized as part of a research project funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), this symposium invites proposals that address the relationship between performance and postsocialism in twenty-first-century China. Since its initial formulations in the late 1980s and 1990s, the notion of postsocialism has captured the ideological ambiguities and cultural contradictions brought about by China’s late-twentieth-century transition to a socialist market economy and integration into the global capitalist system in the new millennium.

Postsocialism denotes a fluid condition of socioeconomic unevenness and temporal dissonance that mirrors the stratification of traditional values with historical experiences of revolution and reform, and the persistence of socialist-era practices and institutions alongside the affirmation of new societal dynamics and cultural formations. The postsocialist turn has informed scholarly debates in several fields, ranging from literature and intellectual history to media and visual cultures. However, research on the impact of postsocialist transformation on the theory and practice of performance and on the reconfiguration of performance ecologies, aesthetics, and epistemologies since the turn of the twenty-first century has been limited. Continue reading Performing Postsocialism–cfp

Summer Translation Collaborative III

Summer Translation Collaborative III
with Julia Keblinska and Patricia Sieber
May 12-16, 2025 (May 11 arrival, May 17 departure)
The Ohio State University (Columbus, OH, U.S.A., in person)

Developing modules for the “Chinese Theater Collaborative”

Fig.1 Excerpt from “Khubilai Khan Hunting” 元世祖出獵圖 (1280, by  Liu Guandao 劉貫道, painting); Courtesy of the open-source database of the National Palace Museum, Taipei

In this week-long workshop to be held on the OSU campus, CTC co-editors Julia Keblinska and Patricia Sieber will guide a small group of participants in authoring new modules for the Chinese Theater Collaborative (CTC) digital resource center. The program will feature presentations on how to handle different texts and diverse media, hands-on module development, and spirited peer review. This year’s workshop will focus on the modern afterlives of plays featuring Eurasian peoples, diasporic communities, ethnic minorities and foreigners (e.g., Jurchen, Mongols, Manchus, tribute delegations from around Eurasia, etc.) in any media (e.g., different traditional theatrical/operatic styles, spoken drama of any tradition, films, animation, TV drama, graphic renditions, prints, etc.). The goal is to create workable draft modules that can eventually be published on CTC.

We would like to recruit a lively cohort of advanced undergraduate and graduate students as well as recent MAs and PhDs. Required qualifications: Advanced command of modern Chinese, professional fluency in spoken and written English. Experience with translation, theater or other media is desirable, but not required. We welcome participants who are interested in developing either individually authored or collaboratively written modules. CTC modules are backed by scholarly research but presented in an accessible and visually appealing style to cater to a broad range of audiences. Continue reading Summer Translation Collaborative III

Chinese Theater Collaborative expansion

We are delighted to share that the Chinese Theater Collaborative digital resource center has added a new section entitled “The Injustice to Dou E and Other Plays by Guan Hanqing” to its coverage of modern adaptations of traditional Chinese plays on stage, screen, and other media. The new modules on different plays by Guan Hanqing cover opera film, television, and live theatrical performance, highlighting the intermedial relationships between cinematic and theatrical forms. The expansion includes contributions by Wenbo Chang, Savanna Eggens, Ka Kei Lau, Francesco Papani,  Xiaoqiao Xu, and Kaixuan Yao. If you would like to find out more about how to become a contributor to CTC, consider signing up for the AAS Pre-Conference Workshop “Chinese Theater Collaborative (CTC): Writing for Public Facing, Open-Access Digital Humanities” to be held on March 13, 2025.

Chinese Theater Collaborative Content Co-editors

Dr. Julia Keblinska (Visting Scholar) <keblinska.1@osu.edu> & Professor Patricia Sieber
Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures
The Ohio State University

RMMLA Asian Drama and Performance Session–cfp

CFP: Asian Drama and Performance Session
Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association 78th Annual Convention
Date: October 16–18, 2025
Location: Spokane, WA

In an era marked by global interconnectivity, rapid cultural change, and social transformation, Asian drama and performance emerge as vital sites of aesthetic negotiation and political intervention. Through embodied practices, transmedial production, and creative expressions, drama and performance have shaped how Asian and Asian diasporic communities remember, resist, and reimagine their place in the world.

