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This book provides a critical study of how China was represented on the historical London stage in selected examples from the late seventeenth century to the early twentieth century—which corresponds with the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), China’s last monarchy. The examples show that during this historical period, the stage representations of the country were influenced in turn by Jesuit writings on China, Britain’s expanding material interest in China, the presence of British imperial power in Asia, and the establishment of diasporic Chinese communities abroad. While finding that many of these works may be read as gendered and feminized, Chang emphasizes that the Jesuits’ depiction of China as a country of high culture and in perennial conflict with the Tartars gradually lost prominence in dramatic imaginations to depictions of China’s material and visual attractions. Central to the book’s argument is that the stage representations of China were inherently intercultural and open to new influences, manifested by the evolving combinations of Chinese and English (British) traits. Through the dramatization of the Chinese Other, the representations questioned, satirized, and put in sharp relief the ontological and epistemological bases of the English (British) Self.
This book provides a critical study of how China was represented on the historical London stage in selected examples from the late seventeenth century to the early twentieth century—which corresponds with the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), China’s last monarchy. The examples show that during this historical period, the stage representations of the country were influenced in turn by Jesuit writings on China, Britain’s expanding material interest in China, the presence of British imperial power in Asia, and the establishment of diasporic Chinese communities abroad. While finding that many of these works may be read as gendered and feminized, Chang emphasizes that the Jesuits’ depiction of China as a country of high culture and in perennial conflict with the Tartars gradually lost prominence in dramatic imaginations to depictions of China’s material and visual attractions. Central to the book’s argument is that the stage representations of China were inherently intercultural and open to new influences, manifested by the evolving combinations of Chinese and English (British) traits. Through the dramatization of the Chinese Other, the representations questioned, satirized, and put in sharp relief the ontological and epistemological bases of the English (British) Self.
This book details the history of Chinese theatre, and British representations of Chinese theatre, on the London stage over a 250-year period. A wide range of performance case studies – from exhibitions and British Chinese opera inspired theatre, to translations of Chinese plays and visiting troupes – highlight the evolving nature of Sino-British trade, fashion, migration, the formation of diaspora, and international relations. Collectively, they outline the complex relationship between Britain and China – the rise and fall of the British Empire, and the fall and rise of China – as it was played out on the stages of London across three centuries. Drawing extensively upon archival materials and fieldwork research, the book offers new insights for intercultural British theatre in the 21st century – ‘the Asian century’.
This book is a timely and solid portrait of modern China from the First Opium War to the Xi Jinping era. Unlike the handful of existing textbooks that only provide narratives, this textbook fashions a new and practical way to study modern China. Written exclusively for university students, A-level or high school teachers and students, it uses primary sources to tell the story of China and introduces them to existing scholarship and academic debate so they can conduct independent research for their essays and dissertations. This book will be required reading for students who embark on the study of Chinese history, politics, economics, diaspora, sociology, literature, cultural, urban and women’s studies. It would be essential reading to journalists, NGO workers, diplomats, government officials, businessmen and travellers.
Made-Up Asians traces the history of yellowface, the theatrical convention of non-Asian actors putting on makeup and costume to look East Asian. Using specific case studies from European and U.S. theater, race science, and early film, Esther Kim Lee traces the development of yellowface in the U.S. context during the Exclusion Era (1862–1940), when Asians faced legal and cultural exclusion from immigration and citizenship. These caricatured, distorted, and misrepresented versions of Asians took the place of excluded Asians on theatrical stages and cinema screens. The book examines a wide-ranging set of primary sources, including makeup guidebooks, play catalogs, advertisements, biographies, and backstage anecdotes, providing new ways of understanding and categorizing yellowface as theatrical practice and historical subject. Made-Up Asians also shows how lingering effects of Asian exclusionary laws can still be seen in yellowface performances, casting practices, and anti-Asian violence into the 21st century.
This monograph centres on the history of musical theatre in a space of cultural significance for British identity, namely the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, which housed many prominent American productions from 1924-1970. It argues that during this period Drury Lane was the site of cultural exchanges between Britain and the United States that were a direct result of global engagement in two world wars and the evolution of both countries as imperial powers. The critical and public response to works of musical theatre during this period, particularly the American musical, demonstrates the shifting response by the public to global conflict, the rise of an American Empire in the eyes of the British government, and the ongoing cultural debates about the role of Americans in British public life. By considering the status of Drury Lane as a key site of cultural and political exchanges between the United States and Britain, this study allows us to gain a more complete portrait of the musical’s cultural significance in Britain.
This book examines the performance of ‘Britishness’ on the musical stage. Covering a tumultuous period in British history, it offers a fresh look at the vitality and centrality of the musical stage, as a global phenomenon in late-Victorian popular culture and beyond. Through a re-examination of over fifty archival play-scripts, the book comprises seven interconnected stories told in two parts. Part One focuses on domestic and personal identities of ‘Britishness’, and how implicit anxieties and contradictions of nationhood, class and gender were staged as part of the popular cultural condition. Broadening in scope, Part Two offers a revisionary reading of Empire and Otherness on the musical stage, and concludes with a consideration of the Great War and the interwar period, as musical theatre performed a nostalgia for a particular kind of ‘Britishness’, reflecting the anxieties of a nation in decline.
This book charts the history of modern magic across India, China and Japan, analyzing representations in the cultural imagination of the West.
Monsters in Performance boasts an impressive range of contemporary essays that delve into topical themes such as race, gender, and disability, to explore what constitutes monstrosity within the performing arts. These fascinating essays from leading and emerging scholars explore representation in performance, specifically concerning themselves with attempts at social disqualification of "undesirables." Throughout, the writers employ the concept of "monstrosity" to describe the cultural processes by which certain identities or bodies are configured to be threateningly deviant. The editors take a range of previously isolated critical inquiries – including bioethics, critical race studies, queer studies, and televisual studies - and merge them to create an accessible and dynamic platform which unifies these ranges of representations. The global scope and interdisciplinary nature of Monsters in Performance renders it an essential book for Theatre and Performance students of all levels as well as scholars; it will also be an enlightening text for those interested in monstrosity and Cultural Studies more broadly.
In inviting a rethinking of ideas of foreignness and selfhood, this book explores Sino-British encounters in eighteenth-century English literature, providing detailed critical and literary analysis of individual texts pertaining to China from this period. The author provides a synthesis of approaches to China in eighteenth-century English literature, involving fictional writing related to China, adaptations of Chinese source texts, and translations of Chinese literary works. By discussing various writings about tea and tea-drinking, Arthur Murphy’s The Orphan of China (1759), Oliver Goldsmith’s The Citizen of the World (1760–62), and Thomas Percy’s Hau Kiou Choaan (1761), she highlights the significance of reading these texts not simply as documents of a historical kind, but as texts that are worthy of literary and artistic attention on the basis of their rich variety in genre, style, and themes. The author proposes that Chinese and British cultures are not antithetical entities: they exist in relation to one another and create possibilities in the continuing appreciation of diversity amidst a drive to universality. This study will be primarily helpful to university students and professors of English literature, comparative literature, and history worldwide.