This monograph interrogates the construction of the People's Republic of China across seven plays by White British playwrights. It analyses these original plays to explore the ways in which China is constructed as a political entity in relation to the British sense of self. It constructs a methodological correlation, contingent upon ambivalence, between the appearance of Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble on the London stage in 1956, the dialectics of Brecht’s method, interculturalism and translation, and poststructuralist conceptions of language, to explore tensions between neo-imperialist fantasy and postcolonial critique.

Ashley Thorpe is Reader in Theatre at Royal Holloway University of London, UK. His previous monograph on Chinese drama, Performing China on the London Stage: Chinese Opera and Global Power, 1759-2008 (Palgrave 2016), explored the effects of transnational and intercultural encounters through an exploration of Chinese performance forms (specifically xiqu) in London. The co-edited volume Contesting British Chinese Culture (Palgrave 2018) included analysis of the impact of Arts Council funding on British Chinese performance, whilst the co-edited Asian City Crossings: Pathways of Performance Through Hong Kong and Singapore (2021) explored transnational theatre ecologies outside of the prevailing East-West dynamic.