The Influence of Indigenous Theatre on Modern Chinese Dramaturgy

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Table of Contents

Background
Indigenous Chinese Theatrical Traditions Relevant to the Play
Chuanqi Drama in Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land
Conclusion
Works Cited

Theater can be called a mirror of life. It is fascinating how events from the real world that are rarely pronounced can be so vividly surfaced in on the stage. It is the contemplation, satire, humor, and deep thought that make theater one of the most appreciated leisures across the globe. In Asian culture of the 20th century, there seemed to be an established trend for spoken plays. The modern Asian dramaturgy evolved under the banner of huaju (spoken drama), which was imbued with political, social and cultural perturbations in China, Japan, Taiwan and other Asian nations happening during that period (Wetmore 78). As traditions play a major part in the lives of many Asian peoples, so does theater, incorporating features of the previous epochs and mixing them into the entirely new concepts. To illustrate that phenomenon, the current study will focus on analyzing the dramaturgy and performance in the spoken play written by Lai Shengchuan in 1986 called Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land driving parallels with traditional chuanqi (marvel tales) genre in China.

Background

The play under analysis was originally written in 1986 by a Taiwanese playwright, Lai Shengchuan or Stan Lai. Lai is considered one of the greatest modern writer and director in Taiwan and China. Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land exists in several versions. The original was a true revelation and set a whole new level for Taiwanese theater, which, without the permission of the writer, was staged in China and had tremendous success to the point that it became classical. In 1991 it was reviewed and adapted for the screens. This version also seems to have found success and traveled around the world attracting positive reviews from critics and viewers.

The play includes two stories Secret Love and Peach Blossom Land. The first is a melodrama, and the second is a farcical play. According to the plot, the Theater director scheduled the two theatrical performances for rehearsing on the same time, which forced the two theater groups to use the stage simultaneously. Secret Love tells the story of the young couple in love who got separated and met during the perturbations of the communist revolution in China in 1946-1949. The play setting covers the last two years. Both lovers after ten years of separation have a family of their own, and the male character still longs for the romantic period of their relationships that are long gone.

Peach Blossom Land is a farcical adaptation of an old Chinese tale Peach Blossom Spring that narrates a story of a fisherman who found himself in an unrealistic dream world filled with blossoming peach trees. There he meets the two characters who look exactly like his wife, who is openly cheating on him and her new lover. Except in this world, they invite him to spend his life there, but he refuses, being unable to forget his reality. When he returns, he finds out that his wife married her lover, and in desperation, the fisherman returns to peach blossom land.

In the Secret Love and Peach Blossom Land play there is also a young Taiwanese woman that is not engaged in any of the two plays and looks for her lover the whole time. The two plays are miraculously juxtaposed though humor and mockery and represent that time’s problems of younger and older generations of people in China and Taiwan. Characters from both plays often make fun of the other party’s roles and plot but in the end unite in a single action, combining their plays and finishing their lines for each other, which indicates the similarities between the two plays and their characters.

Indigenous Chinese Theatrical Traditions Relevant to the Play

Different sources have various views on Chinese theatrical tradition. Some researchers are inclined to argue that Chinese traditional theater evolved from being an exclusive entertainment for the high-born and royal dynasty into a more miscellaneous and multifaceted people art, which enriched the variety of topics and genres (Fei 10). Others tend to believe that the art of drama rose from the common people engagement with shadowplay, puppetry, and farcical performances (Fei 10). Either way, in the period from early 17th to the beginning of the 20th century, Chinese theater developed more than 300 various regional variations (Liu 32).

Chuanqi formed in the sixteenth century as fantastic short stories or drama stories that featured biographical and often romantical narratives (Liu 33). The versions of plays for staging featured frequent change of sceneries, bright and elaborated costumes, plot themes originating from real life. The use of bright costumes was especially typical for traditional Chinese theater. The music was also changing fast but incorporated sentimental and melodic tunes matching the often-romantic setting.

The spoken plays are mostly the invention of the 20th century (Liu 23). However, in China, they were still influenced by Beijing opera. The theatrical stages also started to change from open to closed ones with traditional Chinese class division of the seats. Under the western influence, the on-stage scenery developed to become more complex. In the Lai’s play, however, the decorations featured a single background painting of a peach tree. This could indicate a tendency to resort to a simplistic design of the traditional Beijing theater. Lai also left an area of a background unpainted to show the disconnection between China and Taiwan in contrast to the original Peach Blossom Spring that was a representation of a paradise that the older generation sees in China (Kang 42).

