A Study On Chinese One-Act Play

This article takes Chinese one-act play as the research object.Through observing its short and pithy dramatic structure,the flexible and changeable creation methods,and carries on the overall grasp and the concrete analysis to its several creative peaks in the history of Chinese drama,and this paper tries to sum up the reasons for the explosion of his creation climax and the spiritual characteristics in a specific era and political environment.In terms of structure,this paper systematically sorts out the development of Chinese one-act play in the script creation,dramatist groups,and performance methods of Chinese one-act dramas in the past half century.On the vertical axis,the creative climax of the three one-act plays in the period of the May 4th Movement,the Anti-japanese War and the 17 th year after the founding of the People's Republic is taken as the time background.On the horizontal axis,the writer's works and artistic characteristics are taken as the object of investigation,avoiding the one-act play attached to the chronological division of the history of Chinese drama as a simple ‘history' elaboration,but following its unique creative creative law,supporting its exploration and innovation,with the Times resonance of the spiritual temperament.Details as follow:In the May 4th period,the one-act played the role of ‘leading' and ‘creating'.Shi Hu's the affair of a lifetime is one of the hallmarks of the transformation of Chinese drama to modernity.From the point of view of creation,the relationship between the characters in the one-act drama is simple,the plot is single,the creation threshold is relatively low,easy to grasp.For beginners,it is the realistic choice to peep the creation path of modern drama.Therefore,the one-act play became the first choice for the intellectuals of the May 4th Movement when they set foot in modern drama.Han Tian,Xilin Tian,Yuqian Ouyang and Shen Hong,the pioneers of the Chinese drama movement,all started their creative career with one-act plays,the theatre has produced such classic one-act plays as The night of earning the tiger,The oppression,After going home,The good son.As a result,the one-act play has played its pioneering role as the leading form of May 4th drama literature,and has matured in art,with a surge.During the anti-japanese war,the one-act play resonated with the same frequency of times and showed a strong spirit of ‘exploration' and ‘experiment'.The prosperity of one-act play in this stage has its objective and realistic conditions and performance applicability.It is the unique exploration and innovation of the anti-japanese war one-act drama to take materials locally,write collectively and perform on the move.During the anti-japanese war,the performing troupes toured the countryside,the army,the fields and the countryside to conduct propaganda and education,and created various forms of performances,such as live newspapers,street plays,teahouse plays and so on.In the early days of the anti-japanese war,the most frequently performed one-act street drama was a good whip,namely The three rivers,The last strategy,and Put Down Your Whip.As the acting team enters the streets and alleys,it is staged in squares,fields,and even by the barn.The actors and the audience merge into one body,creating a new type of watching and performing relationship,and opening up a completely new performing form of Chinese drama.The creation of drama in the 17 th year of the People's Republic of China ushered in another climax of the prosperity and development of one-act play,and the key words of this period were ‘innovation' and ‘breakthrough'.Due to the needs of the times,the limited life accumulation and the support of the leading departments of literature and art,a large number of young amateur writers joined the ranks of one-act play creation,breaking through the limitations of professional writers as the main creative subject.In the early days of the People's Republic of China,a number of one-act plays with the theme of Women's liberation and the one-act satirical comedies in Before the arrival of the new director,and The grapes have rotted in the fourth kind of plays,breaking through the limitations of the common ideological content in the drama creation at that time.The image is limited only by "heroes" and the formulation and conceptualization of the work.This kind of exploration and breakthrough has provided the very good creation experience for the drama development.In the early 1980 s,Chinese experimental drama came to the stage of history.The rise of experimental drama in the new period originates from the dramatic crisis caused by the decline of social problem drama,which is the product of the joint efforts and bold exploration of dramatists and directors to explore the way out of drama.But as early as 1979 Min Xie's one-act play Why did I die and 1980 Zhongjun Ma,Hongyuan Jia and Xinhua Qu's cooperated in one-act play which named Heat flow outside the house,the experiment of breaking the traditional form has already begun.It can be said that the last batch of experimental one-act dramas that appeared in the 1980 s was its last swan song before going to decline.To sum up,the one-act play has shown three creative peaks in different historical stages.Then in the 1990 s,as the overall decline of drama art gradually faded out of people's vision,it is now only continuing playing a role in the field of drama teaching in colleges and universities.It seems that its short,agile and artistic creation,as well as the propaganda function of political form and social life,has been inherited or even replaced by other small-scale drama styles such as sketches and other small drama styles.However,looking back on its past glory,it is not difficult to find that Chinese one-act play has always been a pioneer in different historical contexts,standing at the forefront of drama art innovation,with its unique spirit of exploration and experiment and sense of resonating with the times,it has left a deep and thought-provoking mark in the history of Chinese drama.In the context of the declining situation of the present-day theatrical creation,the once glory of Chinese one-act plays should be recalled,and the spirit of innovation and the unique sense of "re-scene play" should be recalled,i am afraid that it is of great significance to present Chinese drama creation.