Overview of the germination and development of modern Chinese drama
In the history of Chinese literature in the twentieth century, drama is one of the artistic disciplines that have made significant breakthroughs and achievements. Among the four major literary genres, poetry, prose, and novels have existed for a long time, while drama is an imported product. Drama, as a form of Western drama, was introduced to China by Western expatriates at the end of the 19th century: in 1866, the Shanghai Amateur Troupe of Westerners established the first formal theater, the Shanghai Lanxin Theater, which gave public performances several times a year. Later on, a small theater called "Tokyo Seat" appeared in Shanghai, which was designed for some Japanese new school drama troupes to perform in China. Chinese drama began with amateur performances by students of church schools, such as "The Scandalous History of Officialdom" in 1899 (St. John's College, Shanghai), "The Six Gentlemen" in 1900 (Nanyang Public School, Shanghai), and "Zhang Wenxiang Stabbing a Horse" in 1903 (Nanyang Public School, Shanghai). Later on, students from several schools formed an amateur theater group, the Wenyou Society, which went from the campus to perform in the community; in February 1907, the Chunliu Society was organized by Chinese students who stayed in Japan (the main members were Li Shutong, Zeng Xiaogu and Li Shutong). In February 1907, the Chunliu Society (whose main members were Li Shutong, Zeng Xiaogu, Lu Zhaoruo, and Ouyang Yuqian), organized by Chinese students staying in Japan, performed the third act of The Lady of the Camellias in Tokyo, and then the five-act play The Appeal of the Negroes to Heaven, a play based on the novel translated by Lin Shu, in the famous Tokyo theater, which aroused a sensation in the Tokyo theatre world. After the Xinhai Revolution, some members of the Chunliu Society returned to Shanghai and continued to promote the performances of "New Civilization Theatre" (the germ of modern drama) in China, gradually expanding from the coastal cities to some cities in the interior, and gradually having a nationwide influence. However, the "New Civilization Theatre" became more and more "professional" and "commercial", and gradually lost its audience due to the fact that it accommodated the feudal backwardness and vulgarity of the common people, and was artistically shoddy. It gradually lost its audience. The amateur dramas ("Aimei Drama") performed by students of the Nankai School in Tianjin (e.g., Zhang Pengchun wrote and directed "The New Village") and the Tsinghua School in Beijing (e.g., Hong Shen wrote and directed "The Tragedy of the Paupers") attracted the attention of society.
In the May Fourth period, the drama movement emerged again to meet the demands of the New Culture Movement. Beginning with the "Ibsen Special Issue" of the New Youth, a boom in the introduction of foreign theater theories, translations and adaptations of foreign theatrical creations was rapidly formed. According to incomplete statistics, from 1917 to 1924, 26 kinds of newspapers and magazines and 4 publishing houses*** published more than 170 translated plays, involving more than 70 playwrights from 17 countries, such as Shakespeare, Henrik Ibsen, George Bernard Shaw, Rabindranath Tagore, Oscar Wilde, Galderswasser, Strindberg, Metrincke, Chekhov, Antref, Gogol, Tolstoy, Schiller, Mogol, Tolstoy, Schiller, Molière, and so on. Various schools of thought in the history of Western theater, from realism and romanticism to modern symbolism, futurism, expressionism, aesthetics, and neo-romanticism, flooded into China at almost the same time, bringing with them a diversity of theatrical concepts, aesthetics, and forms and techniques different from those of the traditional Chinese opera, which is mainly song and dance, and written in a pictorial style.
