Use of Asian Theatre for Modern Western Theatre

Min Tian holds his second PhD in Theatre History from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA, having secured his first PhD from the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing, China. He has taught as Associate Professor at the Central Academy of Drama and currently works at the University of Iowa, USA. He is the author of Mei Lanfang and the Twentieth-Century International Stage: Chinese Theatre Placed and Displaced (2012), The Poetics of Difference and Displacement: Twentieth-Century Chinese-Western Intercultural Theatre (2008), Shakespeare and Modern Drama: From Henrik Ibsen to Heiner Müller (2006), and editor of China’s Greatest Operatic Male Actor of Female Roles: Documenting the Life and Art of Mei Lanfang, 1894-1961 (2010).

• Chapter 1. Lugné-Poe’s Orientalism as Part of his Mission as an International Dramatic Prospector.- Chapter 2. Appia’s and Craig’s Views of the Japanese Theatre.- Chapter 3. The Use of the Noh by Jacques Copeau and Suzzane Bing.- Chapter 4. Theatre of Transposition: Charles Dullin and the East Asian Theatre.- Chapter 5. Authenticity and Usability, or “Welding the Unweldable”: Meyerhold’s Refraction of the Japanese Theatre.- Chapter 6. How Does the Billy-Goat Produce Milk? Sergei Eisenstein’s Disintegration and Reconstitution of Kabuki Theatre.- Chapter 7. “The ‘Asiatic’ Model”: The Brechtian Displacement and Refunctioning of the Japanese Theatre.- Conclusion.

“Min Tian offers a valuable contribution to theatre history with a book that addresses the influence of Asian performance on western theatrical traditions. … For researchers and practitioners of Asian performing arts and interculturalism in performance, this book provides eye-opening insights into the ‘founding fathers of modern Western theatre’ and will be valuable as a key source to reposition occidental  aesthetics to better reflect the role ‘oriental’ performance has had – albeit in name and inspiration only – on their evolution.” (Jon Reimer, Modern Drama, Vol. 62 (4), 2019)