Early modern drama

Early modern Chinese theatre is mainly defined by the emergence, formation, and maturity of Chinese spoken drama (huaju) from the 1900s to 1940s. ¹ The theatre’s great power to change society was first noticed by late Qing reformers such as Liang Qichao (1873–1929) and subsequently fully engaged by leading intellectuals in the New Cultural Movement in the 1910s and 1920s. During the first half of the twentieth century, the Chinese spoken drama challenges as well as incorporates the Chinese traditional drama, introduces as well as localizes counterpart Western and Japanese genres, and at the same time roots itself deeply into the social, historical, and cultural soils in modern China. Xia Yan (1900–1995), a major spoken-drama playwright who survived most of his contemporary Chinese dramatists in this dramatic period in modern Chinese theatre, bequeaths the honor of “the three founders of Chinese spoken drama” to his friends Tian Han (1898–1968), Hong Shen (1894–1955), and Ouyang Yuqian (1889–1962). ² Tian Han’s contribution to modern Chinese spoken drama is discussed in Chapter 19 by Ning Ma, and therefore I will devote this chapter to the life and works of Hong Shen and Ouyang Yuqian. Xia Yan’s own career as a playwright started a few years later than the three founders, but his decisive role in developing realism in modern Chinese spoken drama is not unimportant. Besides, Hong, Ouyang, and Xia’s joint work in the Shanghai Theatre Association (Shanghai xiju xieshe) in the 1920s set the key tone for Chinese spoken drama for the next 30 years. In their common cause to shape and promote the spoken drama at historical moments of national crisis, they still display artistic individuality because of their own life experience and psychological identity. Hong Shen literally named the spoken drama as huaju in 1928. He introduced the American theatre tradition to stage direction and performance. Borrowing the expressionist techniques from Eugene O’Neill in his early works, in his later works he gave more considerations to local Chinese audience and paid closer attention to contemporary political activities. Ouyang Yuqian’s skills in scripting and staging popular spoken drama were closely related to his mastery of traditional Chinese drama’s aesthetics and techniques. Xia Yan’s wide readings in Marxism, his political ideology, and his subsequent proletariat concerns all made him a significant shaping force in the Chinese spoken drama ever since the 1930s.