A Selection of Chinese Drama from the 20th Century

Author: Zou Hong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-06-01
Features: The history of modern drama itself is a grand play, with various styles of writers and works taking the stage. According to incomplete statistics, over ten thousand original and adapted dramatic works have been produced in a century. This is a considerable number, and even experts do not need—and certainly cannot—read through all of them. Therefore, a well-chosen selection is highly necessary. The 20th Century Chinese Drama Reader selects eight of the most representative plays, allowing students to gain a general understanding of Chinese drama without spending much time. Among these eight plays, there are two one-act plays and six multi-act plays. While the number is small, it largely reflects the development of Chinese drama from simplicity to complexity, from immaturity to maturity, as well as its unique ideological and artistic characteristics.
Before 1918, early drama was known as "New Drama" or "Civilization Drama." Civilization drama was a professional form of theater that relied on constantly producing new plays to attract audiences. However, the creative forces at the time were very limited, so simple and clear "scene outlines" were used instead of scripts. Scene outlines recorded the plot summary of a play, the entrances and exits of characters, and some key lines, but they were not true scripts. Civilization drama emphasized performance over creation, so few written scripts have been passed down.
The term "drama" was proposed by Tian Han in 1928 and first used by Hong Shen. Later, Tian Han admitted that while the term "drama" emphasized the importance of dialogue, it also risked leading the art into the pitfalls of moralizing and propaganda. In reality, the core of drama is action, and dialogue is merely one form of action. Sometimes, physical or psychological actions can be even more expressive. For example, in Cao Yu's Beijing People, the protagonist is undoubtedly Su Fang, but she has very few lines. Her gentle and resilient personality and deep inner suffering are mainly revealed through various physical and psychological actions in a natural way. Xia Yan's works also share this characteristic. Tian Han's concerns were justified. Since the birth of drama, moralizing and propaganda have always hindered its progress. Especially between 1949 and 1966, the combination of moralizing and power made the path of drama narrower and more difficult, to the point where it was completely reduced to a "tool" for political struggles during the Cultural Revolution.
During those seventeen years, although a large number of dramatic works were produced, only Tian Han's Guan Hanqing and Teahouse are widely remembered. Drama creation saw significant development in the 1920s. Amateur theatrical activities, led by students and employees in major and medium-sized cities across the country, greatly stimulated the creation of one-act plays, especially comedies, including such well-repeated masterpieces as Oppression and Night of Catching a Tiger.
From the mid-1930s onwards, drama again became more professionalized, with regular performances in large theaters becoming the norm, and the audience numbers surged. Multi-act play creation flourished, and stage art made great strides. Finally, Chinese drama entered a mature and fruitful era.