Intercultural and cross-cultural encounters during the quatercentenary of Tang Xianzu and Shakespeare

Many productions were staged to celebrate the 2016 quatercentenary of Tang Xianzu and Shakespeare’s death. Shakespeare-Tang Project celebrated both playwrights through the production of Midsummer Night’s DREAMING Under the Southern Bough (Zhongxiaye mengnanke), staged both in UK and in China. As part of a separate festival taking place in China, Shakespeare Lives, Britain’s Gecko and the Shanghai Drama Art Center worked on a production that combines Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Tang’s The Peony Pavilion. Do these international festivals cement an already well-established imaginary of a transnational global Shakespeare and his theatre in both China and UK? By investigating the reception of these productions, this article argues that Chinese theatre undergoes a process of “othering” and “self-orientalization” and there are hidden political agendas at play.