The repertoire of the play is based on stories reflecting daily life in the countryside, with most of them revolting against feudal marriages and old rituals, and some of them ridiculing the landlord class. The performance is simple and sincere, with a strong flavor of life and a vivid and funny language, and the female roles are all played by men. The female roles are all played by men. The voice is only [reed tone], accompanied by an erhu (sometimes the player plays and sings by himself). At this time, there was neither a class society, nor a class master and professional artists, but purely farmers and small craftsmen in towns and villages who performed for their own amusement. Artists call this period for the "pair of theater" stage.
Daoguang years, began to appear semi-professional or professional beach spring artists, also began to appear female professional artists. A small number of artists into the city of Changzhou, Wuxi and other performances, due to busy performances, the need for additional manpower, artists began to apprentice, organization of the class, to the Guangxu years, and gradually formed the Chang gang, tin gang, Jiangyin gang and Yixing gang. The stage of "pair play" lasted nearly a hundred years, the more widely spread, some rural intellectuals also joined the team of beach spring, plus the competition between the classes, first of all, the repertoire is rich in content, the plot complexity of the repertoire appeared in addition to the three small, and there are the Lao Sheng, the Lao Dan, comical plays, such as three to five roles - "Borrowing yellow chaff", "Lu Yachen sells his wife," "The Story of Pearl Flowers" and so on. The Tale of the Pearl Flower" and so on. On the basis of the original single [reed tune], the [long three tunes], [traveling tune] and other tunes were derived. On the basis of absorbing folk tunes, it added [Purple Bamboo Tune], [Spring Tune] and so on. Due to the development of the repertoire of the "pair of plays", the richness of the tunes, coupled with the increase in the content, the complexity of the storyline, but also broke through the original form, so that the play has entered a new period - the same scene in the stage of the play "small The same scene". The same theater can be divided into two stages, "small same field" and "big same field", "small same field" is the product of the performance in the countryside, while "big same field" is the product of the city after entering the city. The "Small Tongzhang" is a product of the performance in the countryside, while the "Datongzhang" is a product of entering the city, which is an important turning point in the history of the development of Xizhou Opera. The "small common field" was around twenty years before and after the Xinhai Revolution. After the Xinhai Revolution, the relevant authorities of the National Government, as the beach spring "wind and customs" "slang obscene", also repeatedly ordered to ban. Beach spring artists were forced to walk the streets or to the field flow, most of the artists in the countryside in the backcountry, to send the art of singing, to support their families.