THEATER, HISTORY, RITUALISM, EXORCISM, SHAMANISM, SPIRITUALITY, CHINA, SHANG dynasty, China, 1766-1122 B.C., and ZHOU dynasty, China, 1122-221 B.C.

The rite of exorcism known as nuo lies at the very heart of the relationship between ritual and drama in Chinese theatre history. Nuo altar theatre exemplifies the relationship between ritual and drama as dynamic and interactive, with ritual engendering theatre and theatre enriching ritual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

THEATER, HISTORY, CULTURAL relations, AUTHENTICITY (Philosophy), and CHINA

This paper examines a significant pioneer in the history of Sino-Western cultural exchange, S. I. Hsiung, and how his play Lady Precious Stream represents a shift in discursive endeavors within culturally oppressive environments. It demonstrates how Hsiung's discourse was one of the first in China-West relations to eschew the historical and dialogic precedent that held back most of his contemporaries. His approach was at the forefront of his time--a "modern" and sophisticated overture in the realm of cultural relations. With textual and methodological changes, and little regard for authenticity, Hsiung's adaptation of an old Chinese play is tangled in contradiction, yet prescient in its logic. That his work is largely left out of the canonical history of Chinese drama is indicative of the way we should understand his work; that is, he has more to teach us about how Chinese drama was used within cultural exchange than he does about the drama itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

20TH century drama, THEATER, HISTORY, DRAMATIC structure, INDIGENOUS peoples, PERFORMING arts, SHANGHAI (China), and 20TH century

In the late 1950s and early 1960s in Shanghai, the remnant of wenmingxi (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 of tongsu 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 huaju staged 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 some huaju experts who praised its affinity to indigenous performance, thus triggering a debate over its efficacy as a localized alternative to huaju for the future of modern Chinese theatre. Using contemporary sources, this article examines tongsu 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. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

THEATER, HISTORY, FOOTBINDING, FOOTWEAR, FEMININITY, ACTORS, and CHINA

THEATER, HISTORY, NIGHT, LUST in literature, and TRANSCRIPTION

Post-midnight plays were bawdy, skitlike plays performed late at night, after the women and children have left. Traditionally characterized by lascivious content, they did not use playscript and were frowned upon by the Confucian literati and government. Many Chinese xiqu (opera) traditions may have performed post-midnight plays throughout China, but rarely have they been transcribed or even described. All Three Fear Their Wives is a rare transcription of a play of this genre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

THEATER, HISTORY, CHINESE drama, DRAG queens, FEMININITY in popular culture, FEMININITY in art, PERFORMING arts, GENDER, ACTING, and 20TH century

This article examines the history and development of the Chinese theater genre known as hauju or spoken drama and its relationship to Chinese gender performance. Hauju differs from other traditional forms of Chinese theater in that it began practicing gender-appropriate casting as early as the mid 1910s. In its first decade as a genre, from roughly 1907 to the late 1910s when it was called wenmingxi, male actors portrayed female characters as was common practice in Chinese theater at the time. The article examines Chinese theater's history of gender performance and discusses the impact that European ideas of sexuality had on Chinese theatrical representations of femininity.

THEATER, HISTORY, IMMORTALITY of the body in art, TWENTY-first century, and CHINA

This paper attempts to (1) clarify the definition of metadrama, and (2) discuss the use of metadramatic narrative strateties in two plays by the Guoguang Opera Company 國光劇團, Cleopatra and Her Fools 《難后和她的小丑們》 and Flowing Sleeves and Rouge 《水袖與月因月旨》. In traditional Chinese theatre, metadrama usually appears in a wide sense: philosophically, that life is a dream and all the world is a stage, and structurally, as a play-within-a-play. In recent years, we have witnessed a breakthrough in the employment of metatheatricality in traditional theatre in Taiwan: Cleopatra and Her Fools and Flowing Sleeves and Rouge, produced by the Guoguang Opera Company in 2012 and 2013, respectively, have demonstrated an uncommonly keen consciousness of theatricality. Cleopatra and Her Fools is adapted from Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra by modem playwright Wei-Jan Chi 紀蔚然 . His adaptation is about a contemporary Beijing opera company staging the play Antony and Cleopatra. With lines such as “history can be rewritten” and “we lost the original script,” Chi questions Shakespeare and himself and plays with structure and language. An-Chi Wang 王安祈's Flowing Sleeves and Rouge takes on an introversive approach. She retells the story of the famous Yang Guifei 楊貴妃, and the play explores the nature of drama, discussing acting and the immortality of art. The two works demonstrate the confidence to counter the mainstream notions (Western/modem) from the periphery (Eastern/ traditional). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

THEATER, HISTORY, HISTORIOGRAPHY of theater, IDEOLOGY, THEATER in propaganda, THEATER & state, and CULTURAL Revolution, China, 1966-1969

This is the new Communist drama, and the picture is frequently artless and sterile, without depth, without truth, and without reality. —Walter and Ruth Meserve, 1970 Peking opera now is a mixture of drama, music, dance, acrobatics, poetry, propaganda and revolutionary history, with indefatigable heroes (more adroit than James Bond, and with a purpose he never dreamed of) and fabulously wicked villains—the whole socking out a message of exemplary struggle and courage. —Lois Wheeler Snow, 1972 The study of Asian theatre as an academic field independent of English and Asian Studies arose in the West, particularly the United States, after World War II, in part as a result of the U.S. occupation of Japan and cold war–era funding policies aimed at spreading democracy in Asia. The notable exception was research on theatre in the People's Republic of China (PRC), which was restrained by the McCarthyist Red Scare, which greatly constricted China studies, and the PRC's self-imposed closure to the West, which made field and archival research virtually impossible. However, these conditions changed dramatically in the early and mid-1970s when the combined effect of China's midcourse correction during the Cultural Revolution (1966–76) and Nixon's 1972 trip to China prompted a small boom in the translation, publication, reporting, and research of Chinese plays and performance. At the same time, as the two epigraphs above indicate, this first group of writings on Chinese theatre was made largely problematic by a number of factors: the inherently ideological nature of Chinese theatre during the Cultural Revolution; the diverse ideological, academic, and theatrical background of the authors working on the subject during a similarly volatile era in the West; an overreliance on official Chinese publications (usually as the only source available); and restricted access to China for all but a small number of Westerners. Although insightful and well-researched writings certainly existed, much of this body of work reflects the ideological preoccupations of Euro-American intellectuals in the cold war era. The latter manifested themselves either through oversimplified condemnation of communist theatre as artless propaganda or through radical leftist eulogy of China's supposed success in combining theatre and ideology, making theatre serve the people, and promoting amateur performance to stimulate production. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]