The New Play Study Opera Reform Movement In The Late Qing Dynasty

The opera reform movement is the main content of the late Qing dynasty social enlightenment. In order to awake people and promote social revolution, the people who have new knowledge in that time considered opera as effective carrier of spreading new ideas. They called for new play instead of old play, used opera as a tool to transform folk culture and mobilized the whole society. These actions got the media and opera actors’ active support and response.The script is the foundation of opera performance. In the late Qing dynasty opera reform in fact around the script improvement creating and performance new scripts. They were the main content of the opera reform movement. The new intellectual criticized old plays, called for the ban on the obscene operas and advocated to perform new operas.’ They also imputed in the play writing. The new novel and print media became the carrier of new play spread. They published many new scripts which reflected new era, spread new ideas and new knowledge. The played a positive role in promoting opera reform movement. The new scripts in the late Qing dynasty were involved extensively in content. Especially historical plays and the plays of current events were the representative of the new scripts. These new or alerted the world with Chinese and foreign history, arouse people’s patriotic the people who were the progressives. They also expressed strong social change will. At the same time, they changed the old scripts. These new scripts were an important achievement of opera reform movement.Intellectual, the media and opera actors’ common participation promoted the development of the opera reform movement. Through the efforts of the opera actors, the stage performance practice of the new scripts caused positive response. These new operas became the tools of inspiring patriotic and national consciousness, spreading the social reform ideas and calling for revolution and constitution. They promoted by the social enlightenment movement in the late Qing dynasty. At the same time, the Chinese traditional opera acting style also promoted the development of drama industry itself.