Going to the theatre
It was quite the whirlwind holiday during our one-week break for China's GoldenWeek National Holiday. With our favorite couple, Pete and Monica in town from Shanghai, we hiked, camped, biked and ate our way through 小五台山 Xiaowutaishan in Hebei and also in Beijing. We are back at work today and tomorrow and have spent the day catching up with our numerous upcoming engagements for the rest of October. 2010 is going to fly by before we know it!
Once things calm down and once I'm able to gather my thoughts coherently, I shall write about our wonderful trip. For now, let's just say that we ended Pete and Monica's visit with style -- by devouring an apple pie from Piehouse.
Then Evan and I ended the holiday with an impromptu date at the 首都剧场 Capital Theatre, a historical site built in the early 1950s shortly after the founding of the People's Republic. Zhou Enlai and Deng's wife were regular patrons of the theatre (I call it "Zhou's little hangout"), along with many of China's top intellectuals/writers/artists of the time until it was shut down during the Cultural Revolution.
From Baidu Images
Last night, we watched a new adaptation of 雷雨 Thunderstorm, one of the most famous plays of the modern era in China by Cao Yu, a highly respected and influential Chinese playwright who was also once the director at the Capital Theatre. Zhang Yimou's Curse of the Golden Flower was based on this play and even though when I watched the movie, the plot seemed meaningless and Jay Chou's horrendous acting was too distracting, the original play definitely had more profound significance. And thanks to the historical background and political context provided by Evan -- the plot, characters, setting, dialogue, and costumes each carried more layers than I would have noticed otherwise.
A description of Thunderstorm on ChinaCulture.org:
Thunderstorm is a tragedy involving complicated blood relationships and numerous inevitable tragic coincidences. It is a dramatic feat with profound connotations and heart-stirring artistry...... The profound significance of Thunderstorm lies in its exposure of the close political and ideological bond between Chinese capitalists and the deep-rooted feudal traditions......... Thunderstorm achieved great success in art. This results possibly from the inspiration of Greek tragedy, the influence of Ibsen's plays or Cao Yu's familiarity with well-made plays. However, rather than an imitation, the play derives from the playwright's anger at the Chinese family and society and his thunderstorm-like poetic sense. In particular, the dramatic language used in the play is refined, pure and full of undertones.
From GMW.cn
The play is a 话剧 (huaju), described by the Britannica Online Encyclopaedia as "a form of Chinese drama featuring realistic spoken dialogue rather than the sung poetic dialogue of the traditional Chinese dramatic forms", e.g. Peking Opera, which sometimes has screens beside the stage that display the script.
From the Encyclopedia of Contemporary Chinese Culture:
Huaju (spoken drama) is the Chinese term used to categorize modern Western-style theatre that was imported early in the twentieth century. Adopted by Chinese intellectuals living overseas, in hopes of addressing social problems faced by post-Qing China, Huaju contributed to the New Culture Movement and the May Fourth Enlightenment as a whole, offering a new form of theatre radically different from classical Xiqu (sung-drama/opera). Huaju was performed in vernacular Chinese and thus accessible to the masses, and had immediate political application. The first spoken drama written and staged by Chinese citizens was Black Slave’s Cry to Heaven (Heinu yutianlu)-an adaptation of the Chinese translation of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin-presented by the Spring Willow Society in Tokyo in 1907.
The third act opened with a "他妈的!" -- the Chinese equivalent of "God damn it!" -- as you can imagine, after decades of incomprehensible Peking Opera, how refreshing it must have been for the audience back in the day to hear an everyday cuss word uttered on stage. The other thing that stood out to me is the repetition of "我不愿意" (I am not willing) or "我愿意” (I am willing), spoken with conviction by the three female characters in different circumstances.
FYE (as in, for your entertainment): When one of the characters jumped into the room through a window, I shouted, "OH MY GOD!" before melting into my seat. Fortunately for me, a "thunder" eclipsed my outburst and I was spared the embarrassment of a staring, disapproving crowd of cultured theatre-goers.
When Evan announced, "we're going to watch 雷雨！“， I honestly didn't know what we were getting into. After the show ended, we found ourselves at a 24-hr McDonalds on Wangfujing with me dipping my fries in the sundae and him chowing down on a cheeseburger. He expounded on his theories about the play while I reinforced his ideas with my analysis or questioned the validity of his claims with a raised eyebrow and a "but I thought....."