At the same time, a number of specialized theatrical groups appeared, such as the People's Drama Society (1921) organized by Shen Yanbing and Chen Dabei in the early 1920s, and the Beijing Experimental Drama Society (a group of female students from Beijing Women's Higher Teachers' College) organized by Chen Dabei and Li Jianwu, etc. In 1922, under the direction of Li Dazhao and other directors, it staged a production of "Southeast Flight of the Peacock," written by Chen Dabei, in which Chen Junying played the role of Liu Lanzhi and Feng Yuanjun played the role of Mother Jiao. The performance of the play "Southeast Flight of the Peacock", written by Chen Dabei and directed by Li Dazhao, in which Chen Junying played Liu Lanzhi and Feng Yuanjun played the role of Jiao's mother, was a sensation in half of the city of Beijing, and was reported by the Morning Post and the Peking Gazette at that time. The early Crescent Society was also initially a theater salon that focused on self-writing and self-performance. Tian Han, Hong Shen, Ouyang Yuqian, Ding Xilin, and Chen Dabei became famous playwrights engaged in drama in the 1920s. By the end of the 1920s, the left-wing theater movement had reached a climax. In addition to the already famous playwrights such as Tian Han, Hong Shen, Ouyang Yuqian, and Ding Xianxin, Xia Yan, Yang Hansheng, Chen Baichuan, Song Zhi's, and Yu Ling, who succeeded them, also wrote a number of better plays. And the emergence of Cao Yu's Thunderstorm and Sunrise in the 1930s marked the real maturity of the art of Chinese drama.
II. The Life of Cao Yu and His Major Creative Achievements
Cao Yu (1910-1996), formerly known as Wan Jiabao, and originally from Qianjiang in Hubei Province, was born in Tianjin to a feudal bureaucratic family. His mother left him after only three days of life, and at the age of five, his sister, who loved him dearly, died tragically. His father, a disillusioned soldier with a violent temper, retired early and often invited some equally disillusioned Qing guests and staff to recite poems and lyrics at home. Cao Yu later looked back on his family and said, "I was born into a family that used to be rich, but later fell into disrepute. The young masters had their own servants and their own study. They lived quite comfortably, but they were very bored. The whole family was depressed. Every day you can hear and see a lot of messed up things. Things like Zhou Puyuan forcing Fan Yi to drink medicine can often be heard from the mouths of my relatives and friends." In just such a family environment, "I have seen many high-class villains and high-class hooligans; those characters appearing in Thunderstorm, Sunrise, and The Peking Man, I have seen too much of them, and for a while I could even be said to have spent time with them." But this family, at the same time, was full of the atmosphere of a tart and lyricist; his stepmother had a passion for theater, and often took Cao Yu to the opera: Beijing Opera, Kun Cavity, Hebei Opera, Shanxi Opera, Tangshan Falling Trouble, and various kinds of opera and civilized opera (the prototype of modern drama) all fascinated Cao Yu, and he "watched the opera and played it with the children in the study in a babbling manner, sometimes acting out the story, sometimes simply After watching the play, he and the children in his study babbled and played it out, sometimes following the story, sometimes simply making up their own arrangements. His fascination with acting cultivated his interest and understanding to become an outstanding dramatist.
In the fall of 1922, Cao Yu entered Nankai Middle School in Tianjin. In the fall of 1922, Cao Yu entered Nankai High School in Tianjin, where the school was very active in new drama activities. He participated in the Southern Drama Troupe and performed in Ibsen's Enemy of the Nation, A Doll's House, Molière's The Stingy Man, Dinkelin's Oppression, and the plays of some of the best playwrights since the May Fourth Movement, which further cultivated his sense of stagecraft and initially laid the foundation for playwrighting. 1928 After graduating from Nankai Middle School, he was admitted to the Political Science Department of Nankai University. In order to study Western literature, he was transferred to the Department of Foreign Languages at Tsinghua University in his second year, where he specialized in Western literature. During this period, he dabbled in a large number of masterpieces of foreign literature, especially plays, from Greek tragedy to Shakespeare, from Chekhov to Gorky, from Henrik Ibsen to Eugene O'Neill, all of which he studied with great care. In the theatrical world of foreign masters of drama, he learned from all, constantly enriching his own knowledge structure, and introduced him step by step to the door of art.
