Restaging Zhu Yingtai in Early Communist China

In 1953, Shanghai Film Studio produced a Shaoxing opera film version of The Butterfly Lovers as the first color film of the People’s Republic of China. Noted for its immense popularity in the Sinophone sphere throughout the 1950s, the film actually exemplifies a history of Shaoxing opera that is connected to urbanization and nationalism as well as women’s liberation and the cultural politics of early communist China. It is an early example of how Chinese opera and modern media technology contribute to transnational negotiations and imaginations of Chinese identities.

Revitalising the Liang-Zhu legend: Edward Lam Dance Theatre’s postdramatic Art School Musical (2014)1

Hong Kong Theatre director Edward Lam has established close association with an ensemble of Taiwanese actors, collaborating on almost every production since Madame Bovary is Me (Baofali furen men, 2006) and touring to Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mainland China. This article examines Lam’s unique working pattern through the analysis of Art School Musical (Successors to Liang and Zhu, Liang Zhu de jichengzhe men, 2014), the 54th production by the Edward Lam Dance Theatre (ELDT). Inspired by the famous Chinese legend The Butterfly Lovers (Liang Shanbo yu Zhu Yingtai), Lam created a postdramatic musical as a Bildungsroman in a format of classroom drama. The love story underwent a poetic transformation through the lyrics and music. The ELDT version of the Liang-Zhu legend carries Lam’s criticism of the stereotypes assigned to young people in patriarchal societies and allows him to elevate the love story into an allegory of one’s quest for the meaning of life.

Female Cross-Dressing in Chinese Literature Classics and their English Versions

Cross-dressing, as a cultural practice, suggests gender ambiguity and allows freedom of self expression. Yet, it may also serve to reaffirm ideological stereotypes and the binary distinctions between male and female, masculine and feminine, homosexual and heterosexual. To explore the nature and function of cross-dressing in Chinese and Western cultures, this paper analyzes the portrayals of cross-dressing heroines in two Chinese stories:《木蘭辭》 The Ballad of Mulan (500–600 A.D.), and 《梁山伯與祝英台》The Butterfly Lovers (850–880 A.D.). Distorted representations in the English translated texts are also explored.