And that was the end of our Goldenweek Holiday.
Once things calm down and once I'm able to gather my thoughts coherently, I shall write about our wonderful trip. For now, let's just say that we ended Pete and Monica's visit with style -- by devouring an apple pie from Piehouse.
Then Evan and I ended the holiday with an impromptu date at the 首都剧场 Capital Theatre, a historical site built in the early 1950s shortly after the founding of the People's Republic. Zhou Enlai and Deng's wife were regular patrons of the theatre (I call it "Zhou's little hangout"), along with many of China's top intellectuals/writers/artists of the time until it was shut down during the Cultural Revolution.
From Baidu Images
Last night, we watched a new adaptation of 雷雨 Thunderstorm, one of the most famous plays of the modern era in China by Cao Yu, a highly respected and influential Chinese playwright who was also once the director at the Capital Theatre. Zhang Yimou's Curse of the Golden Flower was based on this play and even though when I watched the movie, the plot seemed meaningless and Jay Chou's horrendous acting was too distracting, the original play definitely had more profound significance. And thanks to the historical background and political context provided by Evan -- the plot, characters, setting, dialogue, and costumes each carried more layers than I would have noticed otherwise.
A description of Thunderstorm on ChinaCulture.org:
Thunderstorm is a tragedy involving complicated blood relationships and numerous inevitable tragic coincidences. It is a dramatic feat with profound connotations and heart-stirring artistry...... The profound significance of Thunderstorm lies in its exposure of the close political and ideological bond between Chinese capitalists and the deep-rooted feudal traditions......... Thunderstorm achieved great success in art. This results possibly from the inspiration of Greek tragedy, the influence of Ibsen's plays or Cao Yu's familiarity with well-made plays. However, rather than an imitation, the play derives from the playwright's anger at the Chinese family and society and his thunderstorm-like poetic sense. In particular, the dramatic language used in the play is refined, pure and full of undertones.
From GMW.cn
The play is a 话剧 (huaju), described by the Britannica Online Encyclopaedia as "a form of Chinese drama featuring realistic spoken dialogue rather than the sung poetic dialogue of the traditional Chinese dramatic forms", e.g. Peking Opera, which sometimes has screens beside the stage that display the script.
From the Encyclopedia of Contemporary Chinese Culture:
Huaju (spoken drama) is the Chinese term used to categorize modern Western-style theatre that was imported early in the twentieth century. Adopted by Chinese intellectuals living overseas, in hopes of addressing social problems faced by post-Qing China, Huaju contributed to the New Culture Movement and the May Fourth Enlightenment as a whole, offering a new form of theatre radically different from classical Xiqu (sung-drama/opera). Huaju was performed in vernacular Chinese and thus accessible to the masses, and had immediate political application. The first spoken drama written and staged by Chinese citizens was Black Slave’s Cry to Heaven (Heinu yutianlu)-an adaptation of the Chinese translation of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin-presented by the Spring Willow Society in Tokyo in 1907.
The third act opened with a "他妈的!" -- the Chinese equivalent of "God damn it!" -- as you can imagine, after decades of incomprehensible Peking Opera, how refreshing it must have been for the audience back in the day to hear an everyday cuss word uttered on stage. The other thing that stood out to me is the repetition of "我不愿意" (I am not willing) or "我愿意” (I am willing), spoken with conviction by the three female characters in different circumstances.
FYE (as in, for your entertainment): When one of the characters jumped into the room through a window, I shouted, "OH MY GOD!" before melting into my seat. Fortunately for me, a "thunder" eclipsed my outburst and I was spared the embarrassment of a staring, disapproving crowd of cultured theatre-goers.
When Evan announced, "we're going to watch 雷雨！“， I honestly didn't know what we were getting into. After the show ended, we found ourselves at a 24-hr McDonalds on Wangfujing with me dipping my fries in the sundae and him chowing down on a cheeseburger. He expounded on his theories about the play while I reinforced his ideas with my analysis or questioned the validity of his claims with a raised eyebrow and a "but I thought....."
And that was the end of our Goldenweek Holiday.