This is the first systematic study of networks of performance collaboration in the contemporary Chinese-speaking world and of their interactions with the artistic communities of the wider East Asian region. It investigates the aesthetics and politics of collaboration to propose a new transnational model for the analysis of Sinophone theatre cultures and to foreground the mobility and relationality of intercultural performance in East Asia. The research draws on extensive fieldwork, interviews with practitioners, and direct observation of performances, rehearsals, and festivals in Asia and Europe. It offers provocative close readings and discourse analysis of an extensive corpus of hitherto untapped sources, including unreleased video materials and unpublished scripts, production notes, and archival documentation.

“Transnational Chinese Theatres: Intercultural Performance Networks in East Asia makes an invaluable contribution … to the decolonization of the academic enterprise. … A must-read for scholars and graduate students across disciplines, Transnational Chinese Theatres will go far to fill gaps in the field’s knowledge of contemporary Chinese theatre and modern East Asian history, while its sophisticated theoretical model will open new paths for the study of the marginalized and the minor in theatre and performance studies.” (Tarryn Li-Min Chun, Theatre Journal, Vol. 72 (3), 2020)

Rossella Ferrari is Reader in Chinese and Theatre Studies at SOAS University of London, UK. She is the author of Pop Goes the Avant-garde: Experimental Theatre in Contemporary China (Seagull Books/University of Chicago Press, 2012), the first English-language monograph to examine the development of Chinese avant-garde theatre since the Cultural Revolution, and Da Madre Coraggio e i suoi figli a Jiang Qing e i suoi mariti: Percorsi brechtiani in Cina (Cafoscarina, 2004), on the reception of Bertolt Brecht in China.