A companion volume to Modern Asian Theatre and Performance 1900-2000, this anthology contains nine emblematic scripts from twentieth and twenty-first century Asian theatre. Opening with a history of modern Asian drama and a summary of the plays and their contexts, it features nine works written between 1912 and 2009 in Japan, China, Korea, India, Indonesia and Vietnam.
Showcasing fresh contemporary writing alongside plays central to the established canon, the collection surveys each playwright's work, and includes:
Father Returns by Kikuchi Kan
Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner and the Farewell Speech by Okada Toshiki
Sunrise by Cao Yu
I Love XXX by Meng Jinghui, Huang Jingang, Wang Xiaoli, Shi Hang
Bicycle by O Tae-sok
The Post Office by Rabindranath Tagore
Hayavadana by Girish Karnad
The Struggle of the Naga Tribe by W. S. Rendra
Truong Ba's Soul in the Butcher's Skin by Luu Quang Vu
The chronological and geographical breadth of the anthology provides a unique insight into modern Asian theatre and is essential to any understanding of its relation to Western drama and indigenous performance.
Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr. is professor of theatre arts at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, USA, the author and editor of ten books including The Empire Triumphant: Race, Religion and Rebellion in the Star Wars Films, and a contributor to numerous volumes on sci-fi, pop culture and religion, including essays on Godzilla, Star Wars, and Battlestar Galactica. His areas of expertise include Japanese theatre, African theatre, Shakespeare, Greek tragedy, stage combat and comedy. He is co-editor with Patrick Lonergan of Bloomsbury Methuen Drama's Critical Companions series.
Siyuan Liu is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, and is currently the President of the Association for Asian Performance. He has published numerous articles on twentieth-century Chinese and Japanese theatre as well as Asian Canadian theatre in academic journals such as Asian Theatre Journal, Theatre Journal, TDR, and Text & Presentation and several book anthologies.
Claire Conceison is Quanta Professor of Chinese Culture and Professor of Theater Arts at MIT. She is a scholar, translator, and director. Her publications include the books Significant Other: Staging the American in China (2004); Ying Ruocheng's autobiography Voices Carry: Behind Bars and Backstage During China's Revolution and Reform (2009); the anthology I Love XXX and Other Plays by Meng Jinghui (2017); and the introduction to 'Death of a Salesman' in Beijing (2015), a new edition of Arthur Miller's 1984 book 'Salesman' in Beijing. She is a contributor to the volume Arthur Miller for the Twenty-First Century (2020).
