DOI: 10.5325/eugeoneirevi.47.2.0181 ISSN: 1040-9483
Eugene O’Neill Returns: Theatrical Modernization and O’Neill Adaptations in 1980s China
Shuying ChenABSTRACT
This article summarizes the author’s 2023 dissertation, “Eugene O’Neill Returns: Theatrical Modernization and O’Neill Adaptations in 1980s China.” The dissertation investigates how Chinese dramatists adapted O’Neill’s works within the sociocultural context of the 1980s, thirty years after his disappearance from the Chinese stage. The three content chapters focus respectively on Western-styled productions, experimental stagings, and Chinese operatic adaptations of O’Neill’s works, capturing his role in the multifaceted transformation of Chinese theater in the 1980s. It argues that Chinese playwrights and theater practitioners consciously engaged in borrowing O’Neill’s plays to revitalize and modernize Chinese theater.