This study explores the role of drama troupes tasked with roaming the countryside in support of Mao's communist revolution in China.

Brian James DeMare is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History, Tulane University, Louisiana, where he teaches courses on modern Chinese history. He has published articles in two of the top journals in the field, The China Journal and Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, and lived in China for five years. During that time, he conducted several research trips into the countryside, visiting archives and interviewing active drama troupes, and has ties with Chinese academics studying the countryside in Shanxi. One of his main research sites is Long Bow, well-known in the West due to William Hinton, who wrote Fanshen, about land reform in that village.

Preface; List of abbreviations; Introduction: performing Mao's revolution; 1. The revolution will be dramatized: Red drama troupes; 2. Acting against Japan: drama troupes in North China; 3. Playing soldiers and peasants: civil war and agrarian reform; 4. Staging rural revolution: land reform operas; 5. State agents and local actors: cultural work in the early PRC; 6. Peasants on stage: amateur actors in socialist China; 7. Tradition in conflict: professional drama troupes and the PRC state; Conclusion; Select bibliography.