From The Editor

From The Editor Siyuan Liu This issue's first three articles center on the relationship between theatre and geography/space in China in the twentieth century, starting with Fei Su's "How Culture Was Planned: Shanghai's Troupe-Relocation Project in the 1950s." Focusing on the relocation of two yueju (yue opera) troupes from Shanghai to cities in the northwest, a hub of industrial construction during the People's Republic of China (PRC)'s First Five-Year Plan (1953–1957), Su considers such state-mandated relocation part of the "planned culture" that provided both cultural benefit to relocated workers from Shanghai and a solution for the city's surplus cultural resource. Su methodically documents the fate of the troupe members over three decades, from initial enthusiasm over supporting the state and promised stability as state employees; through disillusionment with the geographic, demographic, and policy realities after relocation; to the disbandment of most of these troupes in the post-Mao 1980s. Su's study of spatial politics and "planned culture" adds new dimensions to the recent slew of publications on the reform of xiqu (traditional Chinese theatre) in the early years of the PRC. The other two articles in this cluster concentrate on physical theatrical space in the Republican (1912–1949) and the PRC (1949– present) eras. In "From Temple to Theatre: The Making of Commercial Grassroots Performance Spaces in Republican China," Sisi Wang focuses on the transformation of local performance spaces from locales of community events to commercial venues with ticket admissions, leading to the conversion of temples into theatres, a change that was met with strong resistance from the locals, even riots. With rich sources focused on Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, Wang links such change to the effect of the colonial modernity process in nearby Shanghai that significantly influenced the development of smaller cities in its radius. By contrast, Chen Chen's "Theatre as Memory Site: Cultural Activities, Imaginaries, and Theatrical Things of a Regional Xiqu Theatre in Contemporary China" presents an ethnographic study of a theatrical End Page iii space in the PRC, the Lüju (Shandong opera) Baihua Theatre, as a site of memory. Chen documents the memories of generations of actors and audience members of this regional xiqu form, largely through the 1954 play Li Er ao gaijia (Remarriage of Widow Li Ersao), one of the notable success stories of the early PRC xiqu reform campaign. Chen's article joins Su's piece in contributing new angles to the ongoing scholarship on the reform. Staying in East Asia, the next two articles offer insights into contemporary Korean theatre. The first is Yeeyon Im's "'Made in Korea': Tradition and Transculturality in Changgeuk Lear." Im, a Shakespeare expert who two years ago published in ATJ a critique of the so-called "homosexual code" in contemporary Korean theatre, contributes another perceptive analysis, this time of the 2022 changgeuk Lear by focusing on its transculturality that fuses traditional chang (singing) with contemporary global art forms. In contrast to the National Changgeuk Theatre's previous Shakespearean production, the 2009 Romeo and Juliet that relied on the common Asian intercultural production strategy of employing traditional performance forms, this new production, Im argues, challenges the dichotomy of Korean as traditional and the West as modern. The result is a transcultural K-opera that underscores a sense of new Koreanness similar to the nation's recent global cultural sensations such as K-pop and K-movie. In "Ran's Diary: Sexually Suggestive Protest and Counterpublic Discourse Staged by Asian Others in South Korea," Bomi Choi focuses on a 2011 play by Salad, a multicultural theatre company with ethnic minority members, as an intervention on the issue of Asian migrant wives of Korean men in a country with a fetish on ethnic homogeneity. Citing Michael Warner, Choi considers the production a counterpublic, "a type of public 'ongoing space of encounter for discourse'." She zooms in on the production's provocative approach to this sensitive issue as evidence of "the play's self-positioning as a protest." Choi's focus on contemporary activist theatre provides a natural transition to Susan A. Reed's article "changeABLE cohe ion: Dance and Disability in Post-war Sri Lanka." A...