MCLC: Meng Jinghui goes mainstream (1)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Claire Conceison <cc253 at duke.edu>
Subject: Meng Jinghui goes mainstream (1)
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For list members interested in Meng Jinghui, I highly recommend Rossella
Ferrari’s excellent book "Pop Goes the Avant-Garde: Experimental Theater
in Contemporary China" (2012, Seagull Books, distributed by University of
Chicago Press), which covers most of his major productions up until early
2000s and places his work in the context of the avant-garde and theatre
experiments in China overall:

http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/P/bo13220284.html

My anthology of five of Meng’s works translated into English is
forthcoming  (also with Seagull Books), and an article I wrote last year
that discusses Meng’s work from 1991 to today and his mix of avant-garde
and mainstream, as well as his “badass” (niubi) persona, was published in
the spring 2014 issue of TDR—the article’s title is “China’s Experimental
Mainstream: The Badass Theatre of Meng Jinghui” (available through TDR
website or Project Muse which displays color images--try links below--or i
can send a black and white PDF of the article to list members who email me
directly, along with an article i wrote that was published in 2001 if
desired). The spring 2014 issue of TDR is a wonderful issue on Chinese
theatre, mostly Shanghai (Meng is based in Beijing and another article
focuses on Taiwan, but most are about various Shanghai performances).

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/the_drama_review/v058/58.1.conceison.html
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/the_drama_review/v058/58.1.conceison.pdf

Both Rossella and I discuss in depth the issue of commercialism and the
mainstreaming of experimental theatre raised in the Fiona Tam SCMP article
posted by Sebastian Veg... Meng Jinghui “went mainstream” quite a while
ago and it’s unfortunate Tam did not include information from these
existing sources.

For those interested in reading one of Meng’s plays in english before my
anthology comes out, my translation of his play “Wo ai XXX” (I Love XXX)
was published in Siyuan Liu and Kevin Wetmore’s “The Methuen Drama
Anthology of Modern Asian Plays” in 2013. The play, which Meng cowrote
with three others, premiered in 1994 and Meng just revised and revived it
last June (which i discuss in the TDR article). It is being staged again
this month June 17-28 for those of you who will be in Beijing and wish to
see it (or one of his other plays now running). Here is the website of
Meng’s theatre with more information and for tickets:
http://www.fengchaojuchang.com.

Finally, i’ll be in Beijing June 26-July 2 working with Meng and also
writing about “red restaurants” 红色饭店 for another project, and then in
Shanghai July 3-10 for the Performance Studies international (PSI)
conference, organized this year by William Hui-zhu Sun and hosted at
Shanghai Theatre Academy (my panel presents my work on sport as
performance, and i’m joined by Susan Brownell presenting on sport in
China), so if anyone will be in Beijing and Shanghai during those dates
and wants to say hi (and especially if you want to eat at a red restaurant
or have thoughts on the subject!), please let me know.

Warm wishes to all for a wonderful summer!
Claire Conceison