Reorienting the Gaze in Mei Lanfang’s Lyrical Theatre: Performing Female Interiority

This article shows how Mei Lanfang and his associates created a “lyrical theatre” and created new possibilities for the female impersonator. Mei Lanfang and his intellectual friends modernized jingju by expanding female roles, reimagining gender categories, and creating female interiority through lyricism. Their modernized jingju changed the role of the female impersonator, publicly showed female subjectivity, and visually transformed jingju performance.