Faculty Lecture Series: Man He

Associate Professor of Chinese Man He presents “Backstaging Modern Chinese Theatre” as part of the spring 2025 Faculty Lecture Series. Lectures will begin at 4:15 p.m. and take place in the Lawrence Hall Auditorium (L-231). Enter via the main WCMA entrance or through the Art Department corridor. Students, faculty, staff, community members – all are welcome!

Theatre, along with food and ritual, has long been considered as one of the three major components of Chinese life. Between the two world wars, Chinese theatre underwent several rounds of aesthetic and ideological disavowals and realignments in the pursuit of modernity. “Modern Chinese theatre” once entailed a variety of forms, but now it primarily refers to huaju (話劇 spoken drama). How did huaju acquire its artistic maturity, sophistication in production, and canonical status when most Chinese were suffering from chaotic disruptions? How did huaju evolve from a cosmopolitan intellectual youth’s imitation of Western realist theatres in the 1910s to a mass art in the 1940s that both the Nationalist and Communist parties competed to claim? Prof. Man He’s upcoming monograph, Backstaging Modern Chinese Theatre, furnishes the scholarly lens of the “backstage” to answer these questions. This book, with an extensive, multi-sited, transnational canvas, shifts focus from written playscripts to the “messy” process of playmaking; from celebrated careers of individual genius dramatists to a wide array of stakeholders and nameless participants; from political prescriptions to technical and aesthetic details. In this talk, Prof. He will share how we can, with keen eyes and ears, find hidden sights and sounds in the “backstage” of huaju and modern theatre discourse.

Man He is an Associate Professor of Chinese who holds a Ph.D. in Chinese Literature and Culture from The Ohio State University. Her monograph, Backstaging Modern Chinese Theatre: Intellectuals, Amateurs, and Cultural Entrepreneurs, 1910s–1940s, will be published by the University of Michigan Press in July 2025. Current research projects include co-editing a special issue on “Professionalism and Amateurism in Modern and Contemporary Chinese Arts” for Modern Chinese Literature and Culture and co-editing a book on theatre and performance theory in twentieth-century China.

This talk is presented as part of the Spring 2025 Faculty Lecture Series. The series was founded in 1911 by Catherine Mariotti Pratt, the spouse of a faculty member who wanted to “relieve the tedium of long New England winters with an opportunity to hear Williams professors talk about issues that really mattered to them.” From these humble and lighthearted beginnings, the Faculty Lecture Series has grown to become an important forum for tenured professors to share their latest research with the larger intellectual community of the college.

The Faculty Lecture Series is organized by the faculty members of the Lecture Committee. The aim of the series is to present big ideas beyond disciplinary boundaries. All lectures will begin at 4:15 p.m. They are free and open to the public.

Upcoming Faculty Lectures

February 27 — Bob Rawle: “The Molecular Biophysics of Viral Infection”
March 6 — Ralph Morrison: “Bézout’s Theorem, Algebraic and Tropical”
March 13 — Justin Shaddock: “Kant and the Problem of Happiness”
March 20 — Joel Lee: “On the Art of Caste Concealment”