1. The Period of Civilized Theatre
Drama is a Western form of theatre, introduced to China by Western expatriates in Shanghai at the end of the 19th century.
The Chunliu Society, which was organized by the Chinese students Li Shutong and Ouyang Yuqian, is regarded as the earliest drama group. The form of Western drama they performed, which was different from traditional opera and mainly adapted to the needs of modern civilization, was called "civilized new drama" or "civilized drama." The Evolution Society, which was initiated by Ren Tianzhi in 1910 and participated by Wang Zhongxian, Ouyang Yuqian, and Chen Dabei, was China's first professional new drama group, and under the banner of "Knowing the Heavenly School of New Drama," it created an early mode of creation and performance for modern drama in China They created an early model of modern Chinese drama creation and performance under the banner of "Zhitianist New Drama", which emphasized the role of publicity on the spot and the improvisation of the actors (adopting the "curtain system", i.e., not using a script, but only an outline of the performance). This kind of "square theater" with the characteristics of "street theater" declined with the failure of the Xinhai Revolution, and in 1914, there was a modern drama centered on the modern metropolis of Shanghai, featuring professionalism and commercialization, and among them, the family drama represented by "The Wicked Family", directed by Zheng Zhengqiu, was popular for a while, and created the highest box-office record of the civilized new theater. It was also due to the commercialization tendency of the civilized new plays, too accommodating to the appreciation interests of the common people, as well as the artistic roughness and degeneration of the actors that they finally lost their audience.
2. The Period of Love of American Plays
After the beginning of the New Culture Movement in 1915, and especially after the beginning of the Literary Revolution in 1917, the writers and theorists of the new literature criticized the traditional plays more fiercely, and advocated the new western plays. 1920, the former famous civilized play actor Wang Zhongxian performed the famous play of George Bernard Shaw's "The Career of Mrs. Warren" in the fall of 1921, and after the accidental failure of the play, the play was performed in the fall of 1921. After the accidental failure, in 1921, the famous civilized actor Wang Zhongxian hosted the performance of George Bernard Shaw's famous play "Mrs. Warren's Profession" in Shanghai, after the accidental failure, with Shen Yanbing, Chen Dabei, Ouyang Yuqian, Xiong Fosi, etc. initiated the establishment of the first drama group in the history of modern literature "People's Drama Society", and at the same time published the first modern literary history of the first special drama publication "Drama" monthly magazine. In order to avoid repeating the mistakes of the professionalization and commercialization of the civilized new plays, they strongly advocated the non-business nature of Amateur Drama (Amateur, meaning "amateur", "non-professional"). It was against this background that a climax was formed in the amateur theater activities of students represented by the Nankai School in Tianjin and the Tsinghua School in Beijing. 3. The period of small theater movement
The small theater movement originated in the late 19th century in France, "free theater" art experimental activities, and later popular in Europe, America and Japan, is the realism and naturalism drama instead of the classicism and Romanticism drama, so as to occupy the dominant position in the theater world of the theatrical innovation movement. The small theater movement in China conducted artistic experiments in the form of Amity plays and established a drama system different from the civilized new plays, the core of which was to replace the "star system" with the "director system". The emphasis on playwriting in the Little Theater Movement nurtured famous playwrights such as Tian Han and Ding Xilin. Hu Shih's "Lifelong Matters", which imitated Ibsen's "Nala", was the earliest play written for modern drama. Guo Moruo and Tian Han of the Creative Society were the most influential playwrights at that time who were known for their "poets writing plays". Unlike the modern dramas of the time, which were mostly tragedies and multi-act plays, Dinkin created one-act comedies that were very mature in art. The small theater movement conducted various artistic experiments in the form of Amity plays, and established a system of drama different from that of civilized new plays, the core of which was to replace the "star system" with the "director system".
