Translating Peking opera for the Anglophone stage

The intricacies of the <i>xiqu</i> form and its different conception of theatre-making engender many difficulties for both the production and reception of the translated <i>xiqu</i> plays in non-Chinese contexts.

In great part, of course, this is because the theatre translator’s decisions are largely conditioned by the contingency of production and reception in a specific context, so that the stage-worthiness of a translated <i>xiqu</i> play is tested and realised through the collaborative work of the translator and the target non-Chinese production team in order to ensure a meaningful audience experience. The stage translators and production teams constantly negotiate between loss and gain in the process of re-creating the theatrical and aesthetic impacts of the original <i>xiqu</i> forms in the target performance.