Rethinking Chinese Socialist Theaters Of Reform

The profound political, economic, and social changes in China in the second half of the twentieth century have produced a wealth of scholarship; less studied however is how cultural events, and theater reforms in particular, contributed to the dynamic landscape of contemporary Chinese society. Rethinking Chinese Socialist Theaters of Reform fills this gap by investigating the theories and practice of socialist theater and their effects on a diverse range of genres, including Western-style spoken drama, Chinese folk opera, dance drama, Shanghai opera, Beijing opera, and rural theater. Focusing on the 1950s and ’60s, when theater art occupied a prominent political and cultural role in Maoist China, this book examines the efforts to remake theater in a socialist image. It explores the unique dynamics between official discourse, local politics, performance practice, and audience reception that emerged under the pressures of highly politicized cultural reform as well as the off-stage, lived impact of rapid policy change on individuals and troupes obscured by the public record. This multidisciplinary collection by leading scholars covers a wide range of perspectives, geographical locations, specific research methods, genres of performance, and individual knowledge and experience. The richly diverse approach leads readers through a nuanced and complex cultural landscape as it contributes significantly to our understanding of a crucial period in the development of modern Chinese theater and performance.

Performing the Socialist State offers an innovative account of the origins, evolution, and legacies of key trends in twentieth-century Chinese theater. Instead of seeing the Republican, high socialist, and postsocialist periods as radically distinct, it identifies key continuities in theatrical practices and shared aspirations for the social role and artistic achievements of performance across eras. Xiaomei Chen focuses on the long and remarkable careers of three founders of modern Chinese theater and film, Tian Han, Hong Shen, and Ouyang Yuqian, and their legacy, which helped shape theater cultures into the twenty-first century. They introduced Western plays and theories, adapted traditional Chinese operas, and helped develop a tradition of leftist theater in the Republican period that paved the way for the construction of a socialist canon after 1949. Chen investigates how their visions for a free, democratic China fared in the initial years after the founding of the People’s Republic, briefly thriving only to founder as artists had to adapt to the Communist Party’s demand to produce ideologically correct works. Bridging the faith play and “antiparty plays” of the 1950s, the “red classics” of the 1960s, and their reincarnations in the postsocialist period, she considers the transformations of the depictions of women, peasants, soldiers, scientists, and revolutionary history in plays, operas, and films and examines how the market economy, collective memories, star culture, social networks, and state sponsorship affected dramatic productions. Countering the view that state interference stifles artistic imagination, Chen argues that theater professionals have skillfully navigated shifting ruling ideologies to create works that are politically acceptable yet aesthetically ingenious. Emphasizing the power, dynamics, and complexities of Chinese performance cultures, Performing the Socialist State has implications spanning global theater, comparative literature, political and social histories, and Chinese cultural studies.

This book offers a stimulating introduction to the Hokkien music drama known as liyuanxi ('pear garden theatre'), heir and current expression of one of China's oldest unbroken xiqu ('Chinese opera') traditions. It considers the genre's history prior to the 20th century, its signal successes before and after the Cultural Revolution, and its national prominence today. Beginning with an analysis of the form's aesthetics and techniques, it proceeds to an overview of its rich and distinctive narrative repertoire, including several dramas unique to the genre. Josh Stenberg illustrates liyuanxi's distinctive musical and narrative qualities and presents the performance art's place, not only in Chinese drama and theatre history, but also in the culture of the historic port city of Quanzhou and the broader Hokkien region and diaspora. This study focuses on the work of the only professional theatre troupe in the genre, the Fujian Province Liyuanxi Experimental Theatre (FPLET), and examines the practice of director and leading actor Zeng Jingping, whose performances have focused attention on the genre's expression of women's desires and ambitions, and on her colleague, playwright Wang Renjie. It argues that new scripts engage with the issues of contemporary China while respecting the genre's traditions and conventions, and have led to rewritings of traditional repertoire by younger female authors. Stenberg's book skilfully demonstrates how a traditional theatre can adapt and thrive in a contemporary society, providing an indispensable introduction while whetting the appetite for the genre's exhilarating live performances.

This book examines male dan, a male actor who performs female roles in Chinese theatre. Through the rise, fall and tenuous survival of male dan in Chinese history, Guo Chao reflects the transformations in the social zeitgeist in China, especially the politics of gender and sexuality. The breadth of this study reflects a diversified set of sources, ranging from classical to contemporary texts (texts of jingju plays, memoirs, collections of notation books) and other commentaries and critical evaluations of dan actors (in both English and Chinese languages) to video and audio materials, films and personal interviews. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of East Asian/Chinese studies across the fields of theatre, history, culture and literature.

