"Pop with Gods, Shakespeare, and AI is a very ambitious book. Its great virtue lies in its bringing together performance works from a variety of media - the author herself lists Western Literature, Chinese Literature, East Asian Studies, Shakespearean Research, Broadway Musicals, Theater Performance, Film Studies and theories of popular culture. ... The 64 color photos are uniformly excellent and make me wonder why I don't go to the theater more often." (Bradley Winterton, taipeitimes.com, April 21, 2022)
1 Introduction: Popular Visual Culture in Film, Theatre and TV Drama
Part I Literature, Film, and Theatre
2 Shakespeare and Popular Culture: Romeo and Juliet in Film and Pop Music
3 Represent Afterlife and Replay Habitus: Performance via Spectacle in the Korean Film Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds
4 Myth and Levi-Strauss: Taiwan Musical The Classic of Mountains and Seas & Chinese Film The Monkey King: Kingdom of Women
Part II Asian American Play, Asian Theatre, and Musical Theater
5 Face, Race, and Performance: Arousal by Face and Identity Transformation
6 Dance Tango and Sing for Revenge in Chicago and The Visit
Part III TV Drama, Robot Theatre and AI Films
7 Theatre, Performance, and Popular Story of Yanxi Palace
8 Hakka Theatre: Roseki Taipei Singer
9 Robot Theatre and AI Films
10 Conclusion
Iris H. Tuan is Professor at National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan. She received her Ph.D. in Theater from UCLA and has been a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University. Tuan’s selected publications include papers published by Asian Theatre Journal, and nine books, including Translocal Performance in Asian Theatre and Film, Intercultural Theatre: Adaptation and Representation, Western Canon in Taiwan Theatre, Alternative Theater in Taiwan, and Transnational Performance, Identity, and Mobility in Asia (edited with Ivy I-chu Chang). Tuan is the recipient of NCTU Outstanding Research Awards.
‘Iris Tuan’s book is wide ranging in scope and diversity, examining theatre, music, film and television productions from both Western and Asian countries. Tuan also surveys an extensive range of critical and theoretical perspectives, especially from performance studies and popular cultural studies, to offer context for her descriptions of the many different works. Some of her examples are well-known while others little known outside their place of origin -- all are approached by the author with enthusiasm.’
—Susan Bennett, Professor of English, University of Calgary, Canada
‘Tuan takes us through multiple examples of contemporary popular performance in theatre/film/TV ranging from "high" art sources to "low" ones. The reader moves at a speed-dating pace through contemporary culture production and interpretive theories, encountering significant works, controversies, and conundrums selected from China, Korea, Japan and the U. S. and filtered through a Taiwanese female gaze.’
—Kathy Foley, Professor of Theatre Arts, University of California Santa Cruz, USA
Applying the theories of Popular Culture, Visual Culture, Performance Studies, (Post)Feminism, and Film Studies, this interdisciplinary and well-crafted book leads you to the fascinating and intriguing world of popular film, (musical) theatre, and TV drama. It explores the classical and contemporary cases of the literature works, both Eastern and Western, adapted, represented and transformed into the interesting artistic medium in films, performances, TV dramas, musicals, and AI robot theatre/films.
Iris H. Tuan is Professor at National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan. She received her Ph.D. in Theater from UCLA and has been a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University. Tuan’s selected publications include papers published by Asian Theatre Journal, and nine books, including Translocal Performance in Asian Theatre and Film, Intercultural Theatre: Adaptation and Representation, Western Canon in Taiwan Theatre, Alternative Theater in Taiwan, and Transnational Performance, Identity, and Mobility in Asia (edited with Ivy I-chu Chang). Tuan is the recipient of NCTU Outstanding Research Awards.