ABSTRACT
The introduction of contemporary theater into Taiwan began with a turbulent modernity that emerged out of colonialism and the Cold War. Chapter 1 charts the genealogy of the body on the contemporary stage. By tracing the body’s presence and absence, as well as its onstage functions and treatments throughout the history of Taiwanese contemporary theater, the chapter accounts for the vehemence of bodily rebellion witnessed in the 1980s. This rebellion was crucial to the growing centrality of the body in the contemporary theater of the 1990s, as well as setting the scene for the divergent modes of transformance that emerged in the 2000s.
