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High-Performance Performance: Digital Technologies in Contemporary Chinese Theatre
October 2 @ 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Tarryn Chun
University of Notre Dame
Date: Thursday, October 2 nd , 2025
Time: 6:00-8:00 PM EST
Location: Hybrid | Kent Hall 403
Zoom registration: https://columbiauniversity.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_RGQpyJKcSnSWvCXTLZxX1w#/regi
stration
In-person registration:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdjVxakOejVSJhnVHKPF_8mT1qyQ6QN0eW1E
gljRQaWAZ_Ozw/viewform
Event Co-sponsors:
Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures; Weatherhead East Asian Institute; The Society
of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities; Institute for Comparative Literature and Society;
Center for Comparative Media
Speaker bio:
Dr. Chun is Associate Professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre at the
University of Notre Dame, where she holds a concurrent appointment in the Department of East
Asian Languages and Cultures and is a Faculty Fellow at the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies.
Her research focuses on modern and contemporary Sinophone theatre, with emphasis on examining
interrelationships among performance, technology, and media. Her book Revolutionary Stagecraft:
Theatre, Technology, and Politics in Modern China (University of Michigan Press, 2024) examines the
relationship between technological modernization and artistic innovation in 20th-21st century
Chinese theatre. Other projects include a second book manuscript on "Spectacle and Excess in
Global Chinese Performance," which received a National Endowment for the Humanities
Fellowship in 2021, and a collaboration with Professor Anton Juan on "Theatre for Justice in Asia:
Past, Present, Futures." She currently serves on the boards of the Association for Asian Performance and the Association for Chinese and Comparative Literature, and as Online Editor for Theatre
Journal.
Talk description:
In the last decade, large-format LED panels, extended and augmented reality, and artificial
intelligence interfaces have appeared with increasing frequency in theatre and dance performances
from the PRC, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. These high-tech experiments have reinvigorated old
debates over liveness and mediatization, but also raise new questions in contexts where political
power and technological development are closely intertwined. This talk will use case studies from
the PRC to explore several key issues: how do we understand connections between the performing
arts and technological infrastructures, especially in light of the environmental and humanitarian
dimensions of constructing and maintaining those systems? What happens when the arts become
implicated in nationalistic narratives of technological progress via use of new technologies? How
might theoretical formulations at the intersection of theatre and media studies grapple with the
complexity of these entanglements?
