{"id":34216,"global_id":"www.sinologie-goettingen.de\/en\/?id=34216","global_id_lineage":["www.sinologie-goettingen.de\/en\/?id=34216"],"author":"10","status":"publish","date":"2022-01-20 12:41:33","date_utc":"2022-01-20 10:41:33","modified":"2022-01-20 12:42:11","modified_utc":"2022-01-20 10:42:11","url":"https:\/\/www.sinologie-goettingen.de\/en\/events\/contemporary-theater-art-seminar-series-no-9-comedies-in-contemporary-chinese-theatre-a-sudden-boom\/","rest_url":"https:\/\/www.sinologie-goettingen.de\/en\/wp-json\/tribe\/events\/v1\/events\/34216","title":"\u201cContemporary Theater Art\u201d Seminar Series No. 9: “Comedies in contemporary Chinese theatre – a sudden boom”","description":"

Speaker:<\/strong> Sabine Heymann, Dr. Anna Stecher<\/p>\n

Zoom Meeting:<\/strong> https:\/\/uni-goettingen.zoom.us\/j\/97996297643<\/a>
\nMeeting ID: 979 9629 7643<\/p>\n

Language: <\/strong>English<\/p>\n

Organizer: <\/strong>
\nThe Department of East Asian Studies at the University of G\u00f6ttingen
\nThe Department of Theater, Film and TV Arts at Nanjing University<\/p>\n

Partner: <\/strong>
\nThe Center for Modern East Asian Studies at the University of G\u00f6ttingen
\nThe Academic Confucius Institute at the University of G\u00f6ttingen
\nThe Journal of Ying Ming Theater
\nThe Chinese Students and Scholars Association in G\u00f6ttingen<\/p>\n

Content:<\/strong>
\nSabine Heymann in conversation with Anna Stecher about her new book \u201eDie Konjunktur her Kom\u00f6die im China der Gegenwart\u201c (The boom of comedies in contemporary China) – which presents six current successful comedies from China in German translation.<\/p>\n

Chinese theatre is not famous for comedies. As far as we know, up to now no Western book has been explicitly dedicated to this topic. However, comedies are among the most watched and discussed plays in contemporary Chinese theatre of recent years \u2013 and someone might even argue, that in present time comedy has become the most serious theatrical expression on the Chinese stage. Entangled with the commercialization of theatre, new cultural structures and the changing of urban audiences, the ques-tion is: How is this phenomenon to be understood? As a sudden boom influenced by narrative conven-tions of Western cinema? As a special expression of a millennial tradition of entertainment \u2013 and cri-tique? It has to be said: comedies as an own genre didn\u2019t really exist within the Chinese theatre tradi-tion. On the other hand: elements of comedy have always been an important piece of the big xiqu tragedies. <\/p>\n

While Chinese audiences are familiar with actors and plays, academic research does not appear to be interested in contemporary comedies, not to mention possible readers and audiences outside China, which have hardly heard of them. This was the reason for Anna Stecher and her colleague Xu Jian in Beijing to plan a book project focusing on contemporary Chinese comedies. It presents some of the most popular recent plays, written by Nick Yu, Wen Fangyi, Huang Weiruo, Lin Weiran, Guo Shixing and Li Jing. It also aims to propose different approaches towards Chinese theatre \u2013 every play in translation is introduced by an expert from the fields of Chinese studies or Theatre studies. In addition, it intends to contextualize the recent phenomenon of comedies within different fields, such as the social reality in contemporary China and the history of comedy in China and to discuss questions like: Which topics are contemporary Chinese comedians interested in? How can this phenomenon be understood in the con-text of 20th and 21st century in China? How can these comedies be understood in Europe? Last but not least, it aims at exploring comedy as a text for intercultural communication. When watching theatrical comedy performances on stage or on tape you think: what the heck is so funny about them? Questions like these are discussion topics of the the book \u2013 and some more will be addressed in the \u201cContempo-rary Theater Art\u201d Seminar Series.<\/p>\n

