Studies in International Performance Published in association with the International Federation of Theatre Research General Editors: Janelle Reinelt and Brian Singleton Culture and performance cross borders constantly, and not just the borders that define nations. In this new series, scholars of performance produce interactions between and among nations and cultures as well as genres, identities and imaginations. Inter-national in the largest sense, the books collected in the Studies in International Performance series display a range of historical, theoretical and critical approaches to the panoply of performances that make up the global surround. The series embraces Culture which is institutional as well as improvised, underground or alternate, and treats Performance as either intercultural or transnational as well as intracultural within nations. Titles include: Patrick Anderson and Jisha Menon (editors) VIOLENCE PERFORMED Local Roots and Global Routes of Conflict Elaine Aston and Sue-Ellen Case STAGING INTERNATIONAL FEMINISMS Christopher Balme PACIFIC PERFORMANCES Theatricality and Cross-Cultural Encounter in the South Seas Matthew Isaac Cohen PERFORMING OTHERNESS Java and Bali on International Stages, 1905 1952 Susan Leigh Foster WORLDING DANCE Helen Gilbert and Jacqueline Lo PERFORMANCE AND COSMOPOLITICS Cross-Cultural Transactions in Australasia Helena Grehan PERFORMANCE, ETHICS AND SPECTATORSHIP IN A GLOBAL AGE Judith Hamera DANCING COMMUNITIES James Harding and Cindy Rosenthal (editors) THE RISE OF PERFORMANCE STUDIES Rethinking Richard Schecher s Broad Spectrum Performance, Difference, and Connection in the Global City Silvija Jestrovic and Yana Meerzon (editors) PERFORMANCE, EXILE AND AMERICA
Ola Johansson COMMUNITY THEATRE AND AIDS Sonja Arsham Kuftinec THEATRE, FACILITATION, AND NATION FORMATION IN THE BALKANS AND MIDDLE EAST Daphne P. Lei ALTERNATIVE CHINESE OPERA IN THE AGE OF GLOBALIZATION Performing Zero Carol Martin (editor) THE DRAMATURGY OF THE REAL ON THE WORLD STAGE Alan Read THEATRE, INTIMACY & ENGAGEMENT The Last Human Venue Shannon Steen RACIAL GEOMETRIES OF THE BLACK ATLANTIC, ASIAN PACIFIC AND AMERICAN THEATRE Joanne Tompkins UNSETTLING SPACE Contestations in Contemporary Australian Theatre S. E. Wilmer NATIONAL THEATRES IN A CHANGING EUROPE Evan Darwin Winet INDONESIAN POSTCOLONIAL THEATRE Spectral Genealogies and Absent Faces Forthcoming titles: Adrian Kear THEATRE AND EVENT Studies in International Performance Series Standing Order ISBN 978 1 4039 4456 6 (hardback) 978 1 4039 4457 3 (paperback) (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England
Alternative Chinese Opera in the Age of Globalization Performing Zero Daphne P. Lei Palgrave macmillan
Daphne P. Lei 2011 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2011 978-0-230-24565-5 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identfied as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-31903-9 ISBN 978-0-230-30042-2 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9780230300422 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Daphne P. Lei. Alternative Chinese Opera in the age of globalization : performing zero / Daphne P. Lei. p. cm. Includes index. Summary: Bringing the study of Chinese theatre into the 21st-century, Lei discusses ways in which traditional art can survive and thrive in the age of modernization and globalization. Building on her previous work, this new book focuses on various forms of Chinese opera in locations around the Pacific Rim, including Hong Kong, Taiwan and California Provided by publisher. 1. Operas, Chinese History and criticism. 2. Operas, Chinese Performances-Pacific area 3.Chinese-Ethnic identity. l.title ML1751.C5L44 2011 792.5089 951 dc22 2010050923 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11
For David, Milo, and Rafe, who give me a home
Contents List of Figures Acknowledgements Series Editors Preface ix x xii Introduction: Performing Zero 1 Chinese nations 2 Center and peripheries 5 Zero 7 Chinese opera 8 Alternative Chinese opera 11 Nostalgia 15 Methodology 18 Chapter outlines 20 1 Femininity Comes to the Rescue: Innovative Jingju in Taiwan 23 The rhetoric of ethnicity in Taiwan 24 Traditional jingju in Taiwan 27 Modern jingju in Transition: Early new jingju and early Innovative Jingju 32 Strategizing Innovative Jingju: depoliticization and effeminization 40 The innovations of Innovative Jingju 56 Conclusion 63 2 Pacification and Silent Resistance: Performing Hong Kong in The Flower Princess 64 Hong Kong: colonial, postcolonial, and neocolonial 65 The Flower Princess (Dinühua, Dae Neui Fa) 71 Nostalgia, loss and mourning (views from the local) 92 Conclusion 96 3 The Blossoming of the Transnational Peony: Performing Alternative China in California 98 Keywords to The Peony Pavilion 99 vii
viii Contents Peony productions 103 The Young Lovers Edition 105 Transnational consumption: the California tour 116 The California performances 121 Transnational racial split 139 Conclusion 140 4 Waiting for Meaning: The Joint Venture of Robert Wilson, Jingju, and Taiwan 142 The stakes of international and intercultural grand collaborations 143 Robert Wilson and his knee structure 146 The Orlando adventure 147 Problems with the grand replication 171 Conclusion 175 Conclusion 178 Notes 184 Bibliography 214 Index 228
List of Figures 1.1 Zheng Chenggong and Taiwan (The National Theatre, Taipei, 1999) 39 1.2 Wang Youdao Divorces His Wife (The Guoguang Theatre, Taipei, 2004) 44 1.3 Three Persons, Two Lamps (The New Stage, Taipei, 2005) 48 1.4 The Golden Cangue (The National Theatre, Taipei, 2006) 54 2.1 The Flower Princess: The Youth Edition (The Studio Theatre at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, Hong Kong, 2007) 74 2.2 The Flower Princess: The Youth Edition (The Studio Theatre at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, Hong Kong, 2007) 78 3.1 The Peony Pavilion: The Young Lovers Edition (Barclay Theatre, University of California, Irvine, California, 2006) 128 3.2 The Peony Pavilion: The Young Lovers Edition (Zellerbach Theatre, University of California, Berkeley, California, 2006) 135 4.1 Orlando (The National Theatre, Taipei, 2009) 168 4.2 Orlando (The National Theatre, Taipei, 2009) 170 ix
