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- Title
Tradition and Innovation in Contemporary Beijing Opera Performance.
- Authors
Wichmann, Elizabeth
- Abstract
This article examines the current balance of tradition and innovation in the opera performance of Beijing, China, as well as some of the reasons for that balance, as of March 1990. Reform in Beijing opera has been advocated for a variety of reasons, and numerous reforms have been carried out since the early years of this century. The most practical and immediate impetus to the current call for reform is the diminishing drawing power of Beijing opera. In revised traditional plays, a number of innovations take the form of technique for the sake of technique, demonstrations of skills which perhaps exceed the parameters of character and expression. A wider range of performance innovations can be found in productions of new plays. Throughout the 1980s, almost all productions of new plays have involved innovations in at least one of several main areas. Financial concerns aside, probably the greatest obstacles to both enhancement and innovation are posed by two fundamentally contradictory attitudes toward, or perceptions of, Beijing opera. On the one hand, the form is viewed as a national cultural treasure. The policies of system reform were a national effort intended at least in part to do away with the iron rice bowl, or the great Wok. In the performing arts, the money crunch undoubtedly provided the primary impetus. However, system reform in the performing arts was also based upon the belief that the state-run management system has resulted in a lack of competition within individual forms, causing a deterioration in the quality of performance and an inability to compete successfully with film and television.
- Subjects
BEIJING (China); CHINA; OPERA; MUSICAL theater; MANNERS &; customs; TECHNOLOGICAL innovations; DRAMA; PERFORMING arts
- Publication
TDR: The Drama Review (MIT Press), 1990, Vol 34, Issue 1, p146
- ISSN
1054-2043
- Publication type
Literary Criticism
- DOI
10.2307/1146013