Staging Chinese Revolution: Theater, Film, and the Afterlives of Propaganda

378 Pages·2016·3.088 MB·English

by  Xiaomei Chen

STAGING CHINESE REVOLUTION
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STAGING CHINESE REVOLUTION
THEATER, FILM, AND THE AFTERLIVES OF PROPAGANDA
XIAOMEI CHEN
columbia university press New York
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columbia university press
publishers since 1893
new york chichester, west sussex
cup.columbia.edu
Copyright © 2017 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Chen, Xiaomei, 1954– author.
Title: Staging Chinese Revolution : theater, film, and the afterlives
of propaganda / Xiaomei Chen.
Description: New York : Columbia University Press, 2016. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: lccn 2015042459 (print) | lccn 2016002640 (ebook) |
isbn 9780231166386 (cloth : alk. paper) | isbn 9780231541619 (electronic)
Subjects: LCSH: China—History—1949—Historiography. | Theater—Political
aspects—China—History—20th century. | Heads of state—China—Biography. |
Biography—Political aspects. | China—Politics and government—1949—Biography.
Classification: lcc ds777.549 .c47 2016 (print) | lcc ds777.549 (ebook) |
ddc 951.05072—dc23
lc record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015042459

Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent
and durable acid-free paper.
Printed in the United States of America
c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
cover image: Song and Dance “Morning Light.”
From The Road to Revival. Courtesy of Li Ge
cover design: Mary Ann Smith
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To my daughter, Miriam Siying Halperin,
and her generation of readers,
who might want to read about Chinese performance arts
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contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction
Propaganda Performance, History, and Landscape
1
1. The Place of Chen Duxiu
Political Theater, Dramatic History, and the Question of Representation
56
2. The Return of Mao Zedong
A People’s Hero and a “New” Legacy in Postsocialist Performance
101
3. The Stage of Deng Xiaoping
The “Incorrigible Capitalist Roader”
165
4. The Myth of the “Red Classics”
Three Revolutionary Music-and-Dance Epics and Their Peaceful Restorations
235
Epilogue
Where Are the “Founding Mothers”?
287
Notes 297
Works Cited 317
Index 341
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Acknowledgments
For a book twelve years in the making, I am indebted to many teachers,
friends, relatives, colleagues, and others in my life who assisted me through
this long process.
My parents were my fi rst teachers. My father, Chen Yongjing, studied and
taught stage design in the National Drama School from the 1930s to the 1940s
in Jiang’an, Sichuan province, together with Cao Yu and Huang Zuolin, and
worked as the leader of the stage and costume design team in the former China
Youth Art Theater beginning in 1949. My mother, Ji Shuping, played Nora in
Ibsen’s A Doll ’s House in 1956 and starred, in the last two plays of her acting
career, in Brecht’s Life of Galileo in 1979 and Jules Vallès’s L a c ommune de Paris
in 1983. An unknown drama in Western theater history, Vallès’s play inspired
Chinese performers and audiences in early post-Mao China with its depiction
of the struggles and suff erings of the people of Paris and their heroic deeds in
establishing the Paris Commune. It was one of my earliest introductions to
staging socialist-inspired revolution on a world stage, in a remote time and
place from its point of origin. Unfortunately, the China Youth Art Theater was
“abolished” at the high tides of economic reform, with only two dozen former
employees still living in its old compound in Beijing. I think oft en of my child-
hood years growing up among them. We were one big family bound together
by an important theater that had staged many of the “red classic” plays in the
fi rst seventeen years in the existence of the PRC. I am grateful to my sister,
Chen Feibi, my brother, Chen Ji, and my sister-in-law, Liu Hongjun, who took
care of my parents in Beijing and attended numerous funerals as “children of
our theater” to bid farewell at the time of death of ailing members. This book
is my tribute to their fabulous lives and outstanding careers.
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