When studying theater, many scholars focus on the actors, director, or script. But Tarryn Chun points the spotlight backstage, asking, “How does it all happen?”
It’s one of the many questions she answers in her 2024 book Revolutionary Stagecraft: Theater, Technology, and Politics in Modern China, which recently won an Outstanding Book Award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) in the Innovative Achievement category.
As one of the primary professional organizations for theater and performance studies, ATHE recognizes work that demonstrates complex engagement with many facets of the field and introduces new ways of thinking about theater. With her book examining the understudied area of theater technology, Chun’s research embodies the innovation ATHE seeks to foster.
“It’s a really big honor to be chosen from a large field and a group of books that I know to be excellent,” she said.
An associate professor in the University of Notre Dame’s Department of Film, Television, and Theatre and Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies faculty fellow, Chun triangulates three concepts in her book: theater, technology, and politics. Often overlooked, technology is crucial in theater productions — lighting units, mechanical sets, and digital projectors work alongside actors, costumes, and scripts to bring stories to life.
“There’s a whole apparatus backstage and a team of people helping to support the performance that the audience sees as a complete whole,” Chun said.
When it comes to politics, Chun said, theater has taken on many roles, including as a propagandist tool or a mode of opposition to governments and institutions. Her research shows that theater is constantly participating in or responding to politics across a wide range of historical, social, and cultural contexts.
Building on these connections, Revolutionary Stagecraft analyzes how the technology used in theater productions influences and is influenced by politics. Additionally, as a scholar of Chinese literature and culture, Chun demonstrates how early- to mid-20th century Chinese theater offers a particularly interesting lens through which to illustrate these dynamics.
“We always need to think of the arts — such clear articulations of human creativity — in conversation with the non-human tools and technologies that are being used to create them.”
— Tarryn Chun, associate professor of theater
In that time period, China experienced many political fluctuations — like the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Chinese Civil War, and the Cultural Revolution — and technological advancements — like electric lighting, new modes of public transportation, and upgraded communication systems.
Chinese theater artists started to use the new technologies, especially lighting systems, and simultaneously wrote theories about the artistic and aesthetic potential of these technologies in theater. The application, Chun said, is where the politics come through.
“The way a particular technology is used on the stage can connect to a political mission for the play,” she said.
In a time of political agitation, a production artist might choose to flood the stage with red light at the end of a performance to encourage revolutionary fervor. Or a socialist director might use fake neon lights in their depiction of the Western-influenced Shanghai to make the city’s capitalist past less appealing.
For Chun, understanding how politics have played into historical theater helps us perceive the messages being shared in present-day theater.
“It gives us a sense of the critique of our current moment, bubbling up from people who are very, very well attuned to their own contexts,” she said.
Chun’s next book, tentatively titled “Spectacle and Excess in Global Chinese Performance,” explores similar concerns as Revolutionary Stagecraft, but in the 21st century — the digital age.
The last 25 years have seen incredibly impactful technological changes, and Chun is interested in how those changes — especially regarding screens and social media — are shaping theater’s connection to culture and politics. Although this project will, again, work within the specific context of Chinese-speaking countries, Chun’s focus on technology furthers broader innovation in theater studies and the arts as a whole.
“We always need to think of the arts — such clear articulations of human creativity — in conversation with the non-human tools and technologies that are being used to create them,” Chun said.
Originally published by at al.nd.edu on August 11, 2025.