Chinese Theatre Research Articles

The current stage of interaction between the theater schools of Russia and China in the context of the dialogue of cultures

The article discusses the current topic of international interuniversity exchanges in the field of theater education. The subject of the study is the interaction of theater schools in Russia and China within the framework of the experimental Russian–Chinese theater and educational project of the Central Academy of Drama (Beijing) and the Russian State Institute of Performing Arts (St. Petersburg). The project has been implemented since 2015. According to the terms of the project, Russian and Chinese teachers of acting and special disciplines work together in St. Petersburg and Beijing. Upon graduation, students receive diplomas from two universities recognized in both countries. The author, a direct participant of the project, analyzes the results of this experiment from the position of compliance with the principles and requirements of the dialogue of cultures.  The novelty of the research lies in the substantiation of the cultural value, the prospects of the modern version of the interaction of theater schools in Russia and China. The results of the study were the following conclusions: in the implementation of the Russian-Chinese theater and educational project, all the basic conditions are present and fulfilled, which make it possible to determine the events, events and their results that took place within the framework of the project as a full-fledged dialogue of cultures. Today, as never before, there are points of contact and mutual enrichment of the cultures of Russia and China. There are mutually significant cultural ties, dialogue and interaction of cultures. This variant of intercultural interaction is also productive from the point of view of innovation, creating a unique field of cross-cultural experiments.

Antiquity to Modernity: Mei Lanfang’s Preparatory and Presentational Strategies for his American and Soviet Visits

The Chinese actor Mei Lanfang and his retinue prepared several documents for his visits to the USA in 1930 and the USSR in 1935. Using these primary sources, this article explores the reasons why Mei presented traditional Chinese theatre differently in each context. One reason was winning popularity among specifically targeted audiences, as indicated by the carefully selected programmes, explanatory discourses, and illustrations from promotional materials. Through a comparative examination, this article argues that, for the American tour, Mei made traditional Chinese theatre an emblem of ancient Chinese art, while, for the Soviet tour, he endorsed the Soviet Union’s social and artistic enterprises, labelling traditional Chinese theatre a modern art. Both images, one static and the other dynamic, were authentic representations of the multifaceted contemporary Chinese theatre as it underwent modernization. Wei Feng received his PhD in Theatre Studies from Trinity College Dublin and teaches in the School of Foreign Languages and Literature at Shandong University. He is the author of Intercultural Aesthetics in Traditional Chinese Theatre: From 1978 to the Present (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). Ye Pi (corresponding author) teaches in the School of Foreign Languages and Literature at Shandong University, specializing in Russian literature.

