Humanities Class...

2.  It is the opinion of modern scholars that drama
was not native to China, but was introduced,
probably in rather an advanced state, by the
Mongols in the thirteenth century. During the
one-hundred and sixty-eight years of the Kin
and Yuen dynasties the most celebrated plays
were written. A famous collection known as the
Hundred Plays of the Yuen Dynasty is
preserved, and the titles of about six-hundred
others are known, as well as the names of
eighty-five playwrights.

3.  During this period (1200-1368) the style of
acting, the subjects to be treated, and the
general conduct of the theater were
determined. The Chinese stage at the
beginning of the twentieth century was
practically the same as that of seven hundred
years ago.

4.  The birth year of the Chinese drama is
unknown. Dates are variously suggested and
disagreed upon and enclose a period of more
than twenty-five centuries. The reason for this
divergence of opinion is that while one writer
considers the pantomimic dances--for
religious worship or military jubilation--which
were presented to musical accompaniment, a
dramatic production, another wants to name
the century of the initial stage performance
until festival rites unite with speech in dramatic
situation and an histrionic dénouement.

5. -Theory of Chinese Drama
-Subjects of Chinese Drama

6.  The ideal of the Chinese stage was that every
play should have a moral. (An article in the
penal code of the Empire requires every
dramatist to have "a virtuous aim." )
 Both prose and verse are often used in the
same play.
 Many of the plays are short, a half-hour or so
in length; and the longer ones are divided
into acts and scenes.

7.  In order to keep the thread of the action clear,
each important character pauses occasionally
to announce his name and lineage, and
perhaps to rehearse the course of the plot.
 A singular feature of the Chinese play is the
singing actor.

8.  The field of the Chinese playwright is broad,
as he has a choice of historical or
contemporary affairs from which to draw his
plots.
 No class or section is exempt from the
laughter of the stage.
 One of the most revolting features of Chinese
drama is the frequent representation of
scenes of violence.

9.  Suicide is a custom honored in China, and
therefore often seen on the stage.
 The Chinese stage usually has little scenery,
no curtain, flies, or wings.
 Those who would enter the profession of
acting must undergo severe discipline from
an early age, and must submit to the strictist
physical training in respect to diet, acrobatic
feats, contortions, and walking with bound
feet in imitation of high-born women.

10.  There are five classes of actors, each being
trained for certain stage types; and each actor
is assigned to his own type. The regular
companies consist of fifty-six actors, and
every member must know from one hundred
to two hundred plays. There is no prompter
at the performance.

11. •Vun Pan Shi
•Sin Pan Shi
•Vun Min Shi

12.  VUN PAN SHI. The oldest form of Chinese play, it
has patriotism and filial devotion for its subjects.
Music and action unite to play upon the emotions
of the audience.
 SIN PAN SHI. It presents civil and military
conditions. The difference between Vun Pan Shi
and Sin Pan Shi is not the libretto, but in the
manner of singing certain roles and in the tradition
of acting. The dictionary defines libretto as a
musical work not intended for stage.
 VUN MIN SHI. This is also known as the modern
play. Colloquial dialects are allowed in the Vun Min
Shi instead of Mandarin, the dialect of Peking,
which is the accepted speech of the stage as well
as of the nation.

13. Not until the eighteenth century did any knowledge
of Chinese drama come to Europe.
 The Little Orphan of the House of Tchao.
 The Story of the Magic Lute (14th century)
 The Sorrows of Han
 The Injustice Suffered (by Tou F by Kuan Han-
ch'ing)
 The Western Chamber (by Wang Shi-fu)
 The Peony Pavilion (by T'ang Hsien-tsu ,16th cent.)
 The Palace of Long Life (by Hung Sheng, 17th
cent.).

14.  In general, Chinese drama is comparatively weak
in the logical development of plot and in the
delineation of character. Great stress, however, is
laid upon verbal decoration and poetical
ornament. There are pleasing contrasts between
parallel scenes, and parallelism of language, as in
the Psalms. In many passages a single word is
played with, compounds being made upon the
root, so that a speech in praise of a flower or of a
royal person becomes an intricate linguistic
labyrinth, like an English acrostic or anagram.

15.  And, in Chinese drama no attempt is made at
realism; props and scenery are symbolic (for
instance, a flag represents an army); the property
man is present on stage; characters at times
directly address the audience. Often only parts of
plays are performed, or scenes are performed in
arbitrary sequence. Since the early 19th cent. the
Beijing opera has been the dominant force in the
Chinese theater. After World War I a realistic,
spoken drama, patterned after Western plays,
developed, but after the establishment of the
People's Republic of China in 1949 the theater
(except on Taiwan) devoted itself to political
propaganda until the 1990s.

16.  Throughout the Modern Period,
selected and modified traditional
operas and dramas remained a staple
of the Chinese theater. There were
also the numerous war plays during
the “fighting years”, but theater
activity during this period was much
more varied and modern.

17.  TWO MAJOR REASONS prompted this
activity:
-demands by the Chinese Communists Party
for more drama and
-a tremendously increased interest by worker
and peasants in amateur dramatic
companies which by 1954 numbered about
one hundred thousand.

18. http://www.theatrehistory.com/asian/chinese004.ht
ml (The article was originally published in A Short
History of the Drama. Martha Fletcher Bellinger. New
York: Henry Holt and Company, 1927. pp. 103-6.)
http://www.factmonster.com/ce6/ent/A0856737.ht
ml
http://www.theatrehistory.com/asian/chinese001.ht
ml (The document was written by Kate Buss and
originally published in Studies in the Chinese Drama.
New York: Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith, 1922. pp.
17-21.)

19. by GROUP 4 (OM2A):
ALCANTARA, Janzen Irvin
FERRERAS, Paula
LIU, Colene Denese
PUNSALAN, Krisandreya
REBAGODA, Ma. Angelica
TINGSON, Gio