Short Bio:<\/strong>
\nSabine Heymann <\/strong>\u2013 the managing director of the ZMI (Interdisciplinary Research Center for Media and Interactivity) at the University of Giessen from the foundation in 2001 until 2017, theatre critic and journalist, translator of theatre texts, fiction and non-fiction books, as well as an expert on the theatre scenes in Italy and China. Already during her studies of German and Romance studies at the University of Giessen she had been working as a cultural journalist and theatre critic for the German newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau and the German public-service television and radio broadcaster Hessischer Rundfunk. From 1981 to 1994 she was a cultural correspondent in Rome, where she worked for several important German newspapers, the prestigious theatre review Theater heute and radio stations. Various lectureships brought her to the Freie Universit\u00e4t Berlin, to the Universities of Mainz and Frankfurt am Main, as well as to the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies at the Univer-sity of Giessen, where she gave lectures about the subject of \u201cPost-dramatic Theatre in Italy\u201d. In 1994 she became curator of supporting programs at the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Re-public of Germany in Bonn. She returned to the University of Giessen in 1996 and became the per-sonal assistant of the President of the University of Giessen. She started working on Chinese theatre with the moderation of the Workshop \u201cOne table two chairs\u201d at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin) in 2000, followed by several journeys and work stays in different parts of China. In 2009 she published a report about the theatre scene in Shanghai in Theater heute. She took part on several European-Chinese culture dialogues, conferences and workshops of Goethe Institut and EUNIC as well as within the cooperation between ZMI and Shanghai Theatre Academy. In 2011 she curated the third German-Chinese Theatre Forum in Chongqing (Goethe Institut). She gave lectures and took part on scientific round-tables in Shanghai, Hamburg, Munich, Salzburg, Weimar, Hellerau, Frankfurt etc. and in 2015 she moderated the panel about New German Musiktheater inside the in-ternational conference \u201cTurning Point of the Theatre\u201d (Shanghai). Her book \u201cContemporary theatre in China\u201d (Alexander Verlag, Berlin, published in 2017 together with Cao Kefei and Christoph Lep-schy) immediately became a reference work on the subject in Germany. At present, she is concerned by translations, publishing of scientific essays, teaching at different universities. <\/p>\n

