Cao Yu (1910-1996) is one of the few modern Chinese playwrights whose core plays are still in regular production today. One reason behind this phenomenon is his masterful adoption of Western dramaturgy to stage the angst of modern China, ranging from Aristotle’s tragic ethos, to Ibsen’s haunting ghosts, to Chekhov’s Russian ennui, to O’Neill’s hallucinating jungle. These and other Western elements have provided tremendous inspirations and challenges to stage productions ever since the 1930s, including some most innovative reinterpretations in the past decade.
Siyuan Liu is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at the University of British Columbia and President of Association for Asian Performance. He has published widely on twentieth-century Chinese theatre, including the forthcoming Performing Hybridity in Colonial-Modern China (Palgrave Macmillan 2013). He is also a director and has twice directed Cao Yu’s Thunderstorm.