Global Chinese Theatre: A Transnational Perspective

The 1980s was a most important decade for global Chinese theatre. In large part prompted by changes in regional geopolitics, the search for a local identity peaked among the Chinese communities in East and Southeast Asia. This period coincided with the rise of the professional careers of four important diasporic director-playwrights – Gao Xingjian 高行健 (b. 1940), Danny Yung Ning Tsun 榮念曾 (b. 1943), Stan Lai Sheng-chuan 賴聲川 (b. 1954), and Kuo Pao Kun 郭寶崑 (1939–2002) – whose efforts shaped the contemporary Chinese-language theatre scenes across China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. While the geopolitical conditions of the Cold War imposed ethno-nationalist identities across the region, in contrast, these dramatists weaved together native, foreign, and Chinese elements in their theatre praxis to give voice to the local. At the same time, by performing cultural identities alternative to the ones sanctioned by their own states, they also debunked the notion of a unified 'Chineseness'. This talk highlights the key role theatre and performance played in suturing identity in the diaspora and circulating people and ideas across geographical space, well before cross-strait relations were yet to thaw.

LIM Wah Guan (BA Hons 1 UNSW, MSt Oxford, MA Princeton, PhD Cornell) is Associate Professor of Transcultural Chinese Theatre at National Chung Hsing University, Taichung. His research spans drama, cinema, and literature. His first monograph, Denationalizing Identities: The Politics of Performance in the Chinese Diaspora (Cornell University Press, 2024), examines theatre’s role in shaping Chinese identitarian communities across East and Southeast Asia. A recipient of the Yushan Fellowship for Early Career Academics, awarded by Taiwan’s Ministry of Education, he has previously held faculty positions at Bard College (New York) and the University of New South Wales, Sydney.