Revolutionary Stagecraft draws on a rich corpus of literary, historical, and technical materials to reveal a deep entanglement among technological modernization, political agendas, and the performing arts in modern China. This unique approach to Chinese theater history combines a close look at plays themselves, performance practices, technical theater details, and behind-the-scenes debates over “how to” make theater amid the political upheavals of China’s 20th century. The book begins at a pivotal moment in the 1920s—when Chinese theater artists began to import, use, and write about modern stage equipment—and ends in the 1980s when China's scientific and technological boom began. By examining iconic plays and performances from the perspective of the stage technologies involved, Tarryn Li-Min Chun provides a fresh perspective on their composition and staging. The chapters include stories on the challenges of creating imitation neon, rigging up a makeshift revolving stage, and representing a nuclear bomb detonating onstage. In thinking about theater through technicity, the author mines well-studied materials such as dramatic texts and performance reviews for hidden technical details and brings to light a number of previously untapped sources such as technical journals and manuals; set design renderings, lighting plots, and prop schematics; and stage technology how-to guides for amateur thespians. This approach focuses on material stage technologies, situating these objects equally in relation to their technical potential, their human use, and the social, political, economic, and cultural forces that influence them. In each of its case studies, Revolutionary Stagecraft reveals the complex and at times surprising ways in which Chinese theater artists and technicians of the 20th century envisioned and enacted their own revolutions through the materiality of the theater apparatus.

Investigating more than 70 key concepts relating to the performing arts in more than six non-European languages, this volume provides a groundbreaking research tool and one-of-a-kind reference source for theatre, performance and dance studies worldwide. The Companion features in-depth explorations of and expert introductions to a select number of performance-related key concepts in Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Yorùbá as well as the Indian languages Sanskrit, Hindi and Tamil. Key concepts—such as Furǧa فرجة in Arabic, for example, or Jiadingxing 假定性 in Chinese, Gei 芸 in Japanese, Ìparadà in Yorùbá and Imyeon 이면 in Korean—that defy easy translation from one language to another (and especially into English as the world’s lingua franca) and that reflect culturally specific ways of thinking and talking about the performing arts are thoroughly examined in in-depth articles. Written by more than 60 distinguished scholars from around the globe, the articles describe in detail each concept’s dynamic history, its flexible scope of meaning and current range of usage. The Companion also includes extensive introductions to each language section, in which internationally renowned experts explain how the presented key concepts are situated within, and are constitutive of, distinct and dynamic epistemic systems that have different yet always interlinked histories and orientations. Offers a fascinating insight into the unique histories, characteristics, and orientations of linguistically and culturally distinct epistemic systems related to the performative arts Contains extensive cross-references and bibliographies An invaluable research tool and one-of-a-kind reference source for scholars and students worldwide and across the humanities, especially in the fields of theatre, performance, dance, translation, area and cultural studies An accessible handbook for everybody interested in performance cultures and performance-related knowledge systems existing in the world today. This volume provides an invaluable research tool and one-of-a-kind reference source for scholars and students worldwide and across the humanities, especially in the fields of theatre, performance, dance, translation and area studies, history (of science and the humanities) and cultural studies.

Tracing the history and adaptation of one of China's foundational texts

Existing scholarly discussions of theatrical realism have been predominantly limited to 19th-century European and Russian theater, with little attention paid to wider explorations and alternative definitions of the practice. Examining theater forms and artists from China, Japan, and Korea, Realisms in East Asian Performance brings together a group of theater historians to reconsider realism through the performing arts of East Asia. The book’s contributors emphasize trans-regional conversations and activate inter-Asian dialogues on theatrical production. Tracing historical trajectories, starting from premodern periods through today, the book seeks to understand realisms’ multiple origins, forms, and cultural significances, and examines their continuities, disruptions, and divergences. In its diversity of topics, geographic locations, and time periods, Realisms in East Asian Performance aims to globalize and de-center the dominant narratives surrounding realism in theater, and revise assumptions about the spectacular and theatrical forms of Asian performance. Understanding realism as a powerful representational style, chapters collectively reevaluate acts of representation on stage not just for East Asia, but for theater and performance studies more broadly.