4. The period of the left-wing theater movement
The failure of the Revolution in 1927 stimulated the proletarian literary movement in 1928, and in the fall of 1929, the Shanghai Art Theatre Society was founded, which put forward the slogan of "Proletarian Theatre" (or "Emerging Theatre" or "Proletarian Theatre"), and in August, 1930, the Shanghai Theatre Troupe Federation was established in conjunction with the Xinyou and Nanguo Theatre Societies, which was the first of its kind in Shanghai. In August 1930, they established the Shanghai Federation of Theatre Troupes, which was later changed to the Chinese League of Left-Wing Theatre Troupes and the Chinese League of Left-Wing Playwrights, and became an important force in the most famous "Left League" (the Chinese League of Left-Wing Playwrights) in the 1930s, and the left-wing theater movement they initiated also became an important part of the most powerful left-wing literature and art movement in the 1930s. The left-wing drama movement was characterized by advocating the "popularization of drama" and developed in the direction of "square drama" in various fields, including workers' drama troupes (Blue Coat Troupe) in the factories, "peasants' drama" experimented by Xiong Fosi in the rural areas in the form of "open-air theatre", "Eight-one Drama Troupe" established by the Red Army under the leadership of the **** Prolific Party, and the "National Defense Drama" advocated in the wake of the "September 18th Incident" in 1931, and "National Defense Drama". After the September 18th Incident in 1931, "national defense drama" was also advocated. The most accomplished playwrights of this period were Tian Han and Hong Shen, the authors of "The Song of Returning to Spring" and "The Rural Trilogy" (Wukuiqiao, Fragrant Rice, and Qinglongtan).
5. Theatre Drama Period
Theatre drama (i.e., "big theatre" performances) is characterized by professionalism and business, and is the symbol of Chinese drama from amateurism to professionalism, and is also the symbol of the maturity of Chinese drama from the infantile period. There are two necessary conditions: one is that it must be a kind of art, and the other is that it must have box office appeal. The key to success lies in the creation of scripts. People realized this from 1929, but it was really realized after Cao Yu's debut play Thunderstorm came out in 1934, which is the special contribution of Thunderstorm to modern drama: it has achieved a high degree of unity between literature and stage, artistry and appreciation. Important writers of theater drama include Xia Yan and Li Jianwu, in addition to Cao Yu.
6. The Period of Plaza Theater
After the outbreak of the war in 1937, Chinese drama once again tilted towards "Plaza Theater", and three climaxes occurred.
First, at the beginning of the war, the organization of rescue drama team (anti-enemy drama team) went to various places to become the main form of theatrical performances at that time, and the main forms of its performances were street drama, square drama, live newspaper drama, teahouse drama, parade drama, harmonic drama and other styles, of which, known as "a good whip" "put down your whip", "three rivers good", "the last plan" is the most famous.
The second is the middle of the war, Yan'an as the center of the enemy base (i.e., the "liberated areas"), to rice-planting opera and national new opera in the form of square theater is most active, of which the representative of the rice-planting opera is "brother and sister open field", "husband and wife literacy", etc., the representative of the national new opera is "White Hairy Maiden" as well as the "Chibi River", "Liu Hulan" and so on.
Thirdly, during the Liberation War, with the upsurge of the nationwide student movement against civil war and starvation, the plaza drama with strong politics became the main form of theater at that time. During this period, the works created by professional playwrights, Chen Baichuan's The Promotion of Officials, Wu Zuguang's Ghost Hunting Legend, Song Zhi's Group of Monkeys, and Qu Baiyin's The South Train, all had the characteristics of plaza dramas, and they were also frequently performed by student troupes.
