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Theatre of "Disbelief": Meng Jinghui's Cynical Metatheatre in Contemporary China
- Asian Theatre Journal
- University of Hawai'i Press
- Volume 37, Number 2, Fall 2020
- pp. 376-397
- 10.1353/atj.2020.0033
- Article
- Additional Information
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Abstract:
Meng Jinghui (b. 1964) is one of the most prominent and controversial experimental theatre directors in contemporary China. Among all his theatrical experiments, metatheatre, or theatre about theatre, bears his most distinct signature and plays a central role in his major works. He uses play within the play in his early works to expose political fraud and uses role playing within the role in his later works to express the schizophrenia of young people in postsocialist China. His use of metatheatre betrays a profound sense of cynicism, which significantly complicates his widely recognized iconoclastic idealism. In fact, Meng is a cynical idealist whose persistent idealism is underscored by his disenchanted skepticism and undermined precisely by the obscurity of that skepticism.