Liyang Xia

Xia, Liyang (2026). Ibsen, Theatre and the Chinese State: A hundred years of contestations. Manchester University Press.

Joanne Tompkins, Jonathan Bollen, Julie Holledge, and Liyang Xia (2022). Visualising Lost Theatres: Virtual Praxis and the Recovery of Performance Spaces. Cambridge University Press. www.cambridge.org/9781108476751

Xia, Liyang (2021). The Silent Noras: Women of the First Chinese Performance of A Doll's House. Asian Theater Journal.  ISSN 0742-5457. . doi: 10.1353/atj.2021.0011

Xia, Liyang (2018). A myth that glorifies: Rethinking Ibsen’s early reception in China.  Ibsen Studies.  ISSN 1502-1866. 18(2), s 141- 168 . doi: 10.1080/15021866.2018.1550868

Xia, Liyang (2016). Heart Higher than the Sky: Reinventing Chinese Femininity through Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, In Frode Helland & Julie Holledge (ed.),  Ibsen Between Cultures.  Novus Forlag.  ISBN 9788270998630.  5.  s 113 - 142

• Xia, Liyang & Tompkins, Joanne (2023). Virtual Praxis and Theatre Research: Textual Recovery. In Tam, Kwok-kan (Eds.), Performance Arts: Research in the Age of Digital Revolution. Springer. ISSN 9789811992131. p. 19–37. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This volume reshapes a contemporary understanding of research in theatre and performance arts. Bringing together distinguished scholars from all over the world, the book serves as an arena for international scholars to introduce innovative research methodologies and disseminate their research findings regarding VLT, data archiving, and digital history and discusses the impacts of digital culture in art production, stage performance, film, and literature. The Ibsen focus in the book is illustrative of the power of digital database research that is generating new relations in spatial-historical dimensions that have otherwise gone unnoticed. It demonstrates how a new methodology can bring practical benefits to handling big data with the support of digital technologies. In line with the post-pandemic landscape, this book engages a reflection on how the digital revolution has brought about changes and challenges, and constraints and breakthroughs within the field of theatre and performance arts. It is of appeal to theatre artists and practitioners, scholars, critics, librarians, digital archive engineers, and postgraduate students interested in theatre, performance studies, digital media, information technology, library science, communication, education, sociology, as well as political science.

• Xia, Liyang & Tompkins, Joanne (2022). Mid-Nineteenth-Century Cantonese Opera Performances in the Victorian Goldfields. In Bush-Bailey, Gilli & Flaherty, Kate (Ed.), Touring Performance And Global Exchange 1850-1960: Making Tracks. Routledge. ISSN 9780367519506. p. 31–47. doi: 10.4324/9781003055860-2. Full text in Research Archive
• Xia, Liyang (2021). The Silent Noras: Women of the First Chinese Performance of A Doll's House. Asian Theater Journal. ISSN 0742-5457. 38(1), p. 218–244. doi: 10.1353/atj.2021.0011. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This article analyzes the first fully verifiable Ibsen performance in the history of Chinese theatre—Nala (Nora) in Beijing in 1923—by a group of female students from the famous Beijing Nüzi Gaodeng Shifan Xuexiao (Peking Normal College for Women). Among scholars of Chinese theatre, this performance has often been overlooked and deemed insignificant. I argue that this performance is significant not only because it sets an example for the hundred-year Ibsen performance tradition on the Chinese stage but also because it challenged the public perception of women in theatre. This article takes issue with the dominant discourse on Ibsen's role in Chinese women's liberation, where men—the "new youth" and by and large "Ibsenites"—liberated women. It reorients the women as the pioneers of staging Ibsen in Chinese theatre. Based on first-hand archival research, I present a detailed theatre historiography of the performance while contextualizing it in the lived realities of the female students at PNCW at that time.

• Xia, Liyang (2019). A myth that glorifies: Rethinking Ibsen’s early reception in China. Ibsen Studies. ISSN 1502-1866. 18(2), p. 141–168. doi: 10.1080/15021866.2018.1550868. Full text in Research Archive
• Xia, Liyang (2016). Heart Higher than the Sky: Reinventing Chinese Fimininity through Ibsen's Hedda Gabler. In Helland, Frode & Holledge, Julie (Ed.), Ibsen Between Cultures. Novus Forlag. ISSN 9788270998630. p. 113–142. Full text in Research Archive
• Xia, Liyang (2007). Power Struggle in Hedda Gabler - A Close Reading of the Conversations between Hedda, Brack and Løvborg. In Helland, Frode; Mollerin, Kaja*; Nygaard, Jon & Sæther, Astrid (Ed.), The Living Ibsen: Proceedings - The 11th International Ibsen Conference, 21 - 27 August 2006. Unipub forlag. ISSN 9788291540108. p. 153–158. Full text in Research Archive

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• Tompkins, Joanne; Holledge, Julie; Bollen, Jonathan & Xia, Liyang (2022). Visualising Lost Theatres: Virtual Praxis and the Recovery of Performance Spaces. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781108476751. 300 p. Full text in Research Archive

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• Xia, Liyang & Janss, Christian (2026). When Nora Stayed – Ibsen's Alternative Ending. doi: https:/www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLY1ZQk6PgqZ4. Full text in Research Archive
• Haaland, Agnete G.; Xia, Liyang & Skuggevik, Erik (2023). Panelsamtale under Performance and Reception of Professedly Authoritative Texts. Full text in Research Archive
• Xia, Liyang (2022). Preface. Ibsen Studies. ISSN 1502-1866. 22(1), p. 1–2. doi: 10.1080/15021866.2022.2063976. Full text in Research Archive
• Xia, Liyang (2013). Heart Higher than the Sky - Reinventing Chinese Femininity through Ibsen's Hedda Gabler. Universitetet i Oslo. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This dissertation examines a Chinese transcreation of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler into the yueju Heart Higher than the Sky (Xin Bi Tian Gao). It argues that this performance text is implicated in contestations over the representations and consumptions of femininity, Chinese identity, and aesthetic purity within contemporary China theatre. Two intertwined aspects of a cultural imaginary dominate the discussion: the representations of women in the yueju genre and by extension within the Chinese culture, and the search for a Chinese identity in and through Chinese traditional theatre. The discussion of femininity is closely tied into the discussion of "Chinese-ness". This dissertation asks questions such as: What is a Chinese woman? What are their socially prescribed aspirations? What kind of gender norms apply to them? The author attempts to answer these questions by looking at the female depiction in the history of the yueju genre, an art form that closely reflects and informs the transformations of women's social status in China. In addition, she looks at the lived realities for women in today's Chinese society, arriving at the conclusion that this yueju adaptation of Hedda Gabler challenges some areas of the current gender norms in China, as well as reinforces other areas. As part of the effort to change the way women and their assigned roles are viewed in the cultural imaginary in China, Heart Higher than the Sky suggests certain ethical values, both for the women and for the society at large, through promoting traditional "Chinese" values in traditional theatre. By adapting an Ibsen play into the traditional Chinese yueju form, the artists of this production evoked a search for a "Chinese identity" in and through Chinese traditional theatre. This searching is done in a two-way manner: placing Ibsen's provocative characters and stories in traditional Chinese theatre challenges the Chinese audience's idea of what "Chinese-ness" is; and interpreting Ibsen's play through a traditional Chinese theatre form sets up an image of a Chinese imaginary to the world.

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