7. Re-emergence of Theater Drama
While the Plaza Drama continued to reach a climax, the Theater Drama continued to flourish in large and medium-sized cities in the rear (as well as in the fallen areas), which was mainly manifested in three aspects: Firstly, the prosperity of the creation of historical dramas, which was mainly represented by the historical dramas about the warring states of Guo Moruo, the historical dramas about the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Yang Hansheng and the historical dramas about the Southern Ming Dynasty of Aying, etc. Secondly, the creation of intellectual themes, which were mainly represented by the dramas about the intellectuals. The second is the prosperity of the creation of intellectual themes, mainly represented by Xia Yan's Fascist Bacteria and Fangcao at the End of the World, as well as Song Zhi's The Motherland Calls, Chen Baichuan's The Yearning and Cold Picture, Yuan Jun's The Ten Thousand Teachers' Table, Yu Ling's The Long Night Journey, Wu Zuguang's Returning Home from the Wind and Snow and Tian Han's The Lillian's Journey, etc. The third is the prosperity of the creation of satirical works. Thirdly, there was a boom in satirical works, mainly represented by Chen Baichuan's The Wedding March and The Picture of Promotion, as well as Lao She's The Remnant Fog, Ding Xilin's Three Dollars of National Coin, Myofeng Mountain, Yuan Jun's Tales of a Small Town, Tales of a Border Town, and Tales of a Mountain Town, and so on. In addition, the "civic" drama creation and performance represented by "Begonia" in the fallen area also showed a monstrous prosperity, which formed a sharp polarization with the "peasantization" of the later liberated area drama.
Third, Cao Yu's drama creation
Thunderstorm extensively absorbed the advantages of Western drama, and was obviously influenced by Ibsen's "social tragedy", Shakespeare's "tragedy of character", and the "tragedy of destiny" of Ancient Greek drama, etc., and combined them organically, successfully expressing the various characters in the bourgeois families in the 1920s, which had a strong feudal coloring in China. It successfully expressed the lives, thoughts and personalities of various characters in a bourgeois family with strong feudalism in China in the 1920s, and became the first real tragedy in modern China, thus making drama, an exotic art form, completely Chinese and becoming a unique art style in China's new literature.
The influence of the "social tragedy" of Ibsen's plays is mainly manifested in the molding of Zhou Puyuan's image and the thematic ideas of his works.
Zhou Puyuan is the main character of <
Zhou Puyuan is even more of an authoritarian and cold-hearted feudal parent; at home, his word is law, and he is willing to sacrifice anyone's happiness in order to carry out his will. His relationship with Artemisia is ostensibly that of husband and wife, but in reality it is entirely that of master and servant, and all he needs Artemisia to do is to set an "example of obedience" for the children. In the first act, when he forced Artemisia to drink the medicine, Artemisia refused his request, and he first asked his youngest son Zhou Chong to carry the medicine to persuade her to do so. Looking at Zhou Chong's tearful eyes, Artemisia had to settle for the second best and asked to leave it for the evening. But he still refused to give in, and ordered his eldest son Zhou Ping to persuade him, and he had to kneel down and persuade him until Artemisia admitted defeat. In his eyes, there is no Artemisia's independent personality and minimum dignity, and his concern is not for his wife's health, but only for his own will.
Zhou Puyuan's relationship with his ex-wife, Shiping, more fully exposed his hypocritical nature, when he was young, he seduced Shiping, when he thought that Shiping had thrown himself into the river, in order to comfort his conscience, to commemorate the only true love of his life, not only will his own son's name "Zhou Ping", retained Shiping gave birth to the room appearance of Zhou Ping, and even like to close the windows of the habit, and has been Shiping as "formally married to Zhou". He not only named his son "Zhou Ping", but also kept the room as it was when she was born and even liked to close the windows, and always treated Shui Ping as if she had officially married into the Zhou family and wanted to build a tomb for her. However, when the woman he longed for appeared in front of him as the maid's mother, she immediately turned her back on him.
