This book presents a detailed, thorough and theoretical study on experimental Xiqu performances that have taken place in recent decades in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Locating experimental Xiqu performances in their specific socio-political context and their historical vein, the book explores the question of transcending the aesthetics of traditional Xiqu and the ‘Western story, Eastern body’ mode of ‘intercultural theatre’, what aesthetics and new modes have been practiced? The book first lays out the main research questions, as well as the theoretical framework and research methodology. This study re-examines the concept of ‘traditional Xiqu’. Focusing on aesthetics, it further carries out a detailed performance analysis of The Outcast General, Metamorphosis and Sighing. The book puts forward that experimental Xiqu performances reveal the deep wounds borne by a significant number of ordinary people in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China. Owing to the Xiqu discourse of ‘beauty’, the institutional situation, the dualistic political discourses and, most of all the not-yet constructed condition of the respective collective cultural trauma, all the wounds are touched softly.

This book will be of great interest to theatre, performance and opera studies scholars and students.