Abstract: In 2018, Zhang Lifen interviewed Professor Liu Siyuan at the University of British Columbia about the cross-cultural Asian theatre during her visiting study at the University of California, Davis. In this interview, Professor Liu Siyuan recalls his academic growth, and mainly expounds the influence between Chinese and Japanese theatre from the cross-culture perspective, and Asian theatre studies. The research of Professor Liu Siyuan starts with drama, and the text, theater, history and theory are emphasized equally in method. He puts spoken drama and traditional Chinese opera in the framework of global colonization and modernization in perspective. He also considers the development of Asian drama, especially Japanese drama and its influence on China. Professor Liu Siyuan points out that the cultural hybridity of civilized drama makes it a typical drama art of east Asian colonialism modernity. He thinks that with the development of the classical literature of Asian drama, Asian drama is playing an increasingly important role in the history of world drama.

Key words: cross-culture, Asian theatre, civilized drama, performing hybridity, drama teaching