From”Drama”of Greek to “Huaju”of China

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Huaju, or the stage play, was introduced into China from other countries. In the early 2oth century, some students who returned after studying in Japan set up the Chunliu Drama Society as an endeavor to explore this new type of drama, known as New Drama at that time. After the year of 1910, it was called “wenming drama”and was performed in the form of mubiao, in which the actors and actresses performed impromptu according to an outline of the plot. Later it was renamed “aimei drama”and”baihua drama”. In 1928, Hong Shen,a dramatist, proposed to name this new drama as “huaju”(stage play), which was later widely accepted because it covered all the important features of this drama form -it integrated literature, acting, music, fine arts and dancing while it presented itself mainly in the form of lines(in dialogues, monologues and asides) and body movements(in Chinese, hua means speeches and ju means “drama”).

Li Shutong(1880-1942) was the founder of the Chinese huaju. He was one of the chief members of the Chunliu Drama Society, which was set up in 1906 in Japan. In 1907, The Lady of the Camellias, adapted from a novel with the same name by Alerandre Dumas, was performed. This was the first stage play put on by Chinese people. Li Shutong not only directed the play but also played the heroine of Margaret.

After that, due to his efforts, the Chunliu Drama Society put on many stage plays such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Painter and His Sister. Though Li Shutong spent a short period of time on the stage play, he began a new era of the Chinese stage play, especially in terms of background design, make-up, costumes, stage properties and lighting.

The creation of Thunderstorm and Sunrise by Cao Yu (1910-1996) marked the maturity of the Chinese stage play. Cao Yu was bound to produce these two works with epoch-making significances because his career life went through three stages of the development of the Chinese stage play. He was a viewer of the wenming drama,a director of the aimei drama and a writer of the new huaju. In terms of drama, he not only was familiar with the theories of the drama but also devoted a lot of time and effort into performance and writing. When studying at Nankai Middle School of Tianjin, he played the lead role in The Doll’s House by Ibsen. In 1929, he was admitted into the Foreign Language Department of Tsinghua University and paid more attention to exploring the development from Greek tragedies to Shakespeare’s plays as well as works by many world-famous dramatists such as Chekhov, Ibsen and O’ Neill. In 1933 before he graduated from university, he created the four-act stage play Thunderstorm and publish it the next year, arousing tremendous echoes. In 1936, he created another important drama script named Sunrise. These two drama pieces laid the foundation for the Chinese stage play to become mature.

Thunderstorm integrates many factors of the western drama and was clearly influenced by western drama concepts and writing skills in the “destiny tragedy”of Greek drama, the “character tragedy”of Shakespeare’s drama and “society tragedy”of Ibsen’s drama. It integrates these concepts and writings skills and successfully shows the life, character and thoughts of various people in capitalist families withstrong feudal traditions in China in the 1920s. In structure, Thunderstorm, influenced by the structure of western classical drama, is strict and refined. It is about whathappened with two families, the Zhou and the Lu, during thirty years. There are eightcharacters present in the drama with complicated relationships with each other. Thefour acts happen on the same day from the morning to midnight and in the houses of the Zhou and the Lu. In language, Thunderstorm is also influenced by western drama. It has strong lyric and emotional flavors and, with excellent language skills, fully displays the charm of “speech”in the stage play.

Cao Yu skillfully borrowed the theories and techniques of western drama into his works and localized them, so that his plays, in a form that was introduced from other countries, profoundly and successfully displays, for the first time, the social life and mentality of the Chinese people.

During the course of development of the Chinese stage play, it is no doubt that Teahouse by Lao She(1899-1966) is a play with epoch-making significance. Teahouse, known as”a wonder of oriental drama”, is a peak of the Chinese stage play and also is a masterpiece around the world.

The three-act play Teahouse begins with Yutai Teahouse and，by depicting how the teahouse rises and declines and how the fate of people of different ranks to the teahouse changes，shows the vicissitudes of the Chinese society in fifty years.The teahouse is like a small society where people in various trades can meet.It is a miniature of the whole society.The three acts，in 30，000 characters，shows three cursed times and predicts that the dawn will soon come after the dark.

In the 1980s，with the reform and opening-up of China，the influence of the experimenting trend of the western drama on China brought about a heated discussion about drama.The call for diversity in drama challenged the pattern of the Chinese stage play that was mainly based on real-life stories.A new exploring erabegan when the Chinese drama tried a brand-new way of expression to challenge the new pattern.

Lin Zhaohua was a pioneer in this drama innovation.He directed Absolute Signal（1982），Railway Station（1983）and Wild Man（1985），which started the experimental drama trend in the 1980s. These works was a break-through of the Chinese-style real-life plays in terms of content and form and brought the Chinese modern drama into the stage of modernism. From 1990s, he, together with playwright Guo Shihang, directed Bird Man (1993), Chess Man (1995) and Fish Man(1997) and these plays were considered as the most profound reflection of the Chinese modern society and aroused wide attention in the culture circle both at home and abroad.

Since Lin Zhaohua, the stage drama in small-scale theatres was born and is growing. Because of its distinctive vanguard and experimental features, it is destined to be unaccepted by most people. However, it has grown rapidly and has boasteda huge number of works and loyal viewers.