Xing Fan

Xing Fan is a specialist in Chinese drama, theatre, and performance culture. Her broader research interests include practice and aesthetics in Asian performance, historiography, inter-cultural collaborations, gender and performance, sound studies and theatre, and pedagogy. Xing is the author of Staging Revolution: Artistry and Aesthetics in Model Beijing Opera during the Cultural Revolution (HKUP 2018). Her peer-reviewed articles and translations appear in Asian Theatre Journal, Performance Matters, Critical Stages/Scènes Critiques, and Renditions; her essays also appear in the books Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Plays by Women: The Early Twenty-First Century, Women in Asian Performance: Aesthetics and Politics, Routledge Handbook of Asian Theatre, New Modern Chinese Women and Gender Politics, and A Dictionary of Critical and Cultural Theory.  Xing’s research has been funded by the Connaught New Researcher Award, SSHRC Insight Grants, and SSHRC Insight Development Grants. She is currently conducting two SSHRC-funded projects, one on female transgression of Beijing opera during 1880–1949, the other on experimental traditional theatre in contemporary China.  

Xing believes in hands-on practice in teaching, learning, and research.  She is a performer with training and stage experience in the performance arts including jingju (Beijing opera), kunqu (Kun opera), kabuki, gudianwu (Chinese classical dance), Nihon Buyō (Japanese dance), Balinese dance, and the gamelan ensemble. Xing is a winner of Hawai‘i State Theatre Council’s Po‘okela Award for Best Leading Female Role for her performance of Omitsu in Nozaki Village (an English-language kabuki production) in 2004. Xing is the current President of the Association for Asian Performance, and served as a Vice President of the Association during 2014–2016 and 2016–2018. She is an area editor (China) for Asian Theatre Journal and an editorial board member for Theatre, Dance and Performance Training.

Virtual office hours: Mondays 2-3pm and by appointment (email Xing Fan <stars.fan@utoronto.ca> for zoom link)

Selected publications

"The Magic of Change: Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig’s The World of Extreme Happiness," in Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Plays by Women: The Early Twenty-First Century, ed. Penny Farfan and Lesley Ferris. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2021, pp. 229–237.

“In Pursuit of the Musical Image: Imagining the Soundscape of Wild Man.” Critical Stages/Scènes Critiques June (2020): Issue No 21.

Staging Revolution: Artistry and Aesthetics in Model Beijing Opera during the Cultural Revolution. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2018.  

“Stars on the Rise: Jingju Actresses in Republican China,” in Women in Asian Performance: Aesthetics and Politics, ed. Arya Madhavan.  London and New York: Routledge, 2016, pp. 66-80.  

“Where Should We Start and What Could We Do: Asian Performance and Pedagogy.” Performance Matters 2.1 (2016): 21-37.