But Cao Yu did not take Zhou Puyuan as a class model, but as a living human being. His coldness to Artemisia was because he could never get her love; his conflict with Lu Dahai was a reflection of the increasingly fierce labor-management conflicts in the society at that time; and his turning his back on Shiping was because he did not dare to face up to the reality that his beloved girl had married again and had a child; finally, when Shiping appeared in the living room of Zhou's house again, he ordered Zhou to come to identify herself with her birth mother in a penitent mood. Although at the beginning of his creation, the author "did not obviously realize that I wanted to correct, satirize or attack something", but "at the end of the writing, it was as if there was a kind of surging stream of emotion pushing me, I was giving vent to my suppressed indignation, slandering the Chinese family and society" (Cao Yu: Thunderstorm - Preface, Cao Yu's Collected Writings, Volume 1, China Drama Publishing House, 1988). And it is Ibsen's view of drama to feel life from the human point of view and to summarize it artistically.
The influence of Shakespeare's "Tragedy of Character" is mainly manifested in the portrayal of Artemisia.
Artemisia "is an old-fashioned woman with a little new education, with her weakness, her wisdom, her love of poetry and literature, but also an uncontrollable passion and strength stirring in her heart." Cao Yu wrote in the "Stage Cue" of the play, "There is an irrepressible 'brute force' in her character, which enables her to make sudden and reckless decisions. She loves people like a fire; she hates people like a fire that burns them up." She was Zhou Puyuan's second wife, and if you count Serving Ping, she was actually Zhou's third wife.
Artemisia came to Zhou's family for 18 years, and not only did she not receive equal love from her husband, but she was mentally destroyed for a long time. She knew of her husband's youthful antics, knew that Zhou Ping was his "illegitimate son" with the maid's daughter, and watched as he kept a room in honor of his son's birth mother. Her husband, on the other hand, sees her only as a role model for his sons. This oppressive family environment and unequal treatment caused her to rebel strongly. With a yearning for love and freedom, and with a vengeance against the Zhou family, she frantically pesters the eldest young master, Zhou Ping. And when she found out that Zhou Ping was fond of the old and wanted to get rid of her to pursue Four Phoenix instead, she even went so far as to chase her to Lu's house, and at the critical moment when Lu Dahai was about to find out about Zhou Ping, she closed the window and cut off Zhou Ping's backward path, exposing him to Lu Dahai, wanting to use Lu Dahai's hand to achieve her own purpose. In the end, it finally led to the death of Sifeng by electrocution, and Zhou Ping shot herself.
The success of Artemisia's image lies mainly in the author's profound expression of her contradictory and complex "thunderstorm" character. On the surface, she is submissive to Zhou Parkyuan, but in her heart, she is full of hatred and resistance. Her pursuit of Zhou Ping, at the risk of falling into the pathetic situation of "a mother who is not a lowly mother and a mistress who is not a mistress", is not so much an outburst of love as a catharsis of hatred. Artemisia is a character that the author considers "worthy of praise", so in his creation, the author focuses on describing the "struggle of a trapped beast" that she made because of the "suffocation of the environment", as well as "the most cruel love and the most intolerable hatred" (Cao Yu: "Thunderstorm: Preface") that intertwined with her life in this process.
The influence of the "tragedy of destiny" in ancient Greek drama is mainly manifested in the portrayal of Shui Ping.
Shui Ping, the daughter of Mei Ma, a maid in the Zhou Mansion in Wuxi, was seduced by Zhou Puyuan, the youngest member of the Zhou family, and gave birth to two sons, Zhou Ping and Lu Dahai. 30 years ago on New Year's Eve, only three days after she gave birth to her second son, Zhou Puyuan drove Shui Ping away in order to marry a lady from a rich family. That night, Shui Ping jumped into the river with her newborn son, and people thought she was dead, but she was rescued and married twice more, and had a daughter, who is now Lu Sifeng.
