UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE The Paradoxical Peking Opera: Performing Tradition, History, and Politics in 1949-1967 China A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Drama and Theatre by Fan Liao Committee in charge: University of California, San Diego Professor Janet L. Smarr, Chair Professor Paul G. Pickowicz, Co-Chair Professor Nancy A. Guy Professor Marianne McDonald Professor John S. Rouse University of California, Irvine Professor Stephen Barker 2012 The Dissertation of Fan Liao is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: Co-Chair Chair University of California, San Diego University of California, Irvine 2012 iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page……………………………………………………………………………iii Table of Contents……………………………………………………………....................iv Vita………………………………………………………………………………………...v Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………...vi Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter One………………………………………….......................................................29 Reform of Jingju Old Repertoire in the 1950s Chapter Two……………………………………………………………………………...81 Making History: The Creation of New Jingju Historical Plays Chapter Three…………………………………………………………………………...135 Inventing Traditions: The Creation of New Jingju Plays with Contemporary Themes Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...204 Appendix……………………………………………………………………………….211 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………229 iv VITA 2003 Bachelor of Arts, Huazhong Normal University (Wuhan, PRC) 2006 Master of Arts, The National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts (Beijing, PRC) 2007-2011 Teaching Assistant, Department of Theatre and Dance, University of California, San Diego 2012 Doctor of Philosophy, University of California, San Diego v ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The Paradoxical Peking Opera: Performing Tradition, History, and Politics in 1949-1967 China by Fan Liao Doctor of Philosophy in Drama and Theatre University of California, San Diego, 2012 University of California, Irvine, 2012 Professor Janet L. Smarr, Chair Professor Paul G. Pickowicz, Co-Chair This dissertation investigates three types of jingju plays known during 1949-1967 for their innovative or invented features, so as to explore the ramifications brought about by the theatre censorship, the confrontation of traditions and inventions, the dilemmas and challenges of both artists and reformers, and the paradoxical dynamics of the relationship between form and content. By analyzing a paradoxical jingju created by both reformers and artists—the paradox of making a modern opera reflecting contemporary history and preserving traditional performance features; the contradiction of acting conventions and realistic stage scenography; the confrontation of actors’ aesthetic methodologies and the directors’ considerations, it argues that, since 1919 it was the China-induced forces, rather than the colonial modernization of the pre-1949, that reshaped jingju, its history and its politics. vi Introduction Jingju: 1949-19671 Numerous reasons explain why the time period 1949-1967 played a significant role in jingju history. Besides the fact that this period was under the nascent Communist regime, which witnessed startling political turmoil and drastic social changes, the performance and creation of jingju took numerous twists and turns under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s changeable initiatives and various reforms. What is more, a brief survey of jingju plays performed now in contemporary mainland China, including those which feature either “classical” or reformed and invented traditions, are surprisingly and paradoxically from a repertoire created in 1949-1967. These still regularly performed new masterpieces include historical plays, such as Xie Yaohuan, Yezhu Lin (Wild Boar Forest), and Mu Guiying Guashuai (Mu Guiying Takes Command), and plays reflecting revolutionary or contemporary themes, such as Baimao Nü (The White-haired Girl), Zhiqu Weihushan (Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy), and Qixi Baihutuan (Raid on White Tiger Regiment), which were new plays invented in the 1950s and ‘60s to meet the CCP’s political demands and were significantly different from the traditional repertoire in both their ideological and artistic features. Even after the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), when the CCP strove to correct the mistakes it had made with regard to the Chinese intellectuals and cultural heritages and encouraged a theatrical freedom and prosperity, the plays created and performed were still practically under a three-fold general directive—to revive or revise the old 1 In this dissertation, all Chinese names and titles are romanized in pinyin, and translations of the Chinese materials are all mine unless noted otherwise. 1 2 repertoire, to create new historical plays, and to make plays reflecting contemporary life. A policy which had been brought up as “walking on two legs (liangtiaotui zoulu),” and then had shifted to “emphasis on three types of plays (sanbingju)” in the early 1960s, though abandoned during the Cultural Revolution, was apparently inherited and revived as a new means of play creation and performance in the post-Mao era, because almost all plays created and performed currently could be automatically filed into these three categories: traditional, historical, and contemporary. For instance, the performance titles listed in various jingju festivals in the post-1990 era were categorizable into these three types of play, which substantially suggests that the performance teams had already categorized their plays accordingly during the process of creation—to choose what kind of play to perform. Despite the fact that jingju has been long considered a classical and traditional art with highly conventionalized forms, plays reflecting contemporary life emerged as early as in the early twentieth century. Nevertheless, most of the plays created by the patriotic intellectuals and artists at the time lasted only briefly. The other “new” type of play—the historical plays, did not emerge until the early 1940s. Besides Mao’s favor on this new type of jingju, rare evidence showed that it was a most popular theatrical form since its inception and during the early phase of the nascent People’s Republic of China (PRC). Obviously, the time period 1949-1967 has played a significant role in creating these two new jingju categories, which involve not only finding new story materials but also formulating new performance rules that the professionals must obey, and eventually shaping jingju’s paradoxical survival in the present day. 3 It is easy to see that although jingju has not been separated from “its anti- imperialist and anti-traditionalist agenda”2 since the May Fourth Movement and was promoted to a position of “national drama” during both domestic and international political entanglements in the context of “colonial modernity,” it was mainly the early decades of the new totalitarian society which, with their theatre censorship along with the various reforms and innovations, drastically altered jingju from a highly successfully commercial and actor-centered art into a state-controlled, state-subsidized, and director- oriented genre. Obviously, this is not to say that jingju was unchained from its conventionalism. Rather, it means that the so-called aesthetic aspects of the genre are inextricably intertwined with thematic concerns, which are profoundly political as well as personal, and can be ultimately appreciated and culturally meaningful only if they play appropriately along with these political considerations. This dissertation, The Paradoxical Peking Opera: Performing Tradition, History, and Politics in 1949-1967 China, investigates several jingju plays known in 1949-1967 for their innovative or invented features, so as to explore the ramifications brought about by the theatre censorship, the confrontation of traditions and inventions, the dilemmas and challenges of both artists and reformers, and the paradoxical dynamics of the relationship between form and content. The dissertation consists of three chapters which are respectively devoted to a discussion of the three types of jingju plays performed during this time period: classical plays with revisions and reforms, newly written historical plays (xinbian lishixi), and new plays with contemporary themes (xiandaixi). 2 Xiaomei Chen. “A Stage in Search of a Tradition: The Dynamics of Form and Content in Post-Maoist Theatre,” Asian Theatre Journal. Vol. 18, No. 2 (Autumn, 2001), 200. Though Chen is talking about Chinese huaju (modern spoken drama) specifically in this paper, the idea can be applied to the modern Chinese theatre as well. 4 Though theatre censorship did not reach its heyday until the Cultural Revolution, it was indeed the CCP’s various reform policies towards jingju during the early phase of the nascent Communist China that foreshadowed an exclusive revolutionary theatre in 1966- 1976, and further, had a far-reaching influence on jingju’s development in the post- Cultural Revolution era and even in the twenty-first century. Jingju, compared with many other traditional theatrical genres, certainly is not an ancient form. The current scholarly consensus is that jingju did not coalesce until about 1840 and did not enter a period of full bloom until approximately 1917. Throughout its coalescence and evolution, jingju established a series of features that identify it as a distinctive theatrical genre. In