Perceiving Asian drama and performance as a critical force of negotiation, resistance, and (re)imagination, this session seeks to address the following questions: How do performances engage with histories of colonialism, migration, and cultural exchange? In what ways do performers negotiate between individual expression and collective memory? How do performances address historical, political, and environmental concerns? What roles do performance spaces – physical, imaginary, or digital– play in shaping cultural discourses and aesthetic conventions?

We seek papers that interrogate how performance practices both reflect and challenge established paradigms of cultural expression, social hierarchy, and artistic innovation. We welcome topics including but not limited to: Continue reading RMMLA Asian Drama and Performance Session–cfp

Cutting micro-dramas down to size

Source: China Media Project (1/9/25)
Cutting Micro-Dramas Down to Size
China’s government has signaled stricter rules this year for micro-dramas, a bite-size entertainment format with mega market potential.
By Alex Colville

Micro-dramas — TV series cut into short snippets of one to 15 minutes — are becoming a huge business worldwide. The global market for this new, bite-size format is said to be worth two billion dollars a year, with forecasts that this could double by the end of 2025. And that’s excluding China, which has emerged as a global leader in the production and consumption of weiduanju (微短剧).

Chinese micro-dramas: heavy on history and romance, light on Xi.

With the PRC’s micro-drama market growing at a blistering 250 percent annually, bringing in some RMB 37.4 billion (5.2 billion dollars) in 2023 according to state media reports, the authorities are also acting quickly to figure out how they can control this new entertainment format and ensure it serves their interests. On January 4, the National Radio and TV Administration (国家广播电视总局), or NRTA, publicized its plan to create hundreds of short videos on Xi Jinping’s political thought — for example, by promoting his vision of uniting classical Chinese culture with the latest technology and teaching netizens about the benefits of Xi’s version of the rule of law. Continue reading Cutting micro-dramas down to size

Mo Yan’s ‘Crocodile’ premieres in Suzhou (1)

A note/correction on a China Daily article posted on May 13 of this year.  The article does not mention previous plays written by Mo Yan (mistakenly says that Crocodile is his first). His previous plays are:

  1. 我们的荆轲 written in 2003 and staged at Beijing People’s Art Theatre (directed by Ren Ming) in 2011/12.
  2. 霸王别姬 (co-written by Wang Shuzeng), staged at Beijing People’s Art Theatre (directed by Wang Xiangming) in 2000.
  3. 锅炉工的妻子 staged reading by three actors from Shanghai Theatre Academy at the Shanghai Library in February 2023.
  4. 离婚 written in 1978 and never performed (no longer extant).

Claire Conceison <claireco@mit.edu>

Acting Modern China conference

An International Digital Conference on “Acting Modern China:
A Transcultural Affair”
Organized by The Department of English, The Hang Seng University of Hong Kong,
October 22 to December 3, 2024

This conference aims at further advancing the existing scholarship with comparative and interdisciplinary approaches to Chinese Performance Studies. It critically examines crucial events of theater culture in the past century in Hong Kong, Mainland China, Taiwan, and their trans-continental paths to Chinatown in San Francisco, Japan, and beyond. It features leading scholars from diverse fields of translation, theater studies, anthropology, musicology, East Asian Cultural Studies, and English. Fourteen speakers will each presents a bird’s eye view history from 1910s to 2020s, with a focus on a landmark event in each decade, and its continuous history across regional, national, and international boundaries to delineate a new roadmap of cross-cultural, trans-national, and inter-disciplinary performance studies.

