In China, theatre studies has been dominated by Western discourse on serious drama, mostly the theatre of purgation. It is equally important, however, to study popular Western theatre genres, such as musicals, comedies, and relatively uplifting plays, especially in terms of their similarities with Chinese opera—an epitome of theatre of cultivation.

Some obsessions stay with you for a reason. On its surface, Bertha, the Sewing Machine Girl; or, Death at the Wheel, a ludicrously named melodrama peopled with exaggerated heroines and villains, offers an example of the noncanonical, everyday fare that audiences consumed in playhouses throughout the 19th century. But the deeper I dug, the more questions I uncovered.

What makes Zora Neale Hurston different as a musical theatre writer is her concern about the creation of safe spaces for black women actors. By looking at the theatrical representation of black women in Hurston and Dorothy Waring’s Polk County, it is possible to see ways in which they resist intersecting oppressions of gender and race. Hurston’s adaptation of the blues and folk music for the musical is also subject to analysis, as is her lasting impact on musical theatre.

More than 80% of Chinese opera performances today are presented by privately run professional folk troupes, mostly in rural areas—Chinese theatre’s best kept secret. These performances are rarely noticed by Chinese theatre scholars. There are more than 30 such troupes in Quangang District, Fujian province, which has a population of 300,000.

In 1953, Shanghai Film Studio produced a Shaoxing opera film version of The Butterfly Lovers as the first color film of the People’s Republic of China. Noted for its immense popularity in the Sinophone sphere throughout the 1950s, the film actually exemplifies a history of Shaoxing opera that is connected to urbanization and nationalism as well as women’s liberation and the cultural politics of early communist China. It is an early example of how Chinese opera and modern media technology contribute to transnational negotiations and imaginations of Chinese identities.

Okada is one of the most internationally produced contemporary Japanese playwrights. American directors approach his work both as uniquely Japanese and as a synecdoche for the world. The story of Okada’s web of institutional, professional, and personal relationships is an object lesson in the foreign assembly of international works.

Director and playwright Stan Lai premiered his marathon play Ago in Shanghai at the end of 2019. Staged in his signature “lotus pond” theatre-in-the-surround, Ago is fueled by Lai’s cross-cultural sensibilities and Buddhist philosophy. If theatre is an art of illusion-making and life is like a dream, Lai turns theatre-going into a ritual of self-encounter and self-reflection, where an illusion mirrors a dream.

Teaching theatre and drama in primary and secondary schools is a very difficult task worldwide. In China, there is a huge demand for drama teachers who also know practical theatre. Taking on this mission, the Shanghai Theatre Academy started a program of “drama etudes.” This pedagogical experiment stimulated debate about opposing concepts in theatre education: imitation vs. improvisation.

From the opening of treaty ports in 1843, the modern history of performing arts in Shanghai traces more than 170 years of development. This history not only summarizes the modern development of Chinese performing arts; it is also representative of the historical development of Chinese urban space and city culture. Theatre arts, culture, and urban development intertwine, as they are refracted through the rise and fall of theatre buildings, yielding a fascinating legacy of cosmopolitan Shanghai.

Magic Theatre’s San Francisco production of Lloyd Suh’s The Chinese Lady plays with theatrical time to stage a confrontation between the 19th-century American past and the Trump-era present.

Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview attempts to implicate white audience members in spectating Black life in order to make room for audiences of color to imagine a story built outside narratives of overcoming. Yet Fairview expects and operates under the assumption that there is a white audience to respond to the work, and leaves audience members of color exposed once more to the white gaze.