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E-book
Author Li, Ruru.

Title The soul of Beijing opera : theatrical creativity and continuity in the changing world / Li Ruru ; with a foreword by Eugenio Barba
Published Hong Kong : Hong Kong University Press, ©2010

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Description 1 online resource (xvi, 335 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates) : illustrations (some color), music
Contents Prologue : eyes on jingju -- Jingju : formation, growth and the first reform -- Training a total performer : four skills and five canons -- Cheng Yanqiu -- masculinity and femininity -- Li Yuru -- the Jingju tradition and communist ideology -- Ma Yongan -- a painted-face role type and a non-painted-face character -- Yan Qinggu -- staging the ugly and the beautiful in the millennium -- Kuo Hsiao-chuang -- a theatre that "belongs to tradition, modernity and to you and me" -- Wu Hsing-kuo -- subversion or innovation? -- Epilogue : new beginnings or the beginning of the end?
Summary Combining theatre, cultural, and area studies perspectives, this text explores how performers as social beings have responded to conflicts between tradition and modernity, and between convention and innovation
Any traditional theatre has to engage the changing world to avoid becoming a living fossil. How has Beijing opera -- a highly stylized theatre with breath-taking acrobatics and martial arts, fabulous costumes, and striking makeup -- survived into the new millennium while coping with a century of great upheavals and competition from new entertainment forms? Li Ruru's The Soul of Beijing Opera answers that question, looking at the evolution of singing and performance styles, make-up and costume, audience demands, as well as stage and street presentation modes amid tumultuous social and political changes. --Li's study follows a number of major artists' careers in mainland China and Taiwan, drawing on extensive primary print sources as well as personal interviews with performers and their cultural peers. One chapter focuses on the illustrious career of Li's own mother and how she adapted to changes in Communist ideology. In addition, she explores how performers as social beings have responded to conflicts between tradition and modernity, and between convention and innovation. Through performers' negotiation and compromises, Beijing opera has undergone constant re-examination of its inner artistic logic and adjusted to the demands of the external world. --Li Ruru is senior lecturer in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Leeds. She is the author of Shashibiya: Staging Shakespeare in China
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 315-328) and index
Notes English
Print version record
Subject Theater -- China -- Beijing -- History and criticism
Operas, Chinese -- History and criticism.
ARCHITECTURE -- Interior Design -- General.
PERFORMING ARTS -- Theater -- General.
Operas, Chinese -- Production and direction.
Operas, Chinese -- Performances.
Operas, Chinese -- History and criticism.
Operas, Chinese
Theater
Peking-Oper
Peking-Oper.
Theater.
China -- Beijing
China.
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9789882205802
9882205801
9882207391
9789882207394
1283016877
9781283016872
9786613016874
661301687X