Theatricality in Translation: Der Bockerer, the Story of an Anti-fascist Butcher in China

In 1982 the production of Der Bockerer by the Mannheim National Theatre was invited to become the first German theatre production to be staged in China after the Cultural Revolution. A Chinese translation of the drama text was published in a leading theatre journal and a production in Chinese was mounted by the Beijing People’s Art Theatre later that year. Despite it having never before been translated into any other language, this grotesque, black humour satire about the butcher Bockerer in Vienna during the Nazi period, written by Ulrich Becher and Peter Preses in 1945, was a major success in China. What are the reasons for this? And what role did translation play here? This article approaches Der Bockerer in Beijing as an example of theatricality in translation. It focuses not only on texts—whether printed drama texts or performances—but also on these texts’ interconnections with their contexts: audiences, historical situations, international diplomacy and others. The aim is to discuss a hitherto neglected case study and contribute to broadening the field of theatre translation in the Chinese–European context, which still mostly focuses on the translation of the literary aspect of theatre.