A History of Taiwanese Theatre by Professor Lin Ho-Yi unfolds the merging trajectories of Taiwanese drama, which roots in several migration tides and divergent political systems. Taiwanese drama represents a significant example where divers culture and political systems convergent in particular way. Crossing the history of ethnic fusion, colonial government, authoritarian regime, and democracy, Taiwan culture absorbs elements of Mainland China, Japan and Western Culture from America before developing out its own way. A History of Taiwanese Theatre by Professor Ho-Yi Lin provides a concise structure with precise details for everyone who wants to explore Taiwanese drama. Many influential variables co-construct the development of Taiwanese drama. Professor Lin uses cumulative number of repertoires and the peak of popularity to measure the circumstance of each drama genre in every history periods. Furthermore, she adopted variables including demographic composition, policies, material condition, social structure and key promoter to explain each genre’s prosperity and decline. Among all these factors, language plays a dominant role due to its unusual changing trajectory caused by origins of immigrants and a series of power transfer. The earliest historic evidence of drama in Taiwan appeared with immigrants from Mainland China. Before 1784, most immigrants came from Quanzhou. They brought Nankuan Opera which prevailed in their home town since the middle of the Ming Dynasty. In 1784, Qing Dynasty constructed an important commercial port in Lukang and consequently led to another wave of migration tide. More immigrants from Zhangzhou with another dialect and culture habit flooded into Taiwan. They brought Peikuan Opera within, which gradually developed superiority over Nankuan Opera after Jia-Qin Period of Qing Dynasty. Along with the ethnic fusion, a subspecies of dialect, Taiwanese, thrived over initial dialects of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou and engendered a new local opera genre: Taiwanese Opera (ge-zi-xi). Taiwanese Opera emerged during Japanese ruled period (1895-1945). In that time, Taiwanese had already been mature and become the prevalent dialect held by main audience. Therefore, Taiwanese Opera trounced Nankuan Opera and Peikuan Opera soon by using dominant language. Since then, Taiwanese Opera kept its dominance through Japan and R.O.C. governments’ policies against local culture until R.O.C. denounced and forbid Taiwanese, which gave a crushing blow to Taiwanese Opera while it had been depressed by the entertainment transformation after World War II. Aside from traditional operas, the modern theatre also appeared in Taiwan since Japan ruled period. Yet after R.O.C. government took over the sovereignty in 1946, the KMT party operated authoritarian regime and imposed martial law to Taiwan, as well as used drama to disseminate anti-communism ideology. These policies strictly confined the development of modern theatre. But on the other hand, the modern theatre relates to American/Western Culture embraced by the KMT government. Moreover, it uses Mandarin that promoted by the government which became new dominant language in Taiwan. The modern theatre grew through Christian association and college, and boomed in 1980s after the government abolished the martial law. Afterward, the modern theatre becomes dominant genre of drama in Taiwan till now. Except the factors and genres mentioned above, there are more interesting details in Taiwanese theatre history. For example, television deeply influenced Taiwan drama development while it popularized after world war two. Taiwanese Opera once became the most popular TV programs during the time. Moreover, there was also several other important drama genres, such as Hakka Tea-picking Opera, Taiwan Glove Puppet, and even Peking opera. A History of Taiwanese Theatre comprehensive epitomizes Taiwan drama investigation achievements and provides an explicit introduction; has already been adopted as textbook by several drama classes in Taiwan colleges. The author, Professor Lin Ho-Yi, professes in Department of Drama and Theatre, National Taiwan University. Her investigation highly focused on Taiwanese theatre and relevant topics.