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The history of modern, Western-style spoken theatre in Asia since the late nineteenth century can generally be divided into four relatively distinct periods: (1) an initial hybridization of indigenous and Western traditions, (2) an orthodox adherence to Western realism, (3) the rediscovery of national culture and (4) contemporary globalism.1In the case of China, these four periods generally correspond to (1) wenmingxi (civilized drama) of the 1900s and 1910s, which flourished in Shanghai as a hybrid of Western spoken theatre, indigenous Chinese theatre, and Japan's first form of modern theatre, shinpa (new-school drama), itself a hybrid of spoken drama and kabuki; (2) huaju (spoken drama), which started in the early 1920s as an antidote to wenmingxi's hybridities and as a socially conscious, script-centric and speech-only theatre based on Western realism and inspired by the anti-traditional zeitgeist of the late 1910s New Cultural Movement; (3) experimental theatre of the 1980s and 1990s that blended Western modernist theatre and indigenous Chinese dramaturgy and theatricality as a reaction to orthodox huaju; and (4) globalized spoken theatre of the new millennium.2
However, while these general and homogenizing trends are largely true, what is equally important is to recognize the cross-currents within each period, particularly during the second phase of westernizing, realistic orthodoxy that dominated much of the twentieth century and blocked various attempts to hybridize spoken drama with indigenous dramaturgy and performance. Identifying these countercurrents and the sociopolitical, cultural and theatrical dynamics that determined centre-periphery relations and the ultimate fate of these undercurrents will significantly complicate existing narratives of theatrical modernity in Asia. As I have discussed elsewhere, one example of this centre-periphery dynamic is China's failed national theatre movement (guoju yundong) of 1925-6, at the beginning of the huaju phase, when a group of recently returned Western-educated intellectuals introduced contemporary European theatrical anti-realism, including its admiration for Asian theatre, and advocated infusing huaju with traditional Chinese theatre's formal conventions in staging and performance.3Yet while their advocacy was much closer to the dominant trend of Western theatre of the time, they were relentlessly attacked as capitulating to the decadent feudal theatre and quickly defeated by their students and other practitioners, who had never been abroad. In other words, the...