he theatrical culture of Tibet is probably the last to remain virtually unknown to the outside world, and to the West in particular. As well as describing the current situation of studies on Tibetan theatre, the current volume also provides an essay on imagination and how it is concretely manifested by the Tibetan people and their actors. Recent decades have seen radical change for Tibetan theatre, ache lhamo, now performed by a diaspora for whom a declining artistic and technical change derives from an uncertain politics concerning secular and popular culture, as well as the ongoing cultural genocide caused by China’s subjection of Tibet.

Antonio Attisani (1948) trained as an actor at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, and performed professionally for seven years. He later worked as a theater critic, directing the magazine Scena and the Santarcangelo International Festival until 1992, when he began teaching at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and, until 2018, at the University of Turin. He is the author of over thirty volumes on twentieth-century and contemporary theatre, employing a comparativist perspective.