Shih-I Hsiung: A Glorious Showmanby Da Zheng

Reviewed by: Shih-I Hsiung: A Glorious Showmanby Da Zheng Weihong Du SHIH-I HSIUNG: A GLORIOUS SHOWMAN. By Da Zheng. Vancouver: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2020. 327 pp. Hardback, $120.00; ebook, $45.00. The Chinese playwright Shih-I Hsiung is probably best understood through a perspective that consists of both literary and historical lenses. Shih-I Hsiung: A Glorious Showman fulfills the latter approach extensively, with both skill and reverence. The author, Da Zheng, draws upon a rich bounty of source material, some known and a great deal previously unpublished. Including personal correspondences between Hsiung and family members, friends, government officials, and prominent figures in artistic fields, this study creates the most complete record of Hsiung’s life in a single volume. Scholarship on Hsiung is mostly geared toward dissecting and analyzing his most prominent accomplishment—the adapted play Lady Precious Stream (Wang Baochuan 王宝钏). This is unsurprising, as it is both the achievement that defined his career as a playwright and an event that changed the course of his life. As a result, the framing of Hsiung’s story in other scholarly work is most often delineated along the lines of artistic choices in staging this famous play and how well or how poorly his production lived up to what it was “supposed to be,” from both the modern European and canonical Chinese perspectives. Zheng shows us, however, that there is much more to know about Hsiung and his career. Complementing existing work, the author’s penetrating biographical treatment of Hsiung makes for both a [End Page 215] fascinating read and a significant contribution to the history of transnational players in Chinese theatre. The primary narrative at work—the story of a glorious showman—is augmented and enhanced by a few others: the story of family, the story of place, and that of a changing China. The author takes special care in demonstrating the importance of family to Hsiung, as well as the tumultuous and ever-changing character of his relationships with his wife, Dymia, and his children. While it becomes clear that Hsiung’s attention often defaulted toward his professional activities, the drama surrounding his family life, whether they were together or apart in Nanchang, London, Oxford, or elsewhere, gives insight into Hsiung’s personal struggles and daring personality amidst the ebb and flow of his career. The dispersal of his family across multiple continents also resonates with the negotiation of identity and place at work in Hsiung’s professional life; he cared deeply for China, its history, and its political wellbeing, but built an identity that was undoubtedly international for himself, his family, and his art. The author places Hsiung’s development as a professional and artist in constant juxtaposition with the rapid changes that China underwent during the 20th century. In doing so, we see a humanized Hsiung on display—showing his own beliefs, biases, activism, and complex reactions to social evolution within the Republican period, war with Japan, civil war, and establishment of the People’s Republic of China. One aspect of this study that is of particular interest is the way the author situates Hsiung among the better-known luminaries of his time: we are made privy to episodes involving interaction, competition, and comradery between Hsiung, Hu Shi, Zhou Zuoren, Xu Zhimo, Mei Lanfang, Yu Dafa, Lao She, Lu Xun, Xu Beihong, Chiang Yee, and more. While this does not stand in direct contradiction of previous research, it certainly places Hsiung in a more positive light than scholarship focused solely on Lady Precious Stream. With the descriptions of Hsiung’s intellect and early history, Zheng introduces the reader to a man that has intellectual clout and, personal spending habits aside, strong business acumen. Considering all of what the author puts forward, readers can recognize how his hand touched many of the efforts of overseas Chinese during his career. Because the inner workings of Hsiung’s art is not the author’s main focus, some opportunity for a comprehensive understanding of Hsiung is missed. Since previous scholarship addresses on theoretical terms the creative, artistic, and cultural space Hsiung’s early work occupied as a trailblazing, transcultural phenomenon, the opportunity to bridge between the...

Эпический театр: культурные и культурологические параллели

The purpose of the article is to identify cultural and cultural parallels between the Yakut storytelling of the Olonkho and the theatrical cultures of the East and West. The work compares the cultural features of B. Brecht’s «epic theater», traditional Chinese theater and Yakut storytelling, which belong to different eras and cultures. Based on this analysis, the idea is put forward that Yakut storytelling can be considered as a model of epic theater, since it is inherent in the signs of the indicated theatrical system. This creates a new perspective in its study as a phenomenon of culture and allows to show the importance of Olonkho in the search for new communicative models in the form of theatrical art.

The dilemma and reflection of Chinese theatre arts education in universities

At present, the education of Traditional Chinese theatre arts in universities is lacking in both “software” and “hardware”, which is in the dilemma of being marginalized by teaching. There are many common problems in the bottleneck and causes of many kinds of theatre arts in the development of universities education, such as the shortage of teachers, the lack of interest of students, the weakness of scientific research, the poor environment of Traditional Chinese Theatre arts and so on. In view of the above problems, it is suggested to adopt multi-channel strategies to cultivate students’ interest, improve the supporting Traditional Chinese Theatre arts curriculum, and optimize the traditional Chinese Theatre arts environment, so as to change the current dilemma of Traditional Chinese Theatre arts in universities.

Faraway Settings: Spanish and Chinese Theaters of the 16th and 17th Centuries ed. by Juan Pablo Gil-Osle and Frederick A. de Armas (review)

Faraway Settings: Spanish and Chinese Theaters of the 16th and 17th Centuries ed. by Juan Pablo Gil-Osle and Frederick A. de Armas (review)

Maggie Greene, Resisting Spirits: Drama Reform and Cultural Transformation in the People’s Republic of China. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2019. xvi, 260 pp. DOI: 10.3998/mpub.9969070. Paperback $24.95, ISBN 978-0-472-05430-5.

