This is the first systematic study of networks of performance collaboration in the contemporary Chinese-speaking world and of their interactions with the artistic communities of the wider East Asian region. It investigates the aesthetics and politics of collaboration to propose a new transnational model for the analysis of Sinophone theatre cultures and to foreground the mobility and relationality of intercultural performance in East Asia. The research draws on extensive fieldwork, interviews with practitioners, and direct observation of performances, rehearsals, and festivals in Asia and Europe. It offers provocative close readings and discourse analysis of an extensive corpus of hitherto untapped sources, including unreleased video materials and unpublished scripts, production notes, and archival documentation.

Rossella Ferrari is Reader in Chinese and Theatre Studies at SOAS University of London, UK. She is the author ofPop Goes the Avant-garde: Experimental Theatre in Contemporary China (Seagull Books/University of Chicago Press, 2012), the first English-language monograph to examine the development of Chinese avant-garde theatre since the Cultural Revolution, andDa Madre Coraggio e i suoi figli a Jiang Qing e i suoi mariti: Percorsi brechtiani in Cina (Cafoscarina, 2004), on the reception of Bertolt Brecht in China.