Anna Stecher<\/strong>
\nDr. Anna Stecher is an assistant professor at the Institute of Sinology at Ludwig-Maximilians- Universi-t\u00e4t (LMU) Munich. She studied Oriental History at the University of Bologna and Modern Chinese Litera-ture at Beijing Normal University (MA and PhD). She also holds a PhD (Dr. phil) in Theatre Studies from LMU. Her main research interests are Chinese theatre and modern Chinese literature. She is the author of a book-length study on Lin Zhaohua, China\u2019s most influent theatre director of the late 20th and early 21st century (Im Dialog mit dem chinesischen Schauspieljahrhundert. Studien zum Theater von Lin Zhao-hua<\/em>), co-editor of a volume with contemporary Chinese plays (Chinas Schauspiel. Nah am Nerv. Sechs St\u00fcck\u00fcbersetzungen<\/em>), and co-translator of a collection of sanqu-songs from Yuan China (Lieddichtungen aus der Yuan-Zeit). Her publications further include a number of literary translations from Chinese.<\/p>","excerpt":"","slug":"contemporary-theater-art-seminar-series-no-9-comedies-in-contemporary-chinese-theatre-a-sudden-boom","image":false,"all_day":false,"start_date":"2022-03-16 13:00:00","start_date_details":{"year":"2022","month":"03","day":"16","hour":"13","minutes":"00","seconds":"00"},"end_date":"2022-03-16 14:30:00","end_date_details":{"year":"2022","month":"03","day":"16","hour":"14","minutes":"30","seconds":"00"},"utc_start_date":"2022-03-16 11:00:00","utc_start_date_details":{"year":"2022","month":"03","day":"16","hour":"11","minutes":"00","seconds":"00"},"utc_end_date":"2022-03-16 12:30:00","utc_end_date_details":{"year":"2022","month":"03","day":"16","hour":"12","minutes":"30","seconds":"00"},"timezone":"UTC+2","timezone_abbr":"UTC+2","cost":"","cost_details":{"currency_symbol":"","currency_code":"","currency_position":"prefix","values":[]},"website":"","show_map":true,"show_map_link":true,"hide_from_listings":false,"sticky":false,"featured":false,"categories":[],"tags":[],"venue":{"id":32369,"author":"10","status":"publish","date":"2020-05-22 12:48:42","date_utc":"2020-05-22 10:48:42","modified":"2020-05-22 12:48:42","modified_utc":"2020-05-22 10:48:42","url":"https:\/\/www.sinologie-goettingen.de\/venue\/online\/","venue":"Online","slug":"online","json_ld":{"@type":"Place","name":"Online","description":"","url":"https:\/\/www.sinologie-goettingen.de\/venue\/online\/","address":{"@type":"PostalAddress"},"telephone":"","sameAs":""},"show_map":true,"show_map_link":true,"global_id":"www.sinologie-goettingen.de\/en\/?id=32369","global_id_lineage":["www.sinologie-goettingen.de\/en\/?id=32369"]},"organizer":[{"id":34215,"author":"10","status":"publish","date":"2022-01-20 12:41:34","date_utc":"2022-01-20 10:41:34","modified":"2022-01-20 12:41:34","modified_utc":"2022-01-20 10:41:34","url":"https:\/\/www.sinologie-goettingen.de\/organizer\/the-department-of-east-asian-studies-at-the-university-of-goettingen-the-department-of-theater-film-and-tv-arts-at-nanjing-university-2\/","organizer":"The Department of East Asian Studies at the University of G\u00f6ttingen, The Department of Theater, Film and TV Arts at Nanjing University","slug":"the-department-of-east-asian-studies-at-the-university-of-goettingen-the-department-of-theater-film-and-tv-arts-at-nanjing-university-2","json_ld":{"@type":"Person","name":"The Department of East Asian Studies at the University of G\u00f6ttingen, The Department of Theater, Film and TV Arts at Nanjing University","description":"","url":"","telephone":"","email":"","sameAs":""},"global_id":"www.sinologie-goettingen.de\/en\/?id=34215","global_id_lineage":["www.sinologie-goettingen.de\/en\/?id=34215"]}],"json_ld":{"@context":"http:\/\/schema.org","@type":"Event","name":"\u201cContemporary Theater Art\u201d Seminar Series No. 9: “Comedies in contemporary Chinese theatre – a sudden boom”","description":"<p>Speaker: Sabine Heymann, Dr. Anna Stecher Zoom Meeting: https:\/\/uni-goettingen.zoom.us\/j\/97996297643 Meeting ID: 979 9629 7643 Language: English Organizer: The Department of East Asian Studies at the University of G\u00f6ttingen The Department […]<\/p>\\n","url":"https:\/\/www.sinologie-goettingen.de\/en\/events\/contemporary-theater-art-seminar-series-no-9-comedies-in-contemporary-chinese-theatre-a-sudden-boom\/","eventAttendanceMode":"https:\/\/schema.org\/OfflineEventAttendanceMode","eventStatus":"https:\/\/schema.org\/EventScheduled","startDate":"2022-03-16T13:00:00+02:00","endDate":"2022-03-16T14:30:00+02:00","location":{"@type":"Place","name":"Online","description":"","url":"https:\/\/www.sinologie-goettingen.de\/venue\/online\/","address":{"@type":"PostalAddress"},"telephone":"","sameAs":""},"organizer":{"@type":"Person","name":"The Department of East Asian Studies at the University of G\u00f6ttingen, The Department of Theater, Film and TV Arts at Nanjing University","description":"","url":"","telephone":"","email":"","sameAs":""},"performer":"Organization"}}