This book offers a detailed, comprehensive, and theoretically grounded study of experimental xiqu performances that have taken place in recent decades across Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and online platforms. Situating these performances within their specific socio-political contexts and historical trajectories, this book explores the question, what defining aesthetics and methodologies characterise experimental xiqu practices, and how do they distinguish themselves from traditional xiqu aesthetics and the ‘intercultural theatre’ paradigm epitomised by the ‘Western story, Eastern body’ approach? A performative theoretical framework is developed to facilitate a thorough examination of the evolution of xiqu from the last millennium to modern times, with particular focus on the 20th century. The primary objectives of this investigation are twofold: to establish a nuanced understanding of the dynamic and non-dualistic concept of ‘traditional xiqu’, and to provide a vivid depiction of the diverse soils shaping various experimental xiqu performances. Focusing on aesthetics, this book further conducts detailed performance analyses of The Outcast General, Metamorphosis, Sighing and The Spirits Play Online. This book contends that experimental xiqu performances reveal the deep wounds borne by a significant number of ordinary people. Owing to the discourse of ‘beauty’ surrounding xiqu, the institutional constraints, the dualistic political discourses and, most of all, the as-yet-unconstructed condition of collective cultural trauma within these contexts, all the wounds are touched ‘softly’. Experimental xiqu performances help endure the deep wounds and the unarticulated cultural traumas. This book will be of great interest to theatre, performance and opera studies scholars and students.
