Pop Goes the Avant-Garde: Experimental Theatre in Contemporary China

Pop Goes the Avant-Garde is the first comprehensive review of the history and development of avant-garde drama and theater in the People’s Republic of China since 1976. Drawing on a range of critical perspectives in the fields of comparative literature, theater, performance, and cultural studies, the book explores key artistic movements and phenomena that have emerged in China’s major cultural centers in the last several decades. It surveys the work of China’s most influential dramatists, directors, and performance groups, with a special focus on Beijing-based playwright, director, and filmmaker Meng Jinghui – the former enfant terrible of Beijing theater, who is now one of Asia’s foremost theater personalities. Through an extensive critique of theories of modernism and the avant-garde, the author reassesses the meanings, functions, and sociohistorical significance of this work in non-Western contexts by proposing a new theoretical construct – the pop avant-garde – and exploring new ways to understand and conceptualize aesthetic practices beyond Euro-American cultures and critical discourses.