Nancy Yunhwa RAO, in Week One, for example, starts with a crucial year in 1924, which witnessed the opening of Mandarin Theater in San Francisco, and move back and forth in history to examine critical issues such as sojourner communities, global theater, and the allure of theater in translating culture, language, and heritage. Siyuan LIU couples this cross-ocean theater story with a study of the influence of Japanese leftist Avant-Garde theater as seen in the introduction of European-style proletarian puppet theatre to Tokyo and then to Shanghai in the last 1920s. The essay points to the ideological and artistic vocabularies shared by the worldwide proletarian theatre movement inspired by the Soviet Revolution, while also complicating the notion of “sharing” as the specific ideological and artistic environment in each country affected the dramatic/performatic circumstances. Continue reading Acting Modern China conference

Theater and Politics in Socialist China: A Review Essay

MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Letizia Fusini’s review essay, “Theater and Politics in Socialist China,” which treats recently published books on modern Chinese drama by Maggie Greene, Siyuan Liu, and Xiaomei Chen. The review appears below and at its online home: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/book-reviews/fusini/. My thanks to Jason McGrath, our soon-to-be-former book review editor for media, film, and drama studies, for ushering the review to publication.

Kirk Denton, MCLC

Theater and Politics in Socialist China:
A Review Essay

Resisting Spirits, by Maggie Greene
Transforming Tradition, by Siyuan Liu
Performing the Socialist State, by Xiaomei Chen


Reviewed by Letizia Fusini
MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright May, 2024)


Maggie Greene, Resisting Spirits: Drama Reform and Cultural Transformation in the PRC Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2019. 260pp ISBN: 9780472074303 (hardcover)

Siyuan Liu, Transforming Tradition: The Reform of Chinese Theater in the 1950s and Early 1960s Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2021. 472pp. ISBN: 9780472132478 (hardcover); 9780472128723 (ebook)

Xiaomei Chen, Performing the Socialist State: Modern Chinese Theater and Film Culture New York: Columbia University Press, 2023. 384pp. ISBN: 9780231197762 (hardcover); 9780231552332 (ebook)

Nearly a decade ago, in Autumn 2016, I had the opportunity and the privilege to teach an undergraduate survey course on the history of Chinese theater, the only one of its kind in the UK back then. I was a freshly minted PhD graduate and that was my first teaching post. Aside from developing my lecturing skills, the main challenge was to find creative strategies to make the subject more accessible to students who were majoring in theater studies and knew almost nothing about Chinese culture and history. The task became even more daunting when, due to time constraints, I had to condense the history of the rise of modern drama (huaju 话剧) and the transformations of classical theater (xiqu 戏曲) throughout the late-Qing, Republican and early socialist epochs within the space of a couple of hours. Since I wanted to avoid information overload, I began to look for a unifying thread that could hthelp me connect these three periods and, in my research, I came across an excerpt from a text written by Chen Duxiu 陈独秀 in 1904, where the future founder of the CCP eulogizes theater as the best “vehicle for social reform” (120), tracing the paternity of this idea to Confucius, who once said that “nothing is better than yue [乐, the performing arts lato sensu] at transforming social conventions” (118). These thoughts, written just before the dawn of the Republican period and yet rooted in the Confucian tradition, prefigured the Zeitgeist of the New Culture and May Fourth Movements, which, in turn, would be lauded by Mao Zedong in his essay “On New Democracy” as “having pioneered an unprecedentedly great and thoroughgoing cultural revolution” (361) whose only fault was that it failed to serve the interests of the masses of workers, peasants, and soldiers. Through these connections, I was able to visualize the (r)evolution of Chinese theater in the first half of the twentieth century as a tree growing out of Confucian roots and projecting its branches and foliage in a Marxist direction culminating with the Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976. My goal was to convey to my students the impression I had gotten vis-à-vis that short statement by Chen Duxiu about the power of theater to effect social change. The fact that in China, the attribution of a pedagogic and political function to theater is a traditional concept rather than a twentieth-century novelty, hence not an exclusive prerogative of the Communist period or of the Cultural Revolution, was the unifying thread I was looking for. What was initially a mere perception on my part, found confirmation in Richard Schechner’s foreword to the collection in which I originally found Chen Duxiu’s text, where he notes that “the roots of Mao’s attitude—that theater is an excellent educator and that rulers ought to use it as such—go deep in Chinese history. From an early date, theater was seen as a way of reaching ordinary people who could not read” (x). Continue reading Theater and Politics in Socialist China: A Review Essay

Mo Yan’s ‘Crocodile’ premieres in Suzhou

Source: China Daily (5/8/24)
Nobel laureate Mo Yan’s debut drama ‘Crocodile’ premieres in Suzhou
By Chinadaily.com.cn

A still from the play, Crocodile, May 3, 2024. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

The much-anticipated stage version of Nobel laureate Mo Yan’s inaugural drama, Crocodile, premiered at the Suzhou Bay Grand Theatre in Suzhou, East China’s Jiangsu province, on May 3.

