Operatic China: Staging Chinese Identity Across the Pacific

In this study Lei focuses on the notion of 'performing Chinese' in traditional opera in the 'contact zones', where two or more cultures, ethnicities, and/or ideologies meet and clash. This work seeks to create discourse among theatre and performance studies, Asian and Asian American studies, and transnational and diasporic studies.

DAPHNE P. LEI is Assistant Professor of Drama, University of California-Irvine, USA, having received her BA from Soochow University, Taipei, Taiwan (English), MA from California State University, Los Angeles (Theatre Arts), Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Humanities from Stanford University (Drama) and her PhD from Tufts. Her interests and expertise include Asian Theatre, Asian American Theatre, Intercultural Theatre, Chinese Theatre and Film, Post-Colonial and Diasporic Theatre, and Gender and Performance. She has taught at the Chinese Culture University (Taiwan), Tufts, and Stanford University, and has directed plays with Asian American casts at Harvard and Stanford, and conducted playwriting workshops for Asian American students at Stanford. She has published articles on the subjects of pre-modern Chinese theatre, gender and ethnicity, Chinese immigrant theatre, and Asian American playwrights.