"The Stage in the Temple probes Chinese theatre history generally and Za Opera history particularly.... Johnson invites a reassessment of the interplay among performers, performances, and audiences as well as the function of theatrical performance in everyday village lives. Since Johnson also touches upon Chinese classical fiction, storytelling, and other opera genres including Clapper Opera, this book...appeals to a wider range of readers."—Yunjie Hu, University of Sydney, Asian Studies Review 48, no. 1 (2024): 207-208
"By delving into the immense variation within the symbolic culture of Chinese villages, Johnson's work serves as a foundational research endeavor.... Notably, he posits that while rituals themselves are performances, they are heavily structured, hierarchical, nearly immobile, and symmetrical, controlled by the educated elite. In contrast, opera, in the hands of ordinary people, is characterized by movement, asymmetry, scripted spontaneity, and conflict, providing precisely what traditional rituals lack"—Geng Li, China Agricultural University, China Review 23, no. 4 (2023): 318-320
“This book, together with Johnson’s previous work, represents a groundbreaking contribution to our understanding of ritual performance in China. The Stage in the Temple would make an excellent addition to undergraduate courses on Chinese and East Asian popular religion, performance, and popular culture.” —Levi S. Gibbs, Dartmouth College, Asian Ethnology 82, no. 2 (2023)
“A historian at heart, Johnson sees his studies of the rituals and operas performed at temple festivals in rural Shanxi as a window to the world of the 'hundreds of thousands of villages that, until the mid-twentieth century, held probably 90 percent of the population' but are generally ignored by historians of China”—Fan Pen Chen, University at Albany, SUNY, CHINOPERL 43, no. 1 (2024)
"While David Johnson declares that his main aim is to replace the stereotypes about the 'primitive' Chinese village life 'with detailed descriptions of premodern China’s rural world that are closer to lived reality' (p. 1), this book ought to be read not only by historians of rural China, but by anyone interested in traditional Chinese theater, the social history of Chinese religions, and the interplay of ritual and theater in general…. A highly interdisciplinary work, The Stage in the Temple can be used in both undergraduate and graduate courses on East Asian theater, religion, and history."—Mengxiao Wang, University of Southern California, JAOS, 45.1, 2025