Crocodile is the first original drama script penned by Mo Yan, which was published in June 2023. Celebrated for his imaginative and humanistic fiction, Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2012.

The plot of Crocodile revolves around the protagonist, Shan Wudan, and a crocodile he received as a gift for his birthday. Through an infinitely growing crocodile, the story delves into the complexity of human nature and explores the theme of “desire”. Continue reading Mo Yan’s ‘Crocodile’ premieres in Suzhou

‘Shawshank’ in China

Source: NYT (2/16/24)
‘Shawshank’ in China, as You’ve Never Seen It Before
A stage adaptation of the film featured an all-Western cast, was performed in Chinese and raised questions about translation, both linguistic and cultural.
By Vivian Wang and Vivian Wang reported from Beijing, and Claire Fu from Seoul)

Two women pose for pictures in front of a promotional billboard for the stage production of “The Shawshank Redemption.”

A stage production of the film “The Shawshank Redemption,” cast with Western actors speaking fluent Mandarin Chinese, opened in Beijing in January. Credit…Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times

When a stage production of “The Shawshank Redemption” opened recently in China, it was cast entirely with Western actors speaking fluent Mandarin Chinese. But that may have been the least surprising part of the show.

That the show — an adaptation of the Stephen King novella that became one of the most beloved movies of all time — was staged at all seemingly flew in the face of several trends in China’s cultural sphere.

Chinese audiences’ interest in Hollywood films is fading, with moviegoers turning to homegrown productions. China’s authoritarian government has stoked nationalism and cast Western influence as a political pollutant. Censorship of the arts has tightened.

Yet the production reflects how some artists are trying to navigate the changing landscape of both what is permissible and what is marketable in China. And its success shows the appetite that many Chinese still have for cultural exchange. Continue reading ‘Shawshank’ in China

The Peony Pavilion in HK

Experience the entire kun opera classic The Peony Pavilion the way author Tang Xianzu originally intended. After years of planning, the Shanghai Kunqu Opera Troupe is presenting the Hong Kong debut of the faithfully restored, complete 55-scene saga at the Hong Kong Arts Festival. Structured into three parts and performed over two days, this jewel of the kun opera genre reveals renewed perspectives into the wider social landscape of the Song dynasty, transforming the familiar love story into an unforgettable tale of oppression and emancipation.

A Rotating Poetic World

Explore the ethereal world of The Peony Pavilion through a rotating set design that seamlessly transports the audience from one scene to the next. This unique design also heightens the dreamy landscape of the production, filled with innovative visual effects.

Continue reading The Peony Pavilion in HK

RMMLA Asian Drama and Performance–cfp

CFP: Asian Drama and Performance
Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association 77th Annual Convention
Conference Date: October 10-12, 2024
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada

From traditional theatrical practices to contemporary pop culture, the notion of “performance” has continuously played a pivotal role. It not only influences how we interpret literary and visual texts, but also reflects the evolution of society. With “performance” as the focal point, we aim to bring together scholars who can offer insightful perspectives on the topics related to Asian drama, dance and performance. We welcome studies on Asian dramatic texts and performance traditions across various time periods and regions. Papers that examine the performance in a range of humanities disciplines such as cultural studies, film and media studies, gender studies, religion, and anthropology are also encouraged.

