Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig's China Trilogy: Three Parables of Global Capital

Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig (author)is an internationally produced playwright whose work has been staged in the United Kingdom at the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, Hampstead Theatre, Trafalgar Studios 2 [West End] and the Unicorn Theatre. In the United States her work has been staged at venues that include the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Manhattan Theater Club and the Goodman Theatre. Frances' plays have been awarded the Wasserstein Prize, the Yale Drama Series Award (selected by David Hare), an Edinburgh Fringe First Award, the David A. Callichio Award and the Keene Prize for Literature. Her plays include Lidless, The World of Extreme Happiness, Snow in Midsummer, and The King of Hell’s Palace.Joshua Chambers-Letson (editor) is Professor of Performance Studies at Northwestern University. He is the author of After the Party: A Manifesto for Queer of Color Life (NYU Press, 2018) and A Race So Different: Law and Performance in Asian America (NYU Press, 2013).Christine Mok (contributor): Christine Mok is Assistant Professor in the Deparmtent of English and the University of Rhode Island, teaching and publishing on questions of race and representation in Asian American literature, performance, and visual culture. Her work has been published in the Journal of Asian American studies, Theatre Survery, Modern Drama, and PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art.

• 1. Editorial Preface (Chambers-Letson) – A brief preface introducing the volume and its structure. 2. General Introduction (Mok) – An introduction to Cowhig’s work and the process behind the China Plays3. The World of Extreme Happiness (Cowhig)4. World Afterword (Chambers-Letson)5. Snow in Midsummer (Cowhig)6. Snow Afterword (Chambers-Letson)7. The King of Hell’s Palace (Cowhig)8. King Afterword (Chambers-Letson)9. Transcribed Conversation w/ Cowhig, Chambers-Letson, and Mok

Some playwrights have a gift to amuse; Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig has a darker gift. Anyone with romantic notions of Chinese culture will be unsettled by the jagged, unsentimental portrait of modern urban China.