Chuanqi Drama in Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land

The word ‘classical’ seems to represent items, values, and topics that never get old and remain timely even several hundred years from now. The classical meaning, which is imbued with Peach Blossom Land through the costumes, seems to contrast with the modern setting of the Secret Love. The traditional clothing of a fisherman seems to send the viewer back to the setting of the original Chinese story by Tao Qian (Kang 36). However, Lai made a farce out of it, making the fishermen a cuckolded husband.

The theme of dreaming and juxtaposition of reality and unreality that are emphasized in the two plays correlate with the famous work the peony pavilion written in 1598 by Tang Xianzu who is considered a ‘Chinese Shakespeare’ (34). In Tang Xianzu’s work, a young girl meets a young man in her dream and falls in love with him which ultimately leads her to premature death from lovesickness. In Peach Blossom Land the fisherman also ends up in a dream world where he meets the almost ideal version of reality. However, unlike the girl from the peony pavilion, he finds the power to come back from the dream, but it does not bring him consolation.

In Secret Love, the male character is often distracted from reality daydreaming about his first love fencing himself off his present wife and child. In the combination of the plays, the director seems to have experienced similar love story, which becomes his obsession (Jifang 44). He frequently criticizes the actors during the rehearsal for not being able to act the standards he apparently imagined for himself (Kang 36). Yun Zhifan tells Jiang Binliu that it is the people like him are to blame for the stagnation of the New China (Kang 35). Here she apparently underlines his lack of will to accept the truth and become living in a present day.

The in-between character, the Mysterious woman who seeks a man named Liu Ziji also seems to be obsessed with fantasy (Jing 1). It is through the key characters of both plays Lai mocks the lack of self-respect and inability to take the matters in control acknowledging that living in dreams cannot change the reality. That is where the juxtaposition of dream and reality, and romantic relationship, which were the most popular topics of chuanqi drama reveal themselves in the Stan Lai’s play.

The structure of the play by Lai also indicates a connection with chuanqi. It is separated into several scenes that despite presenting a narrative (or two narratives), constitute logically concluded parts. In the end, the two plays are combined and played on a single stage simultaneously. This again resembles the peony pavilion which was divided into individual scenes that were played independently from the main drama.

Chuanqi dramas often featured love stories that developed against the background of social and political turmoil. Thus, in Peach Blossom Fan written by Kong Shangren in 1699 the love of Hou Fangyu for courtesan Li Xiangjun is developing parallel to hostilities between the Ming Dynasty and the reformist movement. Similarly, the Secret Love events happen during the wartime. Even the name of the play by Shangren features peach blossom. Peachtree in Tao mythology is a symbol of eternal life. Choosing it as a name for one of his play Lai simultaneously referenced the Shangren’s play, the original ancient Chinese story, and the Tao beliefs, which indicates a deep connection to traditions of chuanqi genre that is full of mythology, love stories, and symbolism.

Similarly to the Peach Blossom Fan, the loyalty theme is one of the central in Peach Blossom Land. However, the loyalty of a woman to a man is depicted in reference to society in the first case, where as in the second one it represents only the personal drama. Despite that fact, Lai staged two plays at once adding topics of social and generational problems connected with war, separation of lovers and disconnection from the society.

Conclusion

All in all, there is no doubt that Lai’s work is highly modern and revolutionizing for Taiwanese drama. However, it also transpierced by the chuanqi dramatic traditions and topics typical of that genre, which may be a part of the reason why it has become so topical and influential in China. The topics, costumes of the actors in Peach Blossom Land, and themes vividly underline the connection to this traditional Chinese theatrical genre.

Works Cited

Fei, Faye Chunfang. Chinese Theories of Theater and Performance from Confucius to the Present. University of Michigan Press, 2002.

Jifang, Zan. Lasting Love for “Peach Blossom Land”. Beijing Review, 2007.

Jing, Zhang. Fantasy and Reality: Conflicts in Secret Love in “Peach Blossom Land.” China Academic Journal Publishing Journal, 2017.

Kang, Bindi. The Crisis of Identity in Taiwan in Stan Lai’s Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land. 2011.

Liu, Siyuan. Routledge Handbook of Asian Theatre. Routledge, 2016.

Wetmore Jr, Kevin J., Siyuan Liu, and Erin B. Mee. Modern Asian Theatre and Performance 1900-2000. A&C Black, 2014.

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