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Chinese Play-Making: Cosmopolitan Intellectuals, Transnational Stages, and Modern Drama, 1910s-1940s

He, Man
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1429737192

Abstract Details

2015, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, East Asian Languages and Literatures.
This dissertation examines how Chinese modern drama, or huaju, provided intellectual play-makers a vital but tension-ridden venue to (re)produce forms of “self” as “enlighteners” to the masses and “participatory citizens” of the nation for the task of building a modern China by (re)defining social norms within the huaju “stage.” I present a three-fold understanding of “play-making” that incorporates its textual, performative/theatrical, and meta-theatrical senses while dealing with specific huaju plays that were written and staged in Columbus, Ohio (Chapter 1), Shanghai and Ding County (Chapter 2), Jiang’an (Chapter 3), and Chongqing (Chapter 4). My narrative focuses on four cosmopolitan dramatists—Hong Shen (1894-1955), Xiong Foxi (1900-1965), Yu Shangyuan (1897-1970), and Xia Yan (1900-1995)—while they mobilized self and huaju against the backdrop of successive wars and (re)constructions on domestic and global scales in the first half of the 20th century. I demonstrate how play-making, seen and practiced as a “democratic institution,” attempted to form a “unity” incorporating the metropolitan masses, a rural base for the Mass Education Movement, and shelters for war refugees during the Second Sino-Japanese War. My three-fold approach to play-making problematizes understandings of huaju in extant scholarship and significantly revises the deficient discourse of modern Chinese theatre. Huaju has been designated in both China and theatre studies as being oriented toward intellectuals and informed by “Western modernity,” particularly so during the genre’s formative phase in the 1920s. Although such an identity earned for huaju the glory of being an ideal modern cultural form and a social-educational frontier for May Fourth intellectuals, it also rendered huaju an “undesirable other” in the 1990s when scholarly attention shifted from elite May Fourth culture to popular culture and alternative modernities. Today, while “traditional” and popular cultural forms have been critically unraveled and thereby historically understood, the “Western” and “intellectual” tags associated with huaju have remained intact and have not been subject to revisionist scrutiny. My approach provides a needed alternative imagination of huaju and huaju-making—as “cosmopolitan” instead of “Western,” and “democratic” instead of “elitist.” In addition to presenting a revisionist understanding of huaju, this dissertation sheds light on four pioneering huaju play-makers who, though recognized as important Chinese dramatists, have yet to receive sufficient scholarly attention. My close reading of their play-making practices contributes to the field of modern Chinese drama by bringing more signature plays and key play-makers to light. Meanwhile, I demonstrate the vital and two-way traffic between huaju theatre and the political reality (worldly stage). I link the process of “play-making” on the extended huaju stage with the project of nation-building that took place among China’s overseas student community, its domestic metropolises and rural reconstruction bases, and wartime capital. Huaju thereby gains a fuller examination of its artistic meanings, social function, and trajectory of development. We see how, through a three-fold understanding of “play-making,” cosmopolitan dramatists, the (rural) masses, and performers negotiated with each other in (re)defining artistic and social norms, as well as (re)producing self- and national-identities during the first half of China’s 20th century.
Kirk Denton (Advisor)
Patricia Sieber (Committee Member)
Christopher Reed (Committee Member)
388 p.
Asian Studies; History; Literature; Performing Arts; Theater
play-making; huaju; Hong Shen; Xia Yan; Xiong Foxi; Ying Yunwei; Yu Shangyuan; juren; modern Chinese drama; canonization; left-wing theatre; National Drama School; cosmopolitanism; cultural entrepreneur; peasant-play

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • He, M. (2015). Chinese Play-Making: Cosmopolitan Intellectuals, Transnational Stages, and Modern Drama, 1910s-1940s [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1429737192

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • He, Man. Chinese Play-Making: Cosmopolitan Intellectuals, Transnational Stages, and Modern Drama, 1910s-1940s . 2015. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1429737192.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • He, Man. "Chinese Play-Making: Cosmopolitan Intellectuals, Transnational Stages, and Modern Drama, 1910s-1940s ." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1429737192

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1429737192
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.