In Europe, the first encounters with traditional Chinese theatre occurred in the first half of the eighteenth century. From that period to the early twentieth century, European approaches to the Chinese theatre underwent an evolution from the neoclassical to the early avant-garde. The Chinese theatre was judged negatively from the perspectives of European neo-classical and realist theatres, and was subsequently reappraised and used from the modern re-theatricalizing and anti-realist perspective of the early European avant-garde theatre.

In 1731, Joseph Henri Prémare (1666–1736), a French Jesuit missionary in China, made an abridged rendition of Zhaoshi gu’er (The Orphan of Zhao),...

Bertolt Brecht was fascinated with Asian theatres in the early years of his professional career. His essay, “Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting,”¹ inspired by his experience of Mei Lanfang’s performance in Russia in 1935, has been highly regarded not only as the first articulation of his seminal concept of the “Alienation effect” (A-effect) but also as a definite example of the theory and practice of the twentieth-century intercultural theatre. Brecht’s interpretation of the Chinese theatre not only has played a significant role in the dissemination and reception of the Chinese theatre in the West, but also has exerted a far-reaching...

During the first three decades of the twentieth century, Asian theatres, including the Chinese theatre, played an important part in the formation and development of Russian avant-garde theatre. Mei Lanfang’s 1935-visit to Russia is the culmination of the impact of Asian theatres on Russian avant-garde theatre. After observing Mei Lanfang’s performance, Vsevolod Meyerhold predicted in 1936 that in twenty-five to fifty years, “a certain union of the techniques of the Western-European theatre and the Chinese theatre will occur,” and he argued that “the glory of the future of our theatre” and the Soviet “socialist realism” would be based on the...

During the early years of his career, Gordon Craig had showed a broad and keen interest in Asian theatres, including the Chinese theatre.¹ His 1935-visit to Russia that coincided with that of Mei Lanfang provided the first opportunity for him to see an authentic performance of Chinese theatre by China’s greatest actor, whom he had read about in the 1920s. The presence of Craig and Mei Lanfang drew particular attention from the Soviet press, which was, however, more concerned with the presence of these two internationally known artists as evidence to the Soviet theatre’s interest in foreign theatres and to...

Eugenio Barba is arguably the first Western theatre artist who has taken a sustained interest in and has extensively studied various traditional Asian performing arts. In his study and experiments of Theatre Anthropology, Barba has conducted field studies in a number of Asian countries and has long been engaged in a direct experimental collaboration with artists from Bali, China, India, and Japan. More significantly, what interested Barba most was not merely techniques and conventions but recurring “similar principles” underlying both various Asian and Western performance traditions — a transcultural “tradition of traditions” (Barba 1996, 218), which led to Barba’s vision of...

Peter Sellars has been considered the enfant terrible of American opera and theatre and one of the most controversial and influential directors of the last two decades of the twentieth century. In his operatic and theatrical experiments, Sellars has shown a keen interest in Asian theatre traditions. His interest in the Chinese theatre was exemplified in his two major productions, Nixon in China and Peony Pavilion. In contrast to Brecht, Meyerhold, and Barba, who drew primarily on the artistic principles and theories of the Chinese and other Asian theatres in the formation and practice of their own theories, Sellars characteristically...

In the previous chapters, I have examined modern and contemporary Western theatre’s intercultural displacements of Chinese xiqu. Beginning with Chapter 7, my investigation of the twentieth-century Chinese-Western intercultural theatre will focus on modern and contemporary Chinese theatre’s intercultural displacements of Western realistic and avant-garde theatre. This chapter attempts to map the transformational facets of modern Chinese theatre in a trajectory of constant displacements and re-placements of different and competing theatrical forces.

At the turn of the twentieth century, with the introduction of Western culture into China, Chinese xiqu was under the impact of ideas of Western theatre. The necessity of...

Sergei Eisenstein, who found his idea of “montage” confirmed in kabuki, deplored the “error” of “the ‘leftward drifting’ Kabuki”:

Instead of learning how to extract the principles and technique of their remarkable acting from the traditional feudal forms of their materials, the most progressive leaders of the Japanese theatre throw their energies into an adaptation of the spongy shapelessness of our own ‘inner’ naturalism. The results are tearful and saddening. (Eisenstein 1949, 44)

Having observed Mei Lanfang’s performance in Russia in 1935, Eisenstein advised Mei and his colleagues against any effort to modernize their traditional theatre at his own risk...

As indicated in Chapter 7, Meyerhold was introduced to China as early as the late 1920s, about one decade earlier than the introduction of Stanislavsky. But in the 1950s when Stanislavsky dominated the Chinese theatre world, Meyerhold disappeared in China as in his own country. Brecht was also introduced as early as 1929, but the Chinese were not seriously interested in his work and theory until the 1950s. In 1951, Huang Zuolin, then deputy head of the Shanghai People’s Art Theatre, gave a lengthy speech, introducing to his actors Brecht’s idea of the Epic Theatre prior to his production of...

During the last two decades of the twentieth century, adaptations of Greek tragedies drawing on Asian traditional theatres have made significant contributions to the modern and contemporary staging and interpretation of Greek tragedies and to the twentieth-century intercultural theatre. Productions such as those by Suzuki Tadashi, Ninagawa Yukio, and Ariane Mnouchkine have drawn international acclaim and have brought about critical debate. During the same period of time, along with Chinese adaptations of Shakespeare, adaptations of Greek tragedy in traditional Chinese theatrical forms have become important intercultural theatrical events. The first adaptation of Greek drama in a traditional Chinese theatrical form...

The adaptation and staging of Shakespeare in traditional Chinese theatrical forms began in the early twentieth century and flourished in the 1980s and 1990s.¹ At the first Chinese Shakespeare Festival in 1986, five of Shakespeare’s plays were adapted and staged in traditional Chinese theatrical forms, of which the most important was the kunju version of Macbeth — Xue shou ji (The Story of the Blood-stained Hands). In the 1990s even more Shakespeare’s plays were adapted to traditional Chinese theatrical forms, such as the yueju version of Hamlet — Wangzi fuchou ji (The Revenge of the Prince), presented on the 1994 Shanghai International...