Meaning in Movement: Adaptation and the Xiqu Body in Intercultural Chinese Theatre

Zhuli xiaojie (adapted from Strindberg’s Miss Julie) and Xin bi tian gao (from Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler) are two works in a recent series of intercultural xiqu productions by playwrights William Huizhu Sun and Faye Chunfang Fei. In these works, the xiqu body serves as a medium for theatrical expression, where music, costume, movement, and props come together in a super-expressive acting technique that foregrounds qing (情), or sentiment. In these adaptations, the xiqu body compensates for what is necessarily cut from the text in the transformation from spoken drama to xiqu performance.