ABSTRACT
Recent Chinese adaptations of classic Greek plays in various genres of xiqu do not completely indigenize them, but they tend to deemphasize the agency of gods and compress and retool the dramatic action to make it easier for Chinese audiences to follow and to give full play to the art of xiqu. Although these xiqu adaptations should be viewed in the context of the old “whether China has ‘true,’ ‘authentic’ tragedy” debate, and although some xiqu adaptations verge on turning drama into melodrama and tragedy into spectacle, they engender interesting and enriching intertextual reverberations across cultures.
