Global Theatre Anthologies

Xiaomei Chen is Chair Professor at the Hang Seng University of Hong Kong and Distinguished Professor Emerita of Chinese Literature at the University of California at Davis, USA. A pioneer in the cultural and comparative studies of modern Chinese drama, she is the author of Occidentalism (1995; revised, expanded, and second edition, 2002), Acting the Right Part (2002), Staging Chinese Revolution (2016), and Performing the Socialist State (2023). She is the editor of Reading the Right Text (2003) and Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama (2010) and co-editor, with Claire Sponsler, of East of West: Cross-Cultural Performances and the Staging of Difference (2000); with Julia Andrew, of Visual Culture in Contemporary China (2001), and with Steven Siyuan Liu, Hong Shen and the Modern Mediasphere in Republican-Era China (2016). She is co-editor with Tarryn Chun and Siyuan Liu of Rethinking Socialist Theater Reform (2021), which won Excellence in Editing Award by the Association of Theatre for Higher Education (ATHE). R. N. Sandberg is an award-winning playwright and teacher. His plays have been seen in Australia, Canada, England, Japan, Panama, and South Korea as well at theaters throughout the US. In addition to his playwriting, Sandberg has directed Greek tragedy, comic opera, Brecht, Chekhov, and contemporary plays by writers as different as Lewis Black, Philip Kan Gotanda, Anna Deavere Smith and Wendy Wasserstein. A long time Princeton University faculty member, Sandberg has taught playwriting, acting and a wide range of dramatic literature, including classical and modern drama from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. He has received Princeton’s President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching.Ayling Wang received her PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale and specializes in Chinese Classical drama and literary theory. After being a senior researcher at the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy of Academia Sinica for 20 years, Wang has been a professor and Chair of the Department of Theater Arts at National Sun Yat-sen University in Taiwan since 2013. She has won the Academic Award for Outstanding Young Scholar of Academia Sinica, and several Outstanding Research Project Awards of the National Science Council in Taiwan. Having presided over more than 25 research projects on Chinese drama sponsored by National Science Council, Wang was also the chief investigator of quite a few group projects of Academia Sinica, National Science Council and Ministry of Education in Taiwan. Wang is the author of The Artistry of Characterization in the Masterpieces of Ming Qing Chuanqi Drama, The Aesthetic Construction and Artistic Presentation of the Classical Drama in the Late Ming and Early Qing Dynasties, and more than ten other books. Recently she has completed four other manuscripts on Ming Qing Drama, which will be published in the near future.

• IntroductionMoving Heaven and Shaking Earth: The Injustice to Dou E by Guan HanqingSelections from The Story of the Western Wing by Wang ShifuSelections from The Peony Pavilion by Tang XianzuThe Wilderness by Cao YuGuan Hanqing by Tian HanWild Man by Gao Xingjian

A rich primer for newcomers to Chinese theater as well as an invitation to retrace old paths for lovers of its classic forms and modern offspring.