Based on archival materials, especially the manuscripts of Brecht’s famous essay on Chinese theatre, contemporary sources, eye-witness accounts, and other rarely used first-hand historical materials, this book looks at Brecht and Chinese theatre in the text of his manuscripts and in the contexts of the different views of the Chinese theatre by his contemporaries, questioning the existing views and shedding new light on the historical constitution of Brecht’s theory of “Verfremdungseffekt,” particularly in its relation to Chinese theatre. It deals with such critical questions: how Brecht’s views of Chinese theatre changed over time, especially in the 1950s, as reflected in his revisions of his essays on Chinese theatre, and what their theoretical implications and significance are to our understanding of Brecht’s theory, especially his new concept of “Verfremdungseffekt”; to what extent his views are to be considered part of his reaction to the rising dominance of Stanislavsky on the international stage; how Brecht’s contemporaries’ views of Brecht’s theory and practice and of the Chinese theatre were in contrast to his, and what their significance is to our understanding of Brecht’s theory and practice.

Min Tian holds his PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA, and from the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing, China. He has taught as an Associate Professor at the Central Academy of Drama and currently works at the University of Iowa. He is the author of The Spectre of Tradition and the Aesthetic-Political Movement of Theatre and Performance: An Intercultural Perspective (2023); The Use of Asian Theatre for Modern Western Theatre: The Displaced Mirror (2018); Mei Lanfang and the Twentieth-Century International Stage: Chinese Theatre Placed and Displaced (2012; Chinese edition, 2022); The Poetics of Difference and Displacement: Twentieth-Century Chinese-Western Intercultural Theatre (2008); and editor of China’s Greatest Operatic Male Actor of Female Roles: Documenting the Life and Art of Mei Lanfang, 1894-1961 (2010).