Theatrical adaptation frequently plays with the traces of earlier incarnations both from the script and from stage performance, but as often as these ghosts are deliberately evoked, their presence reveals the influences of other unspoken politics in the world of re-makes. In the "xiqu" (Chinese opera) play, Chasing the Fish Spirit, a dense series of rapid re-makes at the end of the 1950s put the complex interplay of these politics into full view, pitting not just the play’s downtrodden against the wealthy or mortals against immortals, but fame against obscurity, city against country, high culture against low, and perhaps most riskily, ideological critique against ideological correctness. The nexus of these different tensions forms the off-stage drama of how this once-closeted play from rural Hunan eventually made it through multiple adaptations onto silver screens for export to Hong Kong and abroad.

Anne Rebull is a postdoctoral fellow at the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies. Her research interests focus on political movements to reform indigenous Chinese theater in the modern era, especially the periods before and after the founding of the People’s Republic. Her book project focuses on the practices of theatrical and filmic adaptation that were part of the reform movement in the early Socialist era, and frames them within greater political debates on theatrical performance and representation. She earned her PhD from the University of Chicago in 2017.