Revolutionary Stagecraft: Theater, Technology, and Politics in Modern China
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About the talk:
This talk will argue for the importance of thinking about Chinese theater and its stage technologies in relation to their technical potential, their human use, and the social, political, economic, and cultural forces that influence them. Beginning at a pivotal moment in the 1920s—when Chinese theater artists began to import, use, and write about modern stage equipment—and ending in the 1980s when China's scientific and technological boom began, this talk will reveal the complex and at times surprising ways in which Chinese theater artists and technicians have envisioned and enacted their own revolutions through the materiality of the theater apparatus.
About the speaker:
Tarryn Li-Min Chun is associate professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre at the University of Notre Dame. Her research focuses on intersections of performance, technology, and media in modern and contemporary Sinophone theatre. She is author of the award-winning Revolutionary Stagecraft: Theater, Technology, and Politics in Modern China (University of Michigan Press, 2024), as well as numerous scholarly articles, chapters, and reviews. She is co-editor with Xiaomei Chen and Siyuan Liu of Rethinking Socialist Theaters of Reform: Performance Practice and Debate in the Mao Era (University of Michigan Press, 2021), and currently serves as online editor for Theatre Journal.
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