Maggie Greene, Resisting Spirits: Drama Reform and Cultural Transformation in the People’s Republic of China. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, . xvi,  pp. DOI: ./mpub.. Paperback $., ISBN ----. This short history book about a spooky subject takes first its readers to a dark corner of the history of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution: How did a kunqu 昆曲 “ghost play” (guixi 鬼戏) by a veteran communist writer named Meng Chao 孟超 became one of the earliest targets of what will be known later as the “Gang of four,” even before the attacks on the plays of the far more famous intellectuals Wu Han and Tian Han? If one of the merits of this study is to shed a new light on the attacks on culture that constituted the premises of the great turmoil of the late ’s—but the author had already publicized this historical “scoop” in an article from  —it is not the main point that this book-length study wants to make. This book has the wider ambition to retrace the resilience of an apparently forbidden topic in the early PRC, the “superstitious and feudal” ghost’s theme. The public appearance of this topic on the stage of the contemporary traditional Chinese theater (xiqu 戏曲) and, more in general, its enduring presence as a subject of heated debates is also explored. Let us first recall the play at the center of the book: the story of Li Huiniang 李慧娘, first appearing in the early Ming Qu You’s 瞿佑 collections in literary Chinese Jiandeng xinhua 剪灯新话, became well known to the Chinese public through the chuanqi 传奇 play “the Prunus pavilion” Hongmei ge 红梅阁. It tells how Huiniang, a concubine of the evil southern Song minister Jia Sidao 贾似道, is slain by her jealous and violent master for having looked tenderly at a young literati near Hangzhou’s West Lake. However, as Jia Sidao prepares to also harm the would-be lover of the late concubine, her ghost appears, chases the assassin away, and scares and humiliates the evil minister. Before coming to the story of Li Huiniang itself, Greene first analyses what happened after the initial chilling ban on a group of twenty-six “superstitious plays,” most of them ghost plays, in the early ’s. Greene shows how the ban initiated a time of confusion. Troops and local authorities were quite puzzled about what was allowed, while intellectual circles began to deploy a salvaging strategy of some of the traditional supernatural themes by drawing a Review©  by University of Hawai‘i Press distinction between permissible “mythological” plays and damnable “superstitious” or “fearsome” works. The second chapter begins with the attempt by a playwright with an impeccable proletarian pedigree, Ma Jianling 马健翎, to produce a “politically correct” version of the story. In his  qinqiang 秦腔 play “Wandering West Lake,” You Xihu 游西湖, Ma does not present a ghost, but still uses the ghost element by staging a ghost-like character, making Huiniang pose as a ghost without being dead. To the author’s surprise, this attempt at a “ghostless ghost play” (which may be found in other genres of the same period, for example in some Hong Kong leftwing movies ) was greeted with harsh criticism in the higher intellectual circles of the PRC by several authors who, while voicing critiques on esthetic grounds against Ma’s play, expressed opinions that amounted to justifications of keeping “real” ghost on the Chinese traditional opera stage. The  relaxing of the initial ban on ghost plays encouraged troops to resume performances. Ma later reintroduced the ghost in the play, without receiving much more understanding from his critics. Chapter  takes the reader right to the middle of the complexity of the Hundred flowers’ time. It compares two contemporary productions, the anthology of classical tales “Stories not to be afraid about ghosts” (Bu pa gui de gushi 不怕 鬼的故事) and the rewriting in  in the kunqu opera form of the Prunus pavilion story by Meng Chao under the title “Li Huiniang.” While the first book, ordered by Chairman Mao himself, gave a new voice to ancient ghost stories by playing on a rhetoric associating ghosts with old and new class enemies (a rhetoric which won’t be forgotten during the Cultural Revolution), Meng Chao created with his “Li...

BOOK REVIEW: Chinese Theatre Troupes in Southeast Asia: Touring Diaspora, 1900s-1970s, by Beiyu Zhang

SOJOURN is an interdisciplinary journal devoted to the study of social and cultural issues in Southeast Asia. It publishes empirical and theoretical research articles with a view to promoting and disseminating scholarship in and on the region. Areas of special concern include ethnicity, religion, tourism, urbanization, migration, popular culture, social and cultural change, and development. Fields most often represented in the journal are anthropology, sociology, and history.

The Influence of Daoism on the Dramatization of the Liaozhaixi of Chuanju

This study employs a collection of fresh resources of the Liaozhaixi of Chuanju (Sichuan opera) to examine the influence of Daoism upon the dramatization of Chinese theatre. In contrast to Buddhism, it has long been supposed that Daoism has exerted only a minor influence on Chinese theatre. Despite some progress after the year 2000, the research into Daoism’s influence on Chinese theatre is still in its infancy. Noting the gap in the literature, the study identifies that the Liaozhaixi of Chuanju has provided us with some exceptional insights into Daoism’s influence on Chinese theatre. Since 2012, the successive publication of 24 Liaozhaixi scripts of Chuanju allows us to more fully enter the exploration. Reinforced by these fresh resources, the study summarizes the influence of Daoism on the Liaozhaixi of Chuanju into two typical adaptation approaches, “transplantation” and “improvement”. By analyzing the two approaches, the study will manifest how Daoism has shaped the dramatization of the Liaozhaixi of Chuanju and will employ these approaches to exemplify the confluence of religions and dramas in Chinese folk culture.

