High-Performance Performance: Digital Technologies in Contemporary Chinese Theatre

Description

In the last decade, large-format LED panels, extended and augmented reality, and artificial intelligence interfaces have appeared with increasing frequency in theatre and dance performances from the PRC, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. These high-tech experiments have reinvigorated old debates over liveness and mediatization, but also raise new questions in contexts where political power and technological development are closely intertwined. This talk will use case studies from the PRC to explore several key issues: how do we understand connections between the performing arts and technological infrastructures, especially in light of the environmental and humanitarian dimensions of constructing and maintaining those systems? What happens when the arts become implicated in nationalistic narratives of technological progress via use of new technologies? How might theoretical formulations at the intersection of theatre and media studies grapple with the complexity of these entanglements?

Speaker

Dr. Chun is Associate Professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre at the University of Notre Dame, where she holds a concurrent appointment in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and is a Faculty Fellow at the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies. Her research focuses on modern and contemporary Sinophone theatre, with emphasis on examining interrelationships among performance, technology, and media. Her book Revolutionary Stagecraft: Theatre, Technology, and Politics in Modern China (University of Michigan Press, 2024) examines the relationship between technological modernization and artistic innovation in 20th-21st century Chinese theatre. Other projects include a second book manuscript on "Spectacle and Excess in Global Chinese Performance," which received a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in 2021, and a collaboration with Professor Anton Juan on "Theatre for Justice in Asia: Past, Present, Futures." She currently serves on the boards of the Association for Asian Performance and the Association for Chinese and Comparative Literature, and as Online Editor for Theatre Journal.