"Some playwrights have a gift to amuse; Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig has a
darker gift. Anyone with romantic notions of Chinese culture will be
unsettled by the jagged, unsentimental portrait of modern urban
China."(Chicago Reader)
Poetic and devastating, sensuous and politically acute, Frances Ya-Chu
Cowhig's China Plays explore the forces of global capital as they
explode within the lives of everyday people in contemporary China.
This volume collects together the three plays in the series, including
Cowhig's exploration of the human cost of development in China's
socialist market economy (The World of Extreme Happiness), of justice
and revenge amidst ecological and economic catastrophe (Snow in
Midsummer), and the tale of the trade in blood that brought the AIDS
crisis to rural China (The King of Hell's Palace).
In addition to Cowhig's plays, the volume includes a host of
supplemental materials including an editorial preface and three
(previously published) brief essays responding to each play by the
editor, Joshua Chambers-Letson; a new introduction by
theatre/performance scholar and dramaturg Christine Mok that explores
the key themes in Cowhig's body of work; a summary discussion between
Cowhig, Chambers-Letson, and Mok, on Cowhig's process and the political
and aesthetic currents animating her work.
The World of Extreme Happiness: "Fearless, zippily-paced, and
satirical . . . Cowhig forces us down the long hard look path"
(Independent)
Snow in Midsummer: "Gripping and affecting... graceful and
impassioned" (Times)
The King of Hell's Palace: "A medical-scandal drama that we can't
afford to ignore" (Telegraph)
