Shortly after the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the PRC launched a reform campaign that targeted traditional song and dance theater encompassing more than a hundred genres, collectively known as xiqu. Reformers censored or revised xiqu plays and techniques; reorganized star-based private troupes; reassigned the power to create plays from star actors to the newly created functions of playwright, director, and composer; and eliminated market-oriented functionaries such as agents. While the repertoire censorship ended in the 1980s, major reform elements have remained: many traditional scripts (or parts of them) are no longer in performance; actors whose physical memory of repertoire and acting techniques had been the center of play creation, have been superseded by directors, playwrights, and composers. The net result is significantly diminished repertoires and performance techniques, and the absence of star actors capable of creating their own performance styles through new signature plays that had traditionally been one of the hallmarks of a performance school. Transforming Tradition offers a systematic study of the effects of the comprehensive reform of traditional theater conducted in the 1950s and '60s, and is based on a decade's worth of exhaustive research of official archival documents, wide-ranging interviews, and contemporaneous publications, most of which have never previously been referenced in scholarly research.

Siyuan Liu (Associate Professor of Theatre, Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh). Professor Liu teaches courses in theatre history, drama, Asian theatre and intercultural theatre. His research focuses on modern and traditional Chinese theatre in the twentieth century and Asian Canadian theatre. 

His published books include Transforming Tradition: The Reform of Chinese Theater in the 1950s and Early 1960s (author, Michigan 2021), Socialist Theaters of Reform: Rethinking Chinese Performance Practice and Debate in the Maoist Period (co-editor, Michigan 2021), Routledge Handbook of Asian Theatre (2016), Modern Asian Theatre and Performance 1900-2000 (co-author, Methuen 2014), The Methuen Drama Anthology of Modern Asian Plays (co-editor, 2014), and Performing Hybridity in Colonial-Modern China (Palgrave Macmillan 2013).

His work has appeared in such journals as Asian Theatre Journal, Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, Theatre Research International, TDR, and Modern Chinese Literature and Culture. He is editor of Asian Theatre Journal and past president of the Association for Asian Performance.
 

Source: The University of British Columbia