Form Follows Function in Community Rituals in North China: Temples and Temple Festivals in Jiacun Village

Yingshen saishe or saishe is a general name for all types of temple festivals held to offer sacrifices to deities of local communities. With its roots traceable to ancient shamanic beliefs and practices, saishe demonstrates itself as a closely integrated form of religious ritual performance and musical/theatrical performance and proves to be instrumental in the development of Chinese theatre from ritual to drama. Based on my fieldwork on Jiacun Double-Fourth Temple Festival in May 2016, this paper offers a close examination of Jiacun temple culture and temple theatre with focus on the religious ritual performance and musical/theatrical entertainment presented during the festival. In so doing, this paper provides an enhanced understanding of the highly dynamic, interactive relationships between temple and theatre and between efficacy and entertainment.

Review: Can’t Slow Down: How 1984 Became Pop’s Blockbuster Year, by Michaelangelo Matos

Review: <i>Can’t Slow Down: How 1984 Became Pop’s Blockbuster Year</i>, by Michaelangelo Matos

A Couple of Soles: A Comic Play from Seventeenth-Century China

A Couple of Soles: A Comic Play from Seventeenth-Century China

An Age of Transition: Restaging Brecht’s Encounter with Beijing Opera

The scene is Moscow, 1935. A who’s who of the European avant-garde has gathered to see the work of their foremost Chinese colleague: the Beijing opera master Mei Lanfang. Among them is the German playwright Bertolt Brecht, who sees in Mei’s performances the aesthetic effect he aims to develop in his own work: an effect he will soon call the ‘alienation effect.’ In 1936, Brecht pens his famous essay “On Chinese Acting,” in which he argues—approvingly—that Chinese theatre alienates the actor and audience from a play’s narrative by smashing the fourth wall and championing symbolism over realism. But did Brecht get it right? In this essay, I examine this remarkable episode in global theatre history. I argue that Brecht misunderstood Beijing opera’s theatre aesthetics, yet nonetheless meaningfully engaged with Chinese culture. A renewed encounter between Brechtian theatre and Beijing opera, I suggest, opens up intriguing possibilities in dramatic performance and theatre aesthetics.

Reframing nothingness in the kunju adaptation of Eugène Ionesco’s The Chairs

AbstractPractitioners of xiqu (traditional Chinese theater) have long appropriated Western plays and theatrical ideas to modernize Chinese tradition for new theatricalities. Primarily, plays driven by plot and characterization have been selected to highlight themes germane to Enlightenment modernity. Yet recently, there have been a few intercultural attempts to adapt the so‐called Absurdist drama with xiqu, in a deliberate deviation from metanarratives that have characterized modern Chinese theater for nearly a century, to reflect better the existential conditions of contemporary individuals. By investigating the actors’ reframing of nothingness in Shanghai Kunqu Opera Troupe’s adaptation of Eugène Ionesco’s The Chairs, this article argues that Ionesco’s original absence‐presence dynamic has been displaced and transformed in the Chinese context; his concern with frightening nothingness is replaced by kunju’s philosophical reflection on emptiness, which aims at a positive negativity. This adaptation also suggests a new path for Western modernist plays to communicate with classical Chinese culture.

Wang Chong and the Theatre of Immediacy: Technology, Performance, and Intimacy in Crisis

In early January 2020, when Chinese theatre director Wang Chong (b. 1982) arrived in New York to remount his production of Nick Payne's Constellations for the Public Theater's Under the Radar Festival, he couldn't have predicted that this would be the last time for months that he would watch his actors from the middle of a full house. By the time his work-in-progress solo show, Made in China 2.0, opened at the Asia TOPA Festival in Melbourne, Australia, at the end of that February, it was clear that there would be no live theatre in Wang's hometown of Beijing for some time. All of China was on lockdown as the disease now tragically familiar as COVID-19 swept the country. Then, as Wang returned to Beijing in early March, businesses around the globe were shuttering, theatres were going dark, and theatre artists were confronting an unprecedented challenge to their personal safety, livelihoods, and ability to make meaningful art. In short order, some well-resourced theatre institutions began to stream performance recordings and reconfigure their seasons for online platforms. Only a month after returning home, Wang Chong joined this mass online movement with his production of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, streamed live on 5–6 April 2020 as Dengdai Geduo.