More importantly, he was well-prepared for life and thought. He is very familiar with the life of "Thunderstorm", and has seen many "unfortunate women" like Fan Yi. He hated that "messy" home, hated that sinful society, and longed for a "big thunderstorm" to destroy it. In 1933, Cao Yu finished his debut novel Thunderstorm at Tsinghua University, when he was still only a senior student. In July 1934, it was published in Literary Quarterly, Volume 1, Issue 3, edited by Ba Jin and Jin Yi, on Ba Jin's recommendation. However, "in the year following its publication, no critic seemed to have noticed him or said anything about him." （In April 1935, the Chinese Drama Society, organized by Chinese students in Japan, staged this play for the first time in Tokyo, Japan, directed by Du Xuan and Wu Tian, and received a warm welcome from the audience. After watching the performance, the famous Japanese dramatist Akita Yutaka commented, "It is interesting to see that the social and family tragedies of modern China are given a profound dramatic image by this writer." (On Modern Chinese Tragedy) ("On the Publication of the Modern Chinese Tragedy <Thunderstorm>" in 1936/1/19 "Steam Whistle New Journal Monthly," No. 7) However, this time, the original "Prologue" and "Epilogue" were deleted from the performance. Cao Yu was very dissatisfied with this, and he wrote a letter, published in "Quality Writings", expressing his dissatisfaction with the deletion of the original "Prologue" and "Epilogue" during the performance, believing that this was the life of the play, and saying that Thunderstorm was not a play of social problems, but rather a play of social issues. He said that Thunderstorm was not a "social drama" but "a poem". However, there was never a "prologue" or "epilogue" in the subsequent performances of Lei Yu. In August of the same year, the Lone Pine Theater Troupe of the Tianjin Municipal Teacher's College performed "Thunderstorm" in the auditorium of the college, which was a sensation. Later, Shanghai, Nanjing and other places have also staged "Thunderstorm", has been performed, and became the 30s on the theater a strange flower.
Since then, Cao Yu wrote his second major play, Sunrise (1935). The play was first staged by the Fudan University Drama Club, directed by Ouyang Yuqian, with the female lead Chen Bailu played by Feng Zi, and then by a group of foreign students in Tokyo in 1937. In 1937, the play was staged in Tokyo by a group of foreign students, and like Thunderstorm in 1935, it once again stirred up the Japanese theater scene. The famous Japanese dramatist Akita Yuquiao told Guo Moruo, "The Chinese are indeed geniuses, and plays on such a grand scale as Sunrise are rarely seen in Japan." From then on, "Thunderstorm" and "Sunrise" stood side by side like twin peaks in China's theater world in the 1930's. In April 1937, he wrote "The Wilderness", completing his "Life Trilogy", which established his position as a master of drama in the history of modern Chinese drama.
After the outbreak of the war, Cao Yu withdrew from the drama school, and in 1938 he collaborated with Song Zhi's to write Black Character XXVIII (also known as Mobilization of the Whole People), in which Cao Yu played the role of Hou Fengyuan, and in 1939, he wrote Metamorphosis, in which he said: "Only by enduring the pain can one be transformed. "Only by enduring the pain of molting off a layer of rotten old shell can a new and pleasant life be born." Hong Shen listed "Metamorphosis" as one of the "ten must-read anti-war plays", and when it was performed in Shanghai's "isolated island", it was performed for a month to a full house.
In the fall of 1940, he wrote his fourth classic, Beijinger. In terms of its ideology and artistry, it is another pinnacle of Cao Yu's dramatic creation.
The 1942 adaptation of Home was Cao Yu's highly creative "re-creation", from Ba Jin's Home to Cao Yu's Home, which 1) provided a successful example of adapting a long novel into a drama, and 2) made a new breakthrough in the exploration of dramatic poetry. Cao Yu's "Home" pours its artistic focus on the beautiful poetic exploration of love, writing love with youthful vigor and a warm poetic touch. It became Cao Yu's fifth theater classic.
In 1946, Cao Yu wrote The Bridge, but only in two acts, and in February 1946, he and Lao She were invited to the U.S. to give lectures, and in January 1947, he returned to Shanghai, where he wrote the play Sunny Day in the fall of 1947.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China: 1953 The play Bright Day
1954-1957 Prose collection Yingchunjie
1961 Historical drama The Bold Sword
1960s Started to conceptualize Wang Zhaogun, but was forced to put it aside during the Cultural Revolution. In October 1978, the script was finished.
Three, "Thunderstorm" - the first peak of Chinese drama creation
1, "Thunderstorm" is not a "social problem drama" (the author's intention and has long been misunderstood, for example)
2, "Thunderstorm" in the Eight main characters in "Thunderstorm" (specific analysis)
3. Structure of "Thunderstorm" and "Sunrise" (comparative analysis)
4.