Organizer and Chair: Hongchu Fu, Smith College
Discussant: Stephen H. West, University of California, Berkeley
Drama is a dynamic form of art. It comes from life and it has a direct impact on life. This, however, should not be construed as an exact replica of reality, "a mirror up to nature," as Hamlet puts it. Rather, the relationship between drama and reality is complex and it demands careful deliberations.
The papers to be presented in this panel are to address this issue from various angles. Some will illustrate the circulation of certain cultural elements from folk stories to reality and then back to drama, showing the role theater played in cultural politics; some will examine the transformations certain Yuan zaju plays underwent from stage to page, reflecting the workings of their institutional contexts; and others will either discuss the relationship between commercial theater and the subject matter in Yuan zaju or reflect on some ideological considerations and politics involved in the process of adaptations of Yuan plays on modern stage.
The purpose of this panel is to show the interactions between drama and reality in the case of Yuan zaju, to explore various factors that shaped the performance of those plays as well as the dynamic role Chinese theater played in a given period, and hence to call for more attention to Chinese drama as a cultural entity rather than some mere texts.
Commercialization and Subject Matter in Yuan Drama
Qing Ping Wang, Stanford University
Yuan drama (zaju), as the first mature form of Chinese drama, had the dominant tendency of using historical and legendary subject matter. Derived from and dealing with historical sources, the Yuan plays, nevertheless, disregarded the "historicity" of their materials. Since the 1940s, scholars have proposed but have not thoroughly investigated reasons for this situation. In contrast with previous scholars' approaches from the standpoints of aesthetics and politics, this study focuses on the influence of commercialism upon Yuan drama's subject matter. By investigating the economic and social setting of the Yuan, and analyzing the nature and features of the Yuan theater and theatrical production, this study explains why the influence of commercialism in Yuan theater occurred, as well as how. It demonstrates that the commercialization of Yuan theater, which emerged and developed following the enormous development of commerce and rapid pace of urbanization, enabled Yuan drama to become a popular form of entertainment for profit. Its intrinsically commercial nature caused Yuan drama to orient itself towards the needs and expectations of its audience. This prompted its liberal use and relatively uninhibited alteration of the historical materials adapted for its dramatic themes. This phenomenon was one of the most distinctive characteristics of Yuan drama, and had a tremendous influence upon the subsequent development of the entire range of traditional Chinese drama.
From Stage to Page: Moments in the Textual Reproduction of Two Yuan Plays
Kimberly Besio, Colby College
Judging from the thirty texts extant in Yuan editions, the Yuan stage depicted the world as a violent and rather quixotic place. Two plays which illustrate this harsh vision of reality are "The Miser" (Kanqiannu mai yuanjia zhaizhu) and "The Mohelo Doll" (Zhang Ding zhi kan mohelo). In these plays disaster strikes a decent family seemingly out of the blue. Retribution, when finally achieved, also hinges to a large degree on random coincidence. Stark as these images of ruin and retribution were, they were also popular. Besides the Yuan editions, both plays were reproduced in multiple Ming editions including the collection which established the zaju canon, the Yuanqu xuan.
This paper will examine three moments in the textual reproduction of these two plays. As these plays were successively translated from stage to page they were shaped by their institutional contexts-the worlds of the Yuan commercial theater, the Ming court stage, and the late Ming literatus respectively. While the violent events in these plays are scarcely mediated in the Yuan context, they become the object of ritual/comic and literary/editorial intervention in the latter two. By situating each edition within its particular historical and institutional imperatives we can better understand the different textual strategies each employed, and thus how the ideological and social constructions of zaju drama might have changed over time.
Historicity and Contemporaneity: Adaptations of Yuan Plays in the 1990s
Wenwei Du, Vassar College
The paper first provides a descriptive account of the adaptations in the late 1990s of Yuan plays such as The Story of the Western Wing, The Lute, The Chalk Circle, The Orphan of Zhao, and The Injustice Done to Dou'er in the form of spoken, regional operatic and TV dramas. Then it focuses on various adaptations of The Story of the Western Wing to see how contemporary thoughts and politics have effected changes in the images of characters. The polemics behind these revivals have centered around the issues of historicity and contemporaneity, i.e., whether the revivals should be faithful to the original spirit or make ancient themes relevant to the present situation. The paper bases its analysis on scripts, performances, and audiences/ critics' responses to shed light on the vogue and tendencies in the present-day interpretations of old-time masterpieces.
The Cultural Fashioning of Filial Piety: A Reading of the Yuan Play "Little
Butcher Zhang (Xiao Zhangtu)"
Hongchu Fu, Smith College
This paper purports to show the circulation of a cultural concept-filial piety-in various cultural institutions. Putting the play "Little Butcher Zhang (Xiao Zhangtu)" in the social and cultural context of the Yuan dynasty, the paper tries to tease out its connections as well as its exchanges with a popular moral story contained in Twenty-four Exemplary Stories of Filial Piety (Ershisi xiao gushi) and a historical anecdote cited in the Legal Codes of the Yuan (Yuan dian zhang).
In particular, the paper attempts to pinpoint the process in which the cultural concept of filial piety fashioned itself in various ways and by various means, including the use of religion. Essentially a borrowing and an imitation of the story told in Ershisi xiao gushi, what was condemned in reality, however, came to be eulogized in theater. Thus, through this circulation of social energy, institutional exchanges and negotiations, one can observe the mechanism with which a cultural concept circulated, got publicized and hence survived; and on the other hand, the paper tries to demonstrate the role theater played in the cultural politics of the time.