Modernist Visions Beyond the Horizon of History: The Theatricality of Bai Wei’s Rarely Staged Plays

Abstract:This article explores the theatricality of the works of Bai Wei 白薇 (1894–1987), one of the most prolific women playwrights in early twentieth century China. Her play scripts garnered huge popularity and were frequently reprinted, but were rarely staged. Due to the lack of staging opportunities, their unconventional modernist style, and the paucity of production records, these scripts have been largely deemed unproducible and low in theatricality by scholars and critics both now and then. Through a detailed production analysis of three aspects of Bai’s plays (acting, set design, and stage effects), I argue that Bai’s rarely staged scripts are embedded with rich theatrical intentions and implications. The correlation between the number of staging records and the plays’ intrinsic theatrical value is completely arbitrary, and Bai’s scripts envision a modernist theatre with artistic potentials ahead of her time.