This strong woman, who was humiliated and persecuted, has been trying to get rid of her destiny. Because her own mother was a servant, she herself was so miserable, being toyed with and abandoned, so she has not allowed her daughter to make the same mistake as herself, not realizing that her husband, Lu Gui, sent her daughter into the public house as an envoy again. In order to get her daughter back, she didn't expect to step into the Zhou family's door again. Fate was even more cruel when her daughter was similarly involved with the young master of the public house, who was Zhou Ping, Si Feng's half-brother. Since the author never saw any way out for the "subordinates" like Shui Ping at that time, and all he saw and heard were people who could not change their situation no matter how hard they struggled, he could only use "tragedy of destiny" as an explanation for them.
Influenced by the Western classical view of theater, "Thunderstorm" is very elaborate in its structure, with the time of the four-act play concentrated in one day (from morning to night), the location also concentrated in the range of Zhou and Lu's families, and the eight main characters all inextricably linked by blood, so the author himself realized that it was a bit too much like a play, and that the techniques had been used to an extent that was too much. In addition, the author was influenced by Western Christian culture and the modern view of tragedy, and emphasized the aesthetic effect of distance while rendering compassionate religious thoughts and mysterious destiny. In the first edition, the "Prologue" and "Epilogue" of the same scene were specially designed to let people know the ending of the story as early as possible: ten years later, Zhou Gongguan has become a church hospital, where two crazy old women, Artemisia and Shiping, live, and Zhou Puyuan has also become a Christian. It allows people to reminisce about the emotions that had welled up in their hearts after they have understood the original reasons for the story.
"Sunrise" is set in Tianjin, a semi-feudal and semi-colonial city with Chinese characteristics in the 1930s. Taking the gorgeous living room of Chen Bailu, a socialite, and Baohexia, a third-class brothel in which Cuixi lived, as specific locations, the play demonstrates the completely different living conditions of the two social classes of the "haves and have-nots", and realizes the revelation of the society of the "loss is not enough to serve the haves and have-nots". The play is in four acts: dawn, dusk, midnight and early morning. The work mainly depicts three types of characters: First, the young students who are affected by the May Fourth New Culture and undergo different changes in society, such as Chen Bailu, who has degenerated into a socialite, and Fang Dasheng, who still aspires to the light; second, the representatives and appendages of the "have more than enough", such as Pan Yueting, a banker; Li Shiqing, an assistant manager of the Dafeng Bank; Gu Bajia, a rich widow; Hu Sih, the head of the Noodles; Hei San, the hitman; Zhang Georges, the foreign slave; Wang Fusheng, the tea room of the big hotel; and Jin Baji, the bully, who doesn't appear; and third, the bully Jin Baji, who doesn't appear. The third is the "inadequate" at the bottom of the society, such as the prostitute Cui Xi, the small staff abandoned by the bank Huang Shen San, and the small things unfortunate enough to fall into the hands of the triads, and so on.
Cao Yu, during his studies at Tsinghua University, especially during his teaching period at the Hebei Women's Normal School, met many "Nara-type" new women, of whom Chen Bailu was one. Before entering the society, they were all beautiful and innocent "Zhujun", full of ideals for the future; after entering the society, they soon became cynical "Bai Lu". With their intelligence and beauty, they find their own place in the entertainment industry, and temporarily stand their ground in the modern metropolis without repeating Zijun's mistakes, but they are faced with a new problem that neither Nala nor Zijun has ever encountered: how to resist the temptation and corrosion of money. She soon falls into the arms of the banker Pan Yueting, completing the change from "insufficient" to "surplus". The appearance of Fang Dasheng evokes Chen Bai Lu's beautiful memories of the past, but the past is only a little residue of memories, she knows clearly that there is no going back, she is only a canary in the birdcage kept by Pan Yueting, even if there is Fang Dasheng's rescue, even if the door of the birdcage can be opened, she has lost the ability to survive on her own, and will not be able to forage for food on her own. Chen Bai Lu is an ideal in the author's mind, and also the author's mourning for this ideal, therefore, even though she has been completely rusted, but in the author's mind, she is still a compassionate woman, in order to protect the "little thing" that is being bought and sold at will, and even at the expense of fighting against Jin Ba.
