Operatic China

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

   PDF

2. Introduction: Lotus and Mud

   • Daphne Pi-Wei Lei

   Pages 1-23

3. Chinese Theatre and the Eternal Frontier in Nineteenth-Century California

   • Daphne Pi-Wei Lei

   Pages 25-85

4. Local, National, and International Performance of Barbarians at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

   • Daphne Pi-Wei Lei

   Pages 87-132

5. Rebellion, Revolution, and Theatricality in Late Qing China

   • Daphne Pi-Wei Lei

   Pages 133-172

6. San Francisco Chinatown, Cantonese Opera, and the New Millennium

   • Daphne Pi-Wei Lei

   Pages 173-205

7. The Global Consensus in Chinese Opera on Stage and Screen

   • Daphne Pi-Wei Lei

   Pages 207-254

8. Epilogue: What Could Be More Chinese Than Chinese Opera?

   • Daphne Pi-Wei Lei

   Pages 255-260

9. Back Matter

   Pages 261-348

   PDF

In this study Lei focuses on the notion of 'performing Chinese' in traditional opera in the 'contact zones', where two or more cultures, ethnicities, and/or ideologies meet and clash. This work seeks to create discourse among theatre and performance studies, Asian and Asian American studies, and transnational and diasporic studies.

• American studies
• China
• culture
• identity
• media
• opera
• revolution
• stage
• theatre
• theatre studies
• Tradition

"Comparatively little has been written on Chinese opera, and this is perhaps the first book to look at how that tradition functions in immigrant populations in other geographic areas...Recommended." - CHOICE

DAPHNE P. LEI is Assistant Professor of Drama, University of California-Irvine, USA, having received her BA from Soochow University, Taipei, Taiwan (English), MA from California State University, Los Angeles (Theatre Arts), Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Humanities from Stanford University (Drama) and her PhD from Tufts. Her interests and expertise include Asian Theatre, Asian American Theatre, Intercultural Theatre, Chinese Theatre and Film, Post-Colonial and Diasporic Theatre, and Gender and Performance. She has taught at the Chinese Culture University (Taiwan), Tufts, and Stanford University, and has directed plays with Asian American casts at Harvard and Stanford, and conducted playwriting workshops for Asian American students at Stanford. She has published articles on the subjects of pre-modern Chinese theatre, gender and ethnicity, Chinese immigrant theatre, and Asian American playwrights.

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