Showing papers by "Colin Mackerras published in 1994"

Peking Opera before the Twentieth Century

Abstract: Peking Opera, which takes its name from having been born and matured in Beijing (currently the common romanization of the name of the city which was known as Peking) the capital of China now and also at the time when this art form originated is a highly comprehensive art, integrating music, singing, gesture, costume, make-up, movement, words, acrobatics, and stagecraft in a way unique in the world. Nevertheless, its form and content have their origin in earlier types of Chinese theater, mainly deriving from other parts of China. As possibly the most highly developed of numerous styles of regional theater which had grown up in China since the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), its development gathered momentum during the succeeding Qing dynasty (1644-1911), the latter a period dominated by the Manchus. In the twentieth century the Peking Opera has become a kind of national Chinese theater, with many both inside and outside the country associating it with "Chinese opera." Yet in fact at the beginning of the twentieth century it was not performed very commonly outside of Beijing and a rather small number of other centers.

WVhat About Those at the M4argins?: A Lacuna in Chinese Theatre Research

Abstract: This symposium seeks to reveal the lacunae still existing in Chinese theatre scholarship. I am here interpreting the lacunae as being those in the English language. This is in no sense to undervalue writings in other languages, but it is one way of restricting the scope of an enormous subject. English is also the only language in which the research is likely to be of interest to all readers of A TJ. My other specification is to cover only research published at the time of writing (March 1993). Although I know of current postgraduate research which should go some way toward filling a few of the lacunae mentioned, I have not considered it here. It is customary to begin articles of this kind by commenting on what progress has been made in recent times. J. Thomas Rimer (1992, 215) is among those who have followed this pattern. It is not appropriate for me to diverge from the precedent, because there have indeed been quite a few major contributions in the last two or three years. Two examples of particular scholarly and analytical value published since 1991 come immediately to mind: Elizabeth Wichmann's Listening to Theatre. The Aural Dimensions of Beijing Opera and David Holm's Art and Ideology in Revolutionary China. These two excellent works are extremely different in their approach and topic, the first dealing with the aesthetics of the aural aspects of theatre, the second with cultural policy in the Chinese Communist Party's base areas in the 1940s. Yet they share in common a major attention to Chinese theatre and performance as a field of study; Wichmann considers just one style, namely Beijing opera, and Holm the folk the'atre and dance in the areas of his concern. Another work of an