Hybrid Stages offers a fresh account of modern Chinese theater by examining how translation and hybridity shaped the rise of huaju, or spoken drama, from the 1920s through the 1950s. Translation in this study expands from a linguistic act into the circulation of theatrical ideas and stage conventions across languages and cultures. Challenging narratives that reduce huaju to an imitation of Western realism, the book shows how practitioners translated Western theatrical traditions and merged them with indigenous forms, thereby creating new and often hybrid modes of performance. Tracing this process of hybridization across Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, Barbara Jiawei Li demonstrates how the formation of modern Chinese theater complicates dominant accounts of theater modernity and contributes to broader discussions of transnational theater and performance.

Barbara Jiawei Li is Lecturer at the Department of Translation, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research focuses on translation history, translation theory, and performance studies. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including Translation Studies, Asian Theatre Journal, Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theory and Practice, Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies, and Journal of Translation Studies.