Shakespeare on the Chinese stage, 1839--2004: A history of transcultural performance (William Shakespeare, Taiwan)

Throughout modern Chinese history, non-Chinese cultural and literary texts were translated out of the need to re-describe China's relationship with the globalized world. In theater, the performance of Shakespeare's plays was an important force in the development of huaju and xiqu forms. It was also an important venue where cultural values were negotiated.; The core of the dissertation rests on how these performances have intertwined with Chinese romanticization of the West, with China's taste for literary utilitarianism, and with both the de-politicization and re-politicization of literary texts. Chapter 1 chronicles the early Chinese encounters with Shakespeare (1839--1900) before any of his plays were translated. Chapter 2 analyzes the urge to seek "realistic" and "authentic" representations of exotic tales in early wenmingxi and huaju productions of Shakespeare, beginning with English performances in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Chapter 3 traces the legacy of that approach to Shakespeare and subsequent political interventions of performances under the Soviet influence during 1950--1979. Chapter 4 examines how Shakespeare was staged without his language in stylized productions during the 1980s, a decade when xiqu became a "legitimate" vehicle for cross-cultural adaptation. Chapter 5 identifies two interrelated modes that emerged since 1990: "small-time" and autobiographical performances of Shakespeare.; Throughout the history of Chinese Shakespeare, a mode of aggressive reading can be identified. In this mode, Shakespeare never becomes part of modern Chinese drama as Henrik Ibsen or Eugene O'Neill do. Rather, it is insofar as Shakespeare has remained marginal that he has become useful as a forum for political commentary and as a new site for artistic experiments. Shakespeare's place in the history of modern Chinese theater gradually evolved from a culturally-inflected icon of Englishness---or the West---into a Western curiosity and an image of progressive political iconography. Shakespeare was also a means by which new life could be breathed into traditional Chinese theater and a catalyst initiating China and Taiwan into a global culture. Shakespeare has become an important link in transcultural performance, in which the localization of global texts and the globalization of local signifying practices are no longer distinguishable from each other.