scholarly journals Meaning in Movement: Adaptation and the Xiqu Body in Intercultural Chinese Theatre

2014 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-63
Author(s):  
Emily E. Wilcox
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Theatre ◽  
Hedda Gabler ◽  
Spoken Drama ◽  
Acting Technique

Zhuli xiaojie (adapted from Strindberg's Miss Julie) and Xin bi tian gao (from Ibsen's Hedda Gabler) are two works in a recent series of intercultural xiqu productions by playwrights William Huizhu Sun and Faye Chunfang Fei. In these works, the xiqu body serves as a medium for theatrical expression, where music, costume, movement, and props come together in a super-expressive acting technique that foregrounds qing (情), or sentiment. In these adaptations, the xiqu body compensates for what is necessarily cut from the text in the transformation from spoken drama to xiqu performance.

scholarly journals ‘Spoken Drama (Huaju) with a Strong Chinese Flavour’: The Resurrection and Demise of Popular Spoken Drama (Tongsu Huaju) in Shanghai in the 1950s and Early 1960s

2017 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 265-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
SIYUAN LIU
Keyword(s):  
Policy Changes ◽  
Popular Entertainment ◽  
Chinese Theatre ◽  
Modern Chinese ◽  
The Future ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Spoken Drama ◽  
And Performance

In the late 1950s and early 1960s in Shanghai, the remnant ofwenmingxi(civilized drama), China's first form of Western-style spoken drama, which had flourished in the 1900s and 1910s as a hybrid of Western spoken theatre and indigenous performance, experienced a brief resurrection and ultimate demise under the name oftongsu huaju(popular spoken drama). Considered until then as popular entertainment inferior to the officially recognized form of modern theatre,huaju(spoken drama), that adhered to Western realistic dramaturgy and performance,tongsu huajustaged a six-play festival in January 1957 thanks to liberal art policies, received a warm welcome in Beijing and other cities, and attracted the attention of somehuajuexperts who praised its affinity to indigenous performance, thus triggering a debate over its efficacy as a localized alternative tohuajufor the future of modern Chinese theatre. Using contemporary sources, this article examinestongsu huaju’s brief rise and fall in Shanghai, with a focus on its performances, the debate, the policy changes that decided the fate of China's first form of modern theatre, and the implications of its fate for the narrative of periodization in modern Asian theatre.

Performing Gender at the Beginning of Modern Chinese Theatre

2009 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siyuan Liu
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Chinese Student ◽  
Gender Performance ◽  
New School ◽  
Chinese Theatre ◽  
Modern Chinese ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Female Impersonators ◽  
Performance Of Gender ◽  
Spoken Drama

In the early twentieth century, female impersonators in Japan's first Western-style theatre, shinpa (new school drama), employed gender performance conventions based on kabuki onnagata and European melodramatic techniques. Shinpa performers influenced the performance of gender in early Chinese spoken drama. Chinese student actors emulated shinpa conventions in Tokyo and popularized them in Shanghai in the 1910s, where they were accepted as being accurate enactments of modern women.

scholarly journals Cultural Assimilation: Two Ibsenian Women in Traditional Chinese Yue Opera

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 275
Author(s):  
Terry Siu-Han Yip
Keyword(s):  
Women Characters ◽  
Married Women ◽  
Cultural Assimilation ◽  
Chinese Theatre ◽  
The Past ◽  
Hedda Gabler ◽  
Peking Opera ◽  
Close Study ◽  
Distinct Character ◽  
Made In

Chinese interest in Henrik Ibsen’s plays has flourished for more than a century and many of his plays have been performed on or adapted for the Chinese stage since the early twentieth century. However, attempts to adapt his plays for the traditional Chinese theatre were only made in the past decade with Peer Gynt adapted into Peking opera in 2006, The Lady from the Sea and Hedda Gabler into Yue opera in 2006 and 2010. A close study of the re presentation of two Ibsenian women characters, namely, Ellida Wangel and Hedda Gabler on the Chinese traditional Yue operatic stage during Ibsen’s centenary in 2006 reveals the Chinese cultural assimilation of the two Norwegian women with their distinct character and outlook of life to suit the traditional Chinese notion of femininity and morality, as well as the conventionality of the Yue theatre with its unique theatrical and aesthetic considerations. What is more important is the Chinese desire to invite the audience, especially the young audience, to reconsider what constitutes happiness and integrity for married women in the Chinese context with an emphasis on moral responsibility.

Female Symbols of Resistance in Chinese Wartime Spoken Drama

Modern China ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chang-Tai Hung
Keyword(s):  
Spoken Drama

Dramatizing Chinese Intellectuals of the Republican Era in Face for Mr. Chiang Kai-shek: Encoding Nostalgia in a Comedy of Ideas

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-294
Author(s):  
Yuan Li ◽  
Tim Beaumont
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Assistant Professor ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Liberal Nationalism ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Republican Era ◽  
Spoken Drama ◽  
Experimental Theatre ◽  
Chinese Intellectuals ◽  
China Today

Face for Mr. Chiang Kai-shek, one of the most influential Chinese plays to have garnered attention in recent years, serves as a reminder of the importance of campus theatre in the formation and development of modern Chinese spoken drama from the early twentieth century onwards. As an old-fashioned high comedy that features witty dialogues and conveys philosophical and political ideas, it stands in opposition to such other forms of theatre in China today as the extravagant, propagandistic ‘main melody’ plays, as well as the experimental theatre of images. This article argues that the play’s focus on Chinese intellectuals of the Republican era and their ideas encodes nostalgia both in its dramatic content and theatrical form: the former encodes nostalgia for the Republican era through a nuanced representation of Chinese intellectuals of that period, while the latter encodes nostalgia for orthodox spoken drama (huaju) in the form of a comedy of ideas. Yuan Li (first author) is Professor of English in the Faculty of English Language and Culture, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. She has published extensively on contemporary Chinese and Anglo-Irish drama, theatre, and cinema. Tim Beaumont (corresponding author) is Assistant Professor at the School of Foreign Languages at Shenzhen University. His research is primarily philosophical, and it is currently focused on the relationship between nineteenth-century liberal nationalism and contemporary multiculturalism.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document