This book is a ground-breaking study of 'alternative Chinese opera', contemporary innovative forms of traditional operas on the Pacific Rim. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach and incorporating a wealth of interviews, the author provides an in-depth examination of local performances and balances discourse on the local and global, personal and political, national and transnational, offering a fresh way of addressing the problems with binaries such as tradition/innovation, Chinese/Chinese Identities, center/peripheries, home/diaspora in the age of globalization. Chapters deal with the sociopolitical significance of the Innovative Beijing opera in Taiwan, a Youth Edition of the Cantonese opera classic The Flower Princess in Hong Kong, The Peony Pavilion performance with the transnational capital in California, and the avant-garde adventure of Robert Wilson's Beijing opera Orlando in Taiwan. Contrary to traditional scholarship, Alternative Chinese Opera addresses the "here and now' - the immediacy and stake of an age-old genre - with alternative voices from the peripheries.