Introduction: Modernity, Interculturalism, and Hybridity

I n the first two decades of the twentieth century, in semicolonial Shanghai, emerged a hybrid theatrical form that was based on Western spoken theatre, classical Chinese theatre, and a Japanese hybrid form of kabuki and Western-style spoken theatre called shinpa (new school drama). Known as wenmingxi (civilized drama), this form has, until recently, largely been ignored by scholars in China and the West as it does not fit into the current binary “traditional / modern” model in non-Western theatre and performance studies. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.