In the work, Pan Yueting, Li Shiqing, and Huang Shengsan constitute a chain of three characters that both contrast and complement each other, and well expresses the opposition and change of "those who have more" and "those who have less". Pan Yueting and Huang Shengsan can be regarded as the representatives of the "surplus" and "deficit", while Li Shiqing can be regarded as a typical person who changes from the "deficit" to the "surplus". Therefore, the "conflict between Pan and Li" and the "conflict between Li and Huang" in the work are the key moments that the author consciously "focuses" on, and the main purpose is to let people see the "cruelty" of the "way of man", which is "not enough to serve the surplus".
Li Shiqing is an extremely selfish and devious person, while Huang Shensan is a very neurotic and timid person. Through the conflict between Li and Huang, we can clearly see the motivation for Li Shiqing's change from a "deficient person" to a "surplus person". Huang's current situation is Li Shiqing's past, but also may be Li Shiqing's other future, if he is not like the present heartless and unscrupulous to climb up the ladder, it is entirely possible that he may fall into or fall back into Huang's situation. On the other hand, if the yellow province three also like Li Shiqing has the heart of the trick has the wrist also has the courage, he may also become Li Shiqing second. And if Li Shiqing has the money and power of Pan Yueting, he will be more greedy and lustful than Pan Yueting. Now Li Shiqing is just like the "many years of daughter-in-law" to become a mother-in-law, in the treatment of the daughter-in-law than when the mother-in-law even more cruel. Li Shiqing is very important to his current position of "Xiangli", he knows that he climbed up the hard and humiliating, he saw the current Huang Shengsan is like seeing his own past, he from the bottom of his heart to look down on like Huang Shengsan such a cowardly and losers.
Like Thunderstorm, Sunrise has been criticized severely. Such as the authenticity of the work, the problem of the comedy factor, the arrangement of the third act (Bao and the next place) is reasonable, and "raids the 'phenomenon' and forgets the 'reality' that should be raided", "did not point the brush directly to the root of all the darkness and evil of imperialism," and so on, and finally the focus, centered on the change from the "Thunderstorm" to "Sunrise," is the progress of the author or a regression of the The key question. This is a question that can still be revisited. The opinion shared by most people is that Cao Yu's effort to "test a new path" was not only successful, but also of great importance and far-reaching significance. The same question arose after the publication of the author's third work, The Wilderness.
If "Thunderstorm" mainly reflects the author's understanding of the feudal family in China, and "Sunrise" mainly reflects the author's understanding of the modern urban society in China, "The Wilderness" mainly reflects the author's rational exploration of the spiritual endurance of human beings. The story of The Wilderness unfolds against the backdrop of a series of blood feuds: Qiu Hu's father, Qiu Rong, was buried alive by Jiao Yanwang, a bully and landlord who had been a company commander of a warlord; the land of the Qiu family was seized; the houses of the Qiu family were burned down; Qiu Hu's younger sister was sent to a brothel where she died tragically; Qiu Hu's fiancée, Jin Zi, was taken by Jiao Daxing, son of Jiao, who made her a housewife; and Qiu Hu was thrown into prison himself.
Cao Yu dared to put the background of "The Wilderness" in the countryside, which he was unfamiliar with, not to follow the trend of the times to show the class struggle in the countryside, but to take advantage of the legendary story of vengeance in the countryside, to dig out the rich and fragile inner world of a man under the strong attack of love and hate, and to express the primitive vitality of the human being, full of the sense of resistance, and the psychological changes of the avenger. Therefore, at the beginning of the work, Qiu Hu, who escaped from prison to take revenge, is put in an awkward situation where he can't take revenge and is unwilling to give up. Qiu Hu's chest burns with the flame of revenge, however, the culprit Jiao Yanwang, who caused his family's death, has already gone before him, and all that's left is the blind Jiao mother, the cowardly Jiao Daxing, and the still? /ca>