Ibsen, Manchester University Press Theatre: Theory – Practice – Performance- Ibsen, Theatre and the Chinese State Hardcover

Ibsen, Theatre and the Chinese State presents close and distant readings of Ibsen performances in China in the past hundred years. It argues that the history of Ibsen in China is far more complicated than a simple story of assimilation. The book points to the conflicts, contestations and compromises between artists and the State.

Ibsen, Theatre and the Chinese State interrogates a hundred years of Chinese history from the founding of the Chinese Communist Party to the present day, refracted through representations of a Western playwright on the Chinese stage. It is a study of the entanglements between politics and performance, between theatre and the State.

It is quite remarkable that Henrik Ibsen, an author from a small nation in Northern Europe, has been present in the past hundred years of Chinese history, actively playing a role in the nation’s modernisation process and in the formation of a new world order with the rise of China. The book examines selected theatre productions of Ibsen’s plays in China from 1923 to 2023. It is an important new work that challenges earlier scholarship on Ibsen in China which tells a story of assimilation. Instead, the author argues that the performance history of Ibsen on Chinese stage is full of conflicts, contestations and compromises between artists and the State.

An understanding of the incredibly complex appropriation of Ibsen’s dramas in Chinese theatre offers a litmus test of China’s changing attitude towards the West. This book critically rethinks the mainstream discourse in China around this influential Norwegian playwright and examines in detail how the State, the scholars and the artists have used Ibsen’s drama for different purposes such as nation building, women’s emancipation and theatre reform.

Ibsen, Theatre and the Chinese State interrogates a hundred years of Chinese history from the founding of the Chinese Communist Party to the present day, refracted through representations of a Western playwright on the Chinese stage. No other Western writer has had the same consistent presence in Chinese political, cultural and ideological history as Henrik Ibsen. Yet there is inconsistency in the reception of his dramas in China. Throughout the last hundred years, contestations over the national imaginary of China have played out in the changing interpretations of Ibsen’s plays. An understanding of the complex appropriation of Ibsen’s dramas in Chinese theatre offers a litmus test of China’s changing attitude towards the West. This book examines how the State, the scholars and the artists have used Ibsen’s drama for different purposes such as nation building, women’s emancipation and theatre reform.