'Kunju', Chinese classical theater and its revival in social, political, economic, and cultural contexts

This dissertation is a study of kunju, a genre of Chinese classical theater, and the politically-laden Kunju Revival during the 1950s in China.; Part One, a synchronic study provides a broad discussion and analysis of kunju's musical and cultural foundations, including its historical background, social circumstances, theatrical nature, linguistic features, overall musical construction, and singing style. Part Two is a case study of a famous kunju actor, Zhou Chuanying, an important troupe, the Zhejiang Kunju Troupe, and the kunju revival during the 1950s as well as the current kunju crisis. By using a diachronic approach, the work examines internal and external factors that caused kunju's fall in the early twentieth century, describes kunju's survival and involvement in political issues, and explains how and why the kunju revival phenomenon took place during the 1950s in socialist China. Finally, the study explores kunju's new reality of struggling to survive under the capitalist economy in today's China.; The study concludes that the Kunju revival was primarily a political issue rather than a theatrical event, typical of the time period. It not only victimized kunju into being a form of political propaganda but also symbolized the tragedy of Chinese traditional culture during the mid-twentieth century. The author also shows how the destiny of a theatrical genre, like other cultural subjects, is inevitably associated with and reflects the specific social, political, economic, and cultural contexts in which it exists.; The dissertation uses interdisciplinary approaches, combining methodologies from anthropology, historical ethnomusicology, and the theoretical perspective of "reflectivity," i.e., contextual analysis. In this latter regard, the "text" of kunju serves as a "thread" weaving together related "fabrics" to "re-construct" a broad pictorial "texture" of Chinese music, theater, and culture in the past and present.