We welcome topics including but not limited to:

  • Asian Dance and Drama in Digital Media
  • Decolonizing Asian drama and performance
  • Race and ethnicity in Asian drama and performance
  • Engendering or queering Asian drama and performance
  • (Post-)Human Body and mobility in Asian drama and performance
  • Nationality and diaspora in Asian drama and performance
  • Scripts, Staging, and Props in Theatrical Performances
  • Spatiality and Temporality of Asian Drama, Dance, and Performance
  • Age, aging, and youth in Asian drama and performance

Prospective participants should submit an abstract of approximately 250 words along with a short (2-3 sentence) biography through this google form by March 15, 2024. The language of the session is English.

Please direct any inquiries to: Miao Dou, Melody Yunzi Li, and Pai Wang.

Miao Dou (doumiaokyle@gmail.com)
Melody Yunzi Li (mli40@Central.UH.EDU)
Pai Wang (paiwang@caltech.edu)

Sinophone Adaptations of Shakespeare review

MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Melody Yunzi Li’s review of Sinophone Adaptations of Shakespeare: An Anthology, 1987-2007, edited by Alexa Alice Joubin. The review appears below and its online home: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/book-reviews/melody-li/. My thanks to Michael Hill, our translations/translation studies book review editor, for ushering the review to publication.

Kirk Denton, MCLC

Sinophone Adaptations of Shakespeare:
An Anthology, 1987-2007

Edited by Alexa Alice Joubin


Reviewed by Melody Yunzi Li

MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright February, 2024)


Alexa Alice Joubin, ed., Sinophone Adaptations of Shakespeare: An Anthology, 1987-2007 New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. Xv + 288 pp. ISBN: 978-3-030-92992-3 (hardback).

Sinophone Adaptations of Shakespeare: An Anthology, 1987–2007 is a compelling collection of English translations of seven adaptations of Shakespeare’s tragedies in several stage genres from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. These works, which span two decades, not only transcend national and cultural boundaries but also remap Shakespearean and Sinophone literature. The anthology makes an important step toward remedying a problem in both Sinophone studies and Shakespeare scholarship: the scarce availability of primary research materials on East Asian adaptations of Western classics.

A comprehensive introduction by Alexa Alice Joubin gives readers an overview of adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays in the Sinophone world. It points out the significance of this anthology—that “Sinophone Shakespeare’s rich range of interpretative possibilities have much to teach us about non-Anglophone understanding of Shakespeare and Sinophone performance practices today” (2). Each adaptation offers a unique lens to understand new aspects of timeless Shakespearean classics, including HamletMacbeth, and King Lear. The plays selected for translation were staged in multiple traditional and modern performance genres, from Chinese opera to huaju spoken drama. Continue reading Sinophone Adaptations of Shakespeare review

Chinese Theater Collaborative digital resource center

LAUNCH OF CHINESE THEATER COLLABORATIVE DIGITAL RESOURCE CENTER
January 16, 2024, 8 pm EST

We invite you to the launch of the “Chinese Theater Collaborative/華語戲聚“ (CTC) digital resource center.  CTC is a companion site to two recent publications devoted to making traditional Chinese drama accessible to a broader audience, How To Read Chinese Drama: A Guided Anthology (Columbia University Press, 2022) and How To Read Chinese Drama in Chinese: A Language Companion (Columbia University Press, 2023).

The “Chinese Theater Collaborative” (https://chinesetheatercollaborative.org, going live on 01/16/24)  features over twenty original modules that examine modern renditions of iconic Chinese plays (Orphan of ZhaoStory of the Western WingMulan and Peony Pavilion and more) in multiple formats (theater, film, TV, and comics among others).

These narrated and illustrated modules showcase the vibrant and diverse afterlives of traditional Chinese plays, while facilitating the integration of drama into the literature, culture, media, and language classroom.

Join us on Tuesday, January 16, 2024, 8 pm Eastern Standard Time (EST) by registering here: https://easc.osu.edu/events/ics-event-launching-chinese-theater-collaborative/huayuxiju

For questions, please contact chinesetheatercollaborative@osu.edu.

Patricia Sieber (Professor, DEALL) and Julia Keblinska (Postdoctoral Fellow, EASC)
Editors, CTC
The Ohio State University
Launch supported by The Institute for Chinese Studies (The Ohio State University) and co-sponsored by the Advanced Institute for Global Chinese Studies (Lingnan University)