Organizer and Chair: Dietrich Tschanz, Princeton University
Discussant: Rulan Chao Pian, Harvard University
If the history of 20th-century Western drama can be seen as a series of attempts to recover its lost origins, the history of traditional Chinese music-drama (xiqu) has to be seen as a series of attempts to "reform" it and to align it closer with the ideological and aesthetic needs and ideals of the present. Music-drama reform addresses a problem common to all modernizing societies: How are art forms which grew out of pre-industrial societies and modes of production integrated into a modernizing society? The main emphasis of the reform efforts in China was on the Peking Opera which in the course of the century was elevated to a national art form and became representative of "Chinese drama." This panel seeks to illuminate the motivations, ideological underpinnings, processes, and consequences of these reform efforts. It covers the main reform movements on the mainland since the beginning of this century (early Republican period; 1950s; 1980s through 1990s) and includes a discussion of Chinese opera reform in the Chinese overseas community of Singapore. The panel as a whole addresses questions like, What are the connotations and implications of the Chinese terms for reform (gailiang, gaige, gexin, xiandaihua, gengxin, etc.)? From whom did the various reform plans at different times come? Who supported and who opposed them? What was the role of performers, artists, theater businesses, scholars, and politicians/ideologues in these reform efforts? Which parts of the various music-drama traditions were subject to reform? Which ones were left out and why? How has the actual and/or imaginary "West" influenced these reforms? How does the music-drama of the beginning of the century compare to the one at the end of the century? How have these reform efforts and their products shaped the Western as well as the Chinese understanding and image of "Chinese drama"? The papers will show that Chinese music-drama, far from being a monolithic entity, has undergone many changes during this century and that the various reform efforts have shaped these changes in a profound way.
The "New Drama" Before the New Drama: Chinese Drama Reform Before the May Fourth Movement
Dietrich Tschanz, Princeton University
The years between 1913 and 1915 mark a defining moment in the development of modern Chinese drama. It was during those years that the actor Mei Lanfang and the theater aficionado Qi Rushan began to define traditional Chinese music drama as we know it today and that experiments with Western forms of spoken drama showed the limits to which this alien form could be adapted to Chinese conditions without compromising the form itself. Discussions about the "New Drama" (xin ju)—a term which referred to the reformed traditional music-drama as well as the new forms of spoken drama—abounded in the periodical press of the time. In my paper, I will review these discussions based on my reading of select Shanghai theater journals published during this period. This approach is a departure from previous research on this period which relied heavily on May Fourth accounts of the "pre-history" of Modern Chinese Drama as well as on a memoir literature which was filtered through the May Fourth perspective. By going back to the sources, I will be able to show that pre-May Fourth discussions of Chinese drama were conducted on a sophisticated level and produced a body of critical texts that reveal the complexity of the cultural changes that took place during the period under discussion.
On the Reform of Xiqu (Traditional Chinese Theater) in the 1950s
Mei Sun, National University of Singapore
Xiqu (literally, "theater of song"), which evolved in the traditional Chinese society for about eight hundred years, has experienced its transformation during the process of China’s modernization in this century. Especially after the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began a movement to reform xiqu—the main form of popular entertainment in the 1950s—for ideological, political, economic and artistic reasons. The CCP carried out the movement in three ways: namely, revision of traditional plays in accordance with the contemporary Chinese Communist ideology; retraining artists of xiqu, especially those leading performers, ideologically; changing the ownership of most private companies into collectively-owned troupes substantially financed by the government, or into state-owned institutions fully financed by the government. This movement has been regarded as "one of the great achievements of the literature and arts in the PRC" by scholars in China. This paper attempts to examine the implication of the movement from a new perspective, which is different from the observations that represent the official view. I will show that following the CCP’s directives, a significant number of "new" or "revolutionary" intellectuals and artists, who were the backbone of the left-wing literature and arts world led by the CCP, and who had worked on artistic forms imported from the West such as spoken drama (huaju), participated in and directed the movement. Thus, xiqu, the indigenous Chinese theater, was unavoidably affected by imported theories like Socialist Realism. Further, this paper analyzes the paradoxical and profound influences the movement has exerted on contemporary xiqu.
Chinese Street Opera and the Concept of Culture in Singapore
Tong Soon Lee, University of Durham
Chinese street opera refers to the performance of Chinese opera on make-shift stages in car-parks and open fields. This performance tradition is historically associated only with professional opera troupes, in contrast to the amateur opera groups that perform mainly in indoor settings. Professional troupes are profit-oriented, itinerant groups of performers and musicians who perform twice a day, mainly in religious contexts, while amateur opera groups are non-profit organizations that consist of opera enthusiasts who practice opera on a part-time, leisurely basis.
During the 1960s, there was a decrease in the number of professional opera troupes and a rise in popularity of amateur groups in Singapore. In the 1970s, amateur groups began to stage Chinese street opera in national, state-sponsored events, as part of a larger discourse on preserving local heritage. In Singapore today, amateur opera groups are praised for their high performance standards and have come to represent the Chinese street opera tradition. In contrast, professional opera troupes are rendered invisible in the national discourse on arts and culture, as they routinely perform within the private religious arena.
My paper explores the following questions: (1) why is Chinese street opera conspicuously celebrated in Singapore today?; and (2) why have amateur opera groups, rather than professional troupes, come to represent this performance tradition? I argue that the preference for amateur opera groups and the resulting neglect of professional opera troupes in contemporary discourses on Chinese opera in Singapore is an effect of larger social changes in Singapore after its independence in 1965.
Contemporary "Reform" at the Shanghai Jingju Company
Elizabeth Wichmann-Walczak, University of Hawaii, Manoa
Since the early 1980s, Jingju in China has been facing serious and growing problems, including: oversized troupes and companies, shrinking and aging audiences, diminishing state support, and competition from television, film, and popular, often Western-inspired entertainment. Most Jingju companies have only begun to grapple with these problems in the last two or three years. However, as early as 1983 the Shanghai Jingju Company began a process of self-initiated reform, inspired at least in part by the legacy of Haipai, the daringly-innovative Shanghai-style Jingju of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Now in the late 1990s, the Shanghai Company is one of the few Jingju companies in the country to have successfully maintained traditional audiences while creating new ones, and to be approaching complete economic independence from the state.
In this paper I will first briefly examine the major economic and organizational reforms undertaken by the Shanghai Jingju Company. I will then concentrate on describing and analyzing the Company’s educational and artistic innovations, focusing on their unique system of identifying particular audiences and creating each new play to specifically appeal to one of them. My own two decades of experience in Jingju performance, first as an actor and then as a director, have led me to highly value Jingju as living rather than museum-piece art-form. In my opinion, Jingju is once again living and growing in Shanghai, though purists and/or traditionalists may have a very different view.