Ibsen, Power and the Self: Postsocialist Chinese Experimentations in Stage Performance and Film

Ibsen, Power and the Self: Postsocialist Chinese Experimentations in Stage Performance and Film

The Characteristics of the Traditional Chinese Theather Jing Ju

The title of the paper is “Characters in Jing Ju Traditional Chinese Theatre”. In This paper, the writer wants to analyze the characters from Jing Ju Traditional theatre. This paper talks about the method of the analysis which is used by the writer is descriptive comparative method. And the theory which is used in comparing and analyzed the characters and the meanings of the analysis, the writer show and describes the character which exists in Jing Ju theatre, the meaning of the mask colors from each theatre.

Quangang Hokkien Opera

More than 80% of Chinese opera performances today are presented by privately run professional folk troupes, mostly in rural areas—Chinese theatre’s best kept secret. These performances are rarely noticed by Chinese theatre scholars. There are more than 30 such troupes in Quangang District, Fujian province, which has a population of 300,000.

Translating Culture-Bound Elements: A Case Study of Traditional Chinese Theatre in the Socio-Cultural Context of Hong Kong

This study explores the controversy surrounding the translation of the name of a new cultural infrastructure in Hong Kong, specifically related to the cultural heritage of traditional Chinese theatre. The first performing arts landmark in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District was named the Xiqu Centre; the term xiqu is a Hanyu pinyin representing traditional Chinese theatre. Though this translation issue has been intensely debated for over a decade, it remains unexplored in the research. With reference to Venuti’s translation strategies of foreignization and domestication, this study examines the Hong Kong public’s views on the translation of the name of this cultural landmark and the underlying drivers of their perceptions. It uses internet-based surveys, semi-structured interviews with the public, and interviews with experts as data sources. The results revealed that factors of (1) aesthetics and artistry, (2) cultural identity, and (3) publicity and internationalization have contributed to public perception. This study’s findings shed new light on how translation interacts with cultural, social, and political factors by examining how Hong Kong’s unique historical relationship with China and the West has played a role in this translation issue. The findings have significant implications for the translation of culture-bound elements and the transmission of cultural heritage in Hong Kong and worldwide.

The study of Chinese opera culture on the example of the genre palette

The purpose of the article is to study the problem of Chinese opera culture on the example of the genre palette. The methodology is to use the historical method in the study of this topic. It is thanks to this method that genre genres of Chinese opera are revealed in the work. Information on roles and make-up is provided, based on the historical method. The scientific novelty of the article is to study the feasibility of the issue of Chinese opera culture, drawing on the country's musical traditions. The historical names of the philosophers who influenced the development of the musical arts and education system, which affected the cultural traditions of China, were highlighted. The scientific novelty of the article is the study and study of Chinese opera culture on the example of the genre palette. Based on the country's musical traditions, we single out important factors of opera genres, including Tibetan opera, Shaoxing, Sichuan, Henan, Guangdong, etc. Conclusions are based on the study of the problem of Chinese opera culture on the example of the genre palette, revealed the original culture of the country, its worldview system. The problem of the genre palette of Chinese opera culture has interested many scholars, among which we single out scientific works: L.S. Vasiliev, Hou Jiang, U Gen-Ir, and others. This question highlighted the philosophical trends that underpin China's traditions. The problem of studying the worldview system of ancient China as the basis for the emergence of the musical tradition has interested many scholars because it influenced the cultural life of the countries of the East. Based on the study of the problem of opera culture, they discovered the original art of China. Philosophical views influenced both theatrical life and the country's musical art. Special attention was paid to the issue of education, in particular aesthetics, in China. Music education has played an important role in China's culture. Confucius emphasizes the comprehensive development of humans while emphasizing the morality of the individual. The opera culture of the country is peculiar. Musical load played a big role. The Chinese worldview is based on a vision of nature as a living organism. The first sprouts of musical and theatrical art emerge. XII-XIII centuries marked the birth of Chinese opera. The Chinese theater was in full understanding of the people. The article highlights the types of opera genres. The musical side of classical theater is characterized by an unbroken unity of sound, words, and dance. The circle of images, moods, techniques of acting is characterized by a certain type of melody, rhythm, composition of the orchestra. The study of this issue regarding the opera culture of China is interesting and not fully understood, which necessitates further development in the study of this issue.