Acknowledgements A study with transnational scope like this one cannot be accomplished without institutional support and recognition of the value of the project. Among multiple grants I received during this period, I wish to acknowledge two major awards. Both the Single Investigator Innovation Grant I received in 2006 from the Council on Research, Computing and Library Resources at the University of California, Irvine and the Pacific Rim Development Grant I received from the University of California in 2009 helped make it possible for me to be a truly Pacific Rim investigator. The doctoral faculty of my home department, the Department of Drama, UC Irvine, and of our sister department, the Department of Theatre and Dance, UC San Diego have been a source of constant support for my research. My graduate students from both departments as well as from other campuses have enlightened me with their research projects and inspiring conversations. UC s Multicampus Research Group in International Performance and Culture also provided a unique space for my intellectual growth in the past three years. Special thanks are due my series editors, Professors Janelle Reinelt and Brian Singleton. Their insightful comments have helped me shape the project and inform it with a better international understanding. They are also academic colleagues whose works and passion I greatly admire. I am fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with them. I am also grateful to the Palgrave editorial and publication teams for perfecting a smooth publication process. This is a project about collaboration along peripheries. I wish to express my gratitude to the people from all over the world who have helped me: Milky Man Shan Cheung and Professor Yu Siu Wah of the Chinese University of Hong Kong; Vivian Chang, and Zhong Baoshan (Vice President) of the National Guoguang Opera Company in Taipei; Li Huey-mei, Huang Pen-ting and Michael Chang-han Liu of the National Theatre in Taipei; Amy O Dowd and all the Peony lovers from California; and photographers Chung Yu-sang, Hsu Pei-Hung and Liu Chen-Hsiang. Special thanks also go to Professor Chan Sau-Yan, who opened the door to Hong Kong Cantonese opera for me, as well as to Professor Wing- Chun Ng, whose knowledge of and enthusiasm for Cantonese opera have been a constant source of inspiration. x
Acknowledgements xi Although zeroed out in this study as a matter of methodological principle, the Chinese center has contributed to the project as well. I would like to thank Professor Fu Jin of the National Academy of Chinese Theatre, Beijing and Professor Kang Baocheng of Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, whose conference invitations allowed me to get a glimpse of the academic discourse between the center and the peripheries. Alternative Chinese Opera is about unrelenting belief and passion. I am deeply indebted to a few people whose expertise and devotion I admire greatly. Their perseverance and resilience, their belief and determination, and above all, their love and labor for the art are the reasons alternative Chinese opera has survived and flourished. To Professor Wang An-Ch i and Professor Pai Hsien-yung, Wei Hai-Ming and Li Hsiao-Ping I wish to express my thanks for multiple interviews and for much further generous guidance. I thank them further for their tireless battling on behalf of alternative Chinese opera. This book is my contribution to the fight. This book is also a project about survival. Neither an art form nor a scholar can survive the times of darkness and despair without the support of friends. Thank you, Julia and Michael, for constantly thinking of me, checking my vital signs. This is a project about nostalgia. My parents, both gone now, were witnesses and direct victims of the 1949 split; they never had a chance to go home. This book is for people like my parents, for whom nostalgia is real. I also wish to express my warmest appreciation to my sisters, who continue to provide me with a loving home in Taiwan and with motivations for my trans-pacific crossings. Finally, Alternative Chinese Opera is a project about hope. Family is the source of life and the reason for every breath I take. I cannot finish the project without envisioning a future of light for my boys. Thank you, Milo and Rafe, for being with me every day, for growing with me, and for lighting the bleakest days. The urgency and immediacy of your existence confirms the meaning of my life. You teach me how to keep hope alive. And, thank you, David, my love, for continuing to play multiple roles in my life: reader, critic, companion, supporter, teacher, and crucial audience member. Life is an eternal lack without your participation. Thank you for being there.
Series Editors Preface The Studies in International Performance series was initiated in 2004 on behalf of the International Federation for Theatre Research, by Janelle Reinelt and Brian Singleton, successive Presidents of the Federation. Their aim was, and still is, to call on performance scholars to expand their disciplinary horizons to include the comparative study of performances across national, cultural, social, and political borders. This is necessary not only in order to avoid the homogenizing tendency of national paradigms in performance scholarship, but also in order to engage in creating new performance scholarship that takes account of and embraces the complexities of transnational cultural production, the new media, and the economic and social consequences of increasingly international forms of artistic expression. Comparative studies (especially when conceived across more than two terms) can value both the specifically local and the broadly conceived global forms of performance practices, histories, and social formations. Comparative aesthetics can challenge the limitations of national orthodoxies of art criticism and current artistic knowledges. In formalizing the work of the Federation s members through rigorous and innovative scholarship this Series aims to make a significant contribution to an ever-changing project of knowledge creation. Janelle Reinelt and Brian Singleton International Federation for Theatre Research Fédération Internationale pour la Recherche Théâtrale xii