"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)

An absurdist comedy and fifteenth winner of the Yale Drama Prize, exploring family, religion, identity, desire, and beauty in Korean American culture   In a fantastical fairy-tale world, two Korean American sisters are deemed too fat to fit in their family grave. Will the sisters’ close bond survive under the pressure of their community and fretful parents, who will spare no effort to make them tinier?   Jar of Fat, the fifteenth winner of the Yale Drama Prize, is a phantasmagorical, absurdist Korean American tale about the allure and danger entangled within the quest for beauty and thinness. Both laugh-out-loud funny and deeply troubling, Seayoung Yim’s play burns through the accumulated rage that anti-fat bias produces to reclaim what it steals from us every day: grace, space, possibility, and breath.

Theatre has a complex history of responding to crises, long before they happen. Through stage plays, contemporary challenges can be presented, explored and even foreshadowed in ways that help audiences understand the world around them. Since the theatre of the Greeks, audiences have turned to live theatre in order to find answers in uncertain political, social and economic times, and through this unique collection questions about This anthology brings together a collection of 20 scenes from 20 playwrights that each respond to the world in crisis. Twenty of the world's most prolific playwrights were asked to select one scene from across their published work that speaks to the current world situation in 2020. As COVID-19 continues to challenge every aspect of global life, contemporary theatre has long predicted a world on the edge. Through these 20 scenes from plays spanning from 1980 to 2020, we see how theatre and art has the capacity to respond, comment on and grapple with global challenges that in turn speak to the current time in which we are living. Each scene, chosen by the writer, is prefaced by an interview in which they discuss their process, their reason for selection and how their work reflects both the past and the present. From the political plays of Lucy Prebble and James Graham to the polemics of Philip Ridley and Tim Crouch. From bold works by Inua Ellams, Morgan Lloyd Malcom and Tanika Gupta to the social relevance of Hannah Khalil, Zoe Cooper and Simon Stephens this anthology looks at theatre in the present and asks the question: "how can theatre respond to a world in crisis?" The collection is prefaced by an introduction from Edward Bond, one of contemporary theatre's most prolific dramatists.

When the Henan Ministry of Health begins paying citizens for blood plasma which is then sold to pharmaceutical companies, impoverished farmers in the province's remote villages sell blood to buy fertilizer, mend their houses and create a better life for their children. As corrupt health officials cut costs to maximize profits, safety standards are ignored, bringing potential catastrophe to China's most vulnerable population. Inspired by true events, this gripping drama explores the conflicts that arise when a community's greatest source of capital becomes their own bodies. Focusing on the personal repercussions of the cover-up, The King of Hell's Palace questions how political and medical decisions are made and how both a family and an entire country can look to recover from traumatic events.

Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig's powerful drama Lidless asks important and difficult questions: is guilt a necessary form of moral reckoning, or is it an obstacle to be overcome? Will the price of national political amnesia be paid only by the next generation - the daughters and sons who were never there? It's been fifteen years since Guantanamo, fifteen years since Bashir last saw his U.S. Army interrogator, Alice. Bashir is now dying of a disease of the liver, an organ that he believes is the home of the soul. He tracks down Alice in Texas and demands that she donate half her liver as restitution for the damage wrought during her interrogations. But Alice doesn't remember Bashir; a PTSD pill trial she participated in while in the army has left her without any memory of her time there. It is only when her inquisitive fourteen-year-old daughter begins her own investigation that the fragile peace of mind that Alice's drug-induced oblivion enabled begins to falter. Although politically engaged and topical, the play's significance is further-reaching and taps into timeless questions. Lidless portrays the inevitable consequences of moral crimes, in spite of the lapse of time and the oblivion of the perpetrators. Guilt inexorably engenders retribution with a horrible symmetry, so comeuppance is exacted upon what is held most dear. Within a modern and politically-charged setting, Lidless has a tight plot of cyclical, interfamilial violence and inevitable, if blindly executed, vengeance.

Men in this town were born with mouths that can right wrongs with a few words. Why are you too timid to speak? As she is about to be executed for a murder she didn't commit, young widow Dou Yi vows that, if she is innocent, snow will fall in midsummer and a catastrophic drought will strike. Three years later, a businesswoman visits the parched, locust-plagued town to take over an ailing factory. When her young daughter is tormented by an angry ghost, the new factory owner must expose the injustices Dou Yi suffered before the curse destroys every living thing. A contemporary re-imagining by acclaimed playwright Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig of one of the most famous classical Chinese dramas, which breathes new life into this ancient story, haunted by centuries of retelling. The world premiere of Snow in Midsummer on 23 February 2017 at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon, launched the RSC's Chinese Translations Project, a cultural exchange bringing Chinese classics to a contemporary Western audience. This edition has been republished for the American premiere at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in June 2018 and includes a brand new afterword by Joshua Chambers-Letson.

When Sunny is born in rural China, her parents leave her in a slop bucket to die because she's a girl. She survives, and at 14 leaves for the city, where she works a low-paying factory job and attends self-help classes to improve her chances at securing a coveted office position. When Sunny's attempts to pull herself out of poverty lead to dire consequences for a fellow worker, she is forced to question the system she's spent her life trying to master - and stand up against the powers that be. Savage, tragic and desperately funny, The World of Extreme Happiness is a stirring examination of a country in the midst of rapid change, and individuals struggling to shape their own destinies. This new edition is published to coincide with the US premiere of the play at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago, which then transfers to the Manhattan Theater Club, NYC.

The third winner of the Yale Drama Series competition for emerging playwrights-a haunting and provocative imagining of the reunion, years later, of a Guantanamo detainee and the female interrogator who tortured him It's been fifteen years since Guantanamo, fifteen years since Bashir last saw his U.S. Army interrogator, Alice. Bashir is now dying of a disease of the liver, an organ that he believes is the home of the soul. He tracks down Alice in Texas and demands that she donate half her liver as restitution for the damage wrought during her interrogations. But Alice doesn't remember Bashir; a PTSD pill trial she participated in while in the army has left her without any memory of her time there. It is only when her inquisitive fourteen-year-old daughter begins her own investigation that the fragile peace of mind that Alice's drug-induced oblivion enabled begins to falter. Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig's powerful drama asks important and difficult questions: Is guilt a necessary form of moral reckoning, or is it an obstacle to be overcome? Will the price of our national political amnesia be paid only by the next generation-the daughters and sons who were never there? Upon awarding the prize, David Hare wrote, "We admired the play because-although it was stylishly written, although the governing metaphor and basic realism were held in a fine balance-it also recalled the political urgency which had propelled a previous generation of writers into the theatre in the first place."

When Sunny is born in rural China, her parents leave her in a slop bucket to die because she's a girl. She survives, and at 14 leaves for the city, where she works a low-paying factory job and attends self-help classes to improve her chances at securing a coveted office position. When Sunny's attempts to pull herself out of poverty lead to dire consequences for a fellow worker, she is forced to question the system she's spent her life trying to master - and stand up against the powers that be. Savage, tragic and desperately funny, The World of Extreme Happiness is a stirring examination of a country in the midst of rapid change, and individuals struggling to shape their own destinies.