Performing the Socialist State

In her newest work, Xiaomei Chen confirms her position as the leading chronicler and analyst of modern and contemporary Chinese theater. Focusing on three dramatists of central importance before, during, and after the socialist era, she provides a nuanced and fascinating overview of the theater’s reflection of these turbulent times. – Marvin Carlson, author of Ten Thousand Nights: Highlights from Fifty Years of Theatre-Going
In her study of theater, politics, and performativity in modern China, Chen tells a compelling story of three leading dramatists in search of socialist modernity—their aspirations, their inventions and interventions, and their own tragedies amid the state’s staging of the most brutal theater of revolution. A powerful book. – David Der-wei Wang, author of Why Fiction Matters in Contemporary China
This is an illuminating narrative of modern Chinese theater culture exemplified by Tian Han, Hong Shen, and Ouyang Yuqian. These legendary dramatists navigated the treacherous political terrains of different eras and built a modern theater from the crosscurrents of East and West. Xiaomei Chen is the best writer for keeping their legacy alive. – Ban Wang, author of China in the World: Culture, Politics, and World Vision
This magisterial book chronicles the cross-media story of spoken drama from its inception through Republican, Maoist, and Post-Maoist appropriations in the forms of women’s theater, socialist theater, and “red classic” films. This capacious history offers, among many gems, a diachronic study of the “sonic theater” of the Internationale over the past hundred years. – Alexa Alice Joubin, author of Shakespeare and East Asia
Eminently readable, the entire volume is noteworthy for its detailed, fascinating, and nuanced analysis of not only modern Chinese theater and drama but also Chinese theater historiography … A valuable and significant contribution to Asian theater studies. * Choice Reviews *
Chen’s commitment to documenting the lived experience of high Maoism allows her to make sense of the ambience and entertainments of the era without downplaying the political persecutions that often interrupted or destroyed careers. She strikes a difficult balance between frankness about life in authoritarian times and doing justice to the culture’s capacity to illuminate both the everyday and the horrific. * The China Journal *
Chen’s volume has an impressive breadth and depth. * MCLC (Modern Chinese Literature and Culture) Resource Center *
Offers a bold new reading of modern and contemporary Chinese theater culture…will be of interest to those in the fields of literary, performance, and historical studies, as well as to those who seek to maintain their autonomy in the contemporary world. * H-Asia *

Xiaomei Chen is Distinguished Professor of Chinese Literature at the University of California, Davis. She is the author of Staging Chinese Revolution: Theater, Film and the Afterlives of Propaganda (Columbia, 2016); Acting the Right Part: Political Theater and Popular Drama in Contemporary China (2002); and Occidentalism: A Theory of Counter-Discourse in Post-Mao China (second and expanded edition, 2002), as well as editor of The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama (Columbia, 2010; abridged edition, 2014), among other publications. Chen is also coeditor of Rethinking Chinese Socialist Theaters of Reform: Performance Practice and Debate in the Mao Era (2021), which received the Excellence in Editing Award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education.

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