Spoken Drama and Its Doubles: Thunderstorm 2.0 by Wang Chong and Théâtre du Rêve Expérimental

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 155-163
Author(s):  
Tarryn Li-Min Chun
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Text ◽  
Gender Politics ◽  
Modern Drama ◽  
Live Feed ◽  
Folk Traditions ◽  
Modern Chinese ◽  
Spoken Drama ◽  
Chinese Classic

Thunderstorm 2.0 at the 2018 Under the Radar Festival introduced a modern Chinese classic to US audiences via radical adaptation and an assemblage of textual deconstruction, live-feed video, and Suzhou pingtan performance. It offered a timely interrogation of gender politics and deftly triangulated among tensions of live vs. mediated performance, folk traditions vs. modern drama, Chinese text vs. foreign context, and re-presenting a canonical play vs. flying “under the radar.”

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.

A Stage of Their Own: The Problematics of Women's Theater in Post-Mao China

1997 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-25
Author(s):  
Xiaomei Chen
Keyword(s):  
Political Agenda ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Street Theater ◽  
Modern Chinese ◽  
Patriarchal Society ◽  
Women’S Liberation ◽  
Spoken Drama ◽  
May Fourth ◽  
National Salvation ◽  
War Of Resistance

Hu shi's play of 1919, The Main Event of One's Life (Zhongshen dashi), introduced spoken drama (huaju) to the modern Chinese stage, in imitation of the plays in the Western Ibsenesque tradition. Ever since then, May Fourth male playwrights such as Guo Moruo, Ouyang Yuqian, Chen Dabei, and others, in forming a tradition countering that of the Confucian ruling ideology, have treated women's liberation and equality issues as important political and ideological strategies (Chen 1995, 137–55). Female playwrights such as Bai Wei also depicted loving mothers and courageous daughters waging a fierce struggle against the patriarchal society, symbolized either by domineering and lustful domestic fathers or by new nationalist fathers already corrupted by the emerging revolution. The tradition on the part of both male and female playwrights of exploring woman as a metaphor for national salvation and a given political agenda was most fully articulated in the street theater that grew up during the period of the War of Resistance to Japan.

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.

Software Aided Classic Chinese Poem Composition

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hong Lin
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Language ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Computing Technology ◽  
Modern Chinese ◽  
Poetry Writing ◽  
Chinese Classic

The forms of Chinese classic poetry have been developed through thousands years of history and are still current in today's poetry society. A re-classification of the rhyming words, however, is necessary for the classic poetry writing to be done in the new settings of modern Chinese language. In order to maintain the continuation of the poetry forms, computing technology can be used to help the readers as well as poetry writers to check the compliance of poems in accordance to the forms and compose poems without the effort to learn the old grouping of rhyming words. This work will help revive Chinese classic poetry in modern society and promote its writability.

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