Performing Enlightenment: Buddhism and Theater in Early Modern China

Speaker: Mengxiao Wang, Assistant Professor of Chinese Literature, University of Southern California. 

Brief abstract: 

In late Ming and early Qing China, a major revival of Buddhism coincided with a growing fascination with theater. In Performing Enlightenment, Mengxiao Wang examines how Chinese Buddhist monastics and laypeople actively engaged with and transformed the dramatic arts. Drawing on a wide range of religious and literary sources, the book argues that Buddhist practitioners reconciled the tension between spiritual cultivation and worldly entertainment by reimagining theater as a creative mode of devotion. In this process, playwriting, stage performance, and theatergoing all emerged as legitimate pathways to enlightenment.

Discussant: Yinghui Wu, Associate Professor of Asian Languages and Cultures, UCLA

Time: Thu 11/12/2026

 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM

Place: Humanities Gateway, HG 1030

Sponsors: Humanities Center, Illuminations: The Chancellor’s Arts & Cultures Initiative, Department of East Asian Studies