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This anthology is a collection of four contemporary Chinese plays by the playwright Wan Fang, presented in the original Chinese and in English translation. An introduction by the volume editor offers a survey of the development of modern Chinese drama.

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This anthology is a collection of four contemporary Chinese plays by the playwright Wan Fang, presented in the original Chinese and in English translation. Since the 1990s, modern Chinese drama has experienced a revival, and these plays are representative of the kind of theatre which audiences in China now enjoy. The time is ripe for them to be staged internationally through the medium of translation. This book provides Chinese and English versions consecutively, to enable the plays to be used for study or performance. The volume also offers an introduction to the development of modern Chinese drama over the twentieth century, as a background to the plays included here. In addition, Wan Fang´s own introduction to the writing of plays, and these plays in particular, gives us insights into the mechanisms of writing and staging in a twenty-first-century Chinese context.

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CONTENTS: Valerie Pellatt: Introduction: The twentieth-century context of Wan Fang´s twenty-first-century plays - Wan Fang: Speech delivered at Newcastle University Drama Translation Colloquium May 2014 - Chinese transcript - English translation - (Chinese script) - Murder on the Lalian River (English translation of ) - (Chinese script) - Winterreise (English translation of ) - (Chinese script) - Poison (English translation of ) - (Chinese script) - Reflections on writing Poison (English translation of ) - (Chinese script) - Relationships (English translation of ).

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"Translation is important in an increasingly global world, and for theatre it serves as foundational work when we attempt to understand and stage a foreign work. This Wan Fang anthology is groundbreaking not only because it is the first collection of plays by a contemporary Chinese woman playwright but also, more significantly, these plays express contrasting segments of the period from the 1950s to the present day, showing some crucial moments in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Chinese history and complicated social issues of the time. This volume is compulsory reading for anyone seeking to understand Chinese culture.´." (Ruru Li, Professor of Chinese Theatre Studies, University of Leeds)

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Valerie Pellatt is Reader in Chinese Translation and Interpreting in the School of Modern Languages at Newcastle University. A graduate of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London, she holds a PhD in Translation Studies from Edinburgh University. She She has practised as a professional translator and interpreter since the 1980s, and since 2001 has taught conference interpreting, public service interpreting and specialised translation at post-graduate level. Her research interests are translation paratext, Chinese children´s rhymes and poems, and contemporary Chinese drama. Since 2012 she has worked with Chinese-speaking postgraduate students on the translation and performance of eight contemporary Chinese plays by well-known playwrights.

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