Study On TangYing Operas’ Stage Art

In the history of Qing Dynasty operas, TangYing’s creations are distinctive. Acting differently from other playwrights of his time, TangYing paid a lot of attention to performance’s impression, and actively learned from folk operas and local ones in order to enrich his own. For that reason TangYing’s operas were not only rather folksy, but also managed to preserve the elegance as it is in Kun Operas in the same time, and it is said his works could be enjoyable to both aristocrats and commons. For a long time, people prefer to put TangYing’s operas back in the scene of an ongoing competition between Kun Operas and local ones at that time, and then study them mainly from some common perspectives such as his ideas, the artistic features and other aspects, so as to demonstrate his success in absorbing local operas’ merits. However, the studies on the stage art of his operas are obviously scarce. TangYing’s operas are diverse and rich in contents. Apart from scripts, his heavily meaningful stage art is also worthy of further research.Some previous studies are reviewed and summarized in the introduction part, and their theoretical focuses and shortcomings will be put forward. By doing so, attention is drawn to the essential attribute of opera, which should be a kind of performing art, and clarification is made that it’s necessary and feasible for the thesis to consider the stage art of TangYing’s operas as a new angle to work on. On the basis of pervious studies, and by discussing about TangYing’s success in on-stage practice, the thesis, which starts with performing, will try to analyze and shed some light on the performing art of TangYing’s operas.Chapter 1:background information of TangYing’s creations. To give a full view of the environment in which TangYing’s operas were created, this chapter will dig into 3 aspects, i.e. TangYing’s life experiences, friendships and dramatic theories. First of all, by exhibiting TangYing’s life experiences, his personality is fully illustrated, such as diligentness, uncorruptness, being care about people’s well-being, indifference to fame and wealth, etc. Secondly, concerning TangYing’s friendships, the fact that he intimately contacted with many famous playwrights of his time is very noticeable, which seemed to exert direct influences upon his opera writing. Finally, as to TangYing’s dramatic theories, it is found that he not only attached great importance to performance’s impression, but also linked his theories and ideas so closely to on-stage practices.Chapter 2:the plot setting. Several dimensions of TangYing’s plot setting could be looked into, i.e. rhythms, structures and scenes. Firstly, as to rhythms, TangYing used fast ones and slow ones in turns. By mixing different elements together, e.g. singing/acting and fight-acting, leisureliness and liveliness, joy and sorrow, etc, TangYing controlled the rhythms of his operas so well that he could always manage to meet the aesthetic needs of audiences. Secondly, structurally speaking, TangYing was good at embedding a story into another one, which is chiefly achieved by bringing in parts of local operas, or by setting dreams for characters. Thirdly, TangYing is good at writing vivid, dramatic scenes in 2 ways. On one hand, he always created coincidences in which lovers or enemies bump into each others totally by chance; on the other, he limited audiences’angle of view so that they could only see certain developments but are blind to some others. In a word, with highly awareness of the needs of both viewers and performers, TangYing was always seeing from the angle of his audiences, and that was what enabled him to create performative and ornamental dramatic scenes.Chapter 3:roles. As to TangYing’s roles, there are three distinctive features. Firstly, there are cross-gender performances. In TangYing’s plays, sometimes a Dan is arranged to play a male role, while a Fu or a Jing is arranged to play a female role. Secondly, the comedic tilt always exists. On one hand, the roles of Chou were set in almost every one of TangYing’s plays; on the other, generally speaking, TangYing tended to give clownish and comedic elements to other roles. Thirdly, TangYing adjusted the role arrangements when he created adaptations of local operas, as he did in Zhui Bai Qiu. TangYing’s version did do some reasonable, groundbreaking adjustments, though his arrangement of TieDan is imperfect.Chapter 4:The application of Kejie. In TangYing’s operas, a full set of stylized acts are used to tip his audiences about some information on the stage, e.g. characters’gestures, actions, emotions, expressions, stage effects, etc. Firstly, acts for gestures and actions are accurate and brilliant. TangYing paid a lot of attention to the performing effects of all gestures and actions, no matter they are narrative performing that tells the characteristics of a person, or skill showing like dancing and martial-art acting, which is very good for building his characters. Secondly, acts for emotions and expressions are lively and vivid, and they are praiseworthy in 3 ways, i.e. they were enabled to express multiple feelings and are rich in quantities; facial motions are combined with body motions; TangYing can highlight characters’emotions by changing the acts from one to another or contrasting one to another. Thirdly, acts for stage effects are dimensional and direct. TangYing have plenty acts to tip audiences about stage effects such as background scenery, lighting, firework, music, etc, which demonstrates his favorable notice of performing. As logs that recording performances, Kejie are the instrument that an opera’s performance relies on. By analyzing TangYing’s Kejie, we can gain an insight into his performing art.Chapter 5:stage design. The thesis discusses three aspects of TangYing’s stage design. Firstly, TangYing’s costumes are always very meaningful, and speaking of which, there are several features, i.e. costumes for characters sometimes changes; he defined characters’ personalities and conducts through costumes; he made his costumes typal; his costumes exhibit critical realism ideas. Secondly, face-painting of TangYing’s operas is colourful. It is embodied in several ways, i.e. face-painting skills break the tradition of profiling; appearances change during the plays; the face-painting for Fu and Chou is relatively exaggerating; face-painting effects match the identities of roles and the story of an opera; and TangYing was also quite attentive to the making of beards. Thirdly, TangYing’s props are numerous and diverse.3 features make his props-choosing different, i.e. they are closely related to his stories and serve to develop stories and shape characters; they are always most common to people and their daily life, and are full of local flavors; they are stylized and symbolic. The above points show that TangYing attached much importance to opera styling such as costumes, face-painting and props. Such is it, another proof of his high regard of performing effects.Chapter 6:music. In this chapter, the thesis analyzes TangYing’s stage music from 2 angles, i.e. instrumental accompaniment and the way of singing. Firstly, the instrumental accompaniment helps to express sonds and feelings of the operas. There are three distinctive features for TangYing’s instrumental accompaniment, i.e. taking instrumental ensemble to reconcile the rhythm of sonds and feelings; enhancing the operas’feelings by instrumental accompaniment; instrumental adjustment is used to reflect the plot changes. Anyway, TangYing’s use of instruments and music are quite sensible, because he knew how to make it conform to operas’rhythms, characters’emotions and on-stage atmosphere. Secondly, singing tunes was learned from local operas. This can be demonstrated by three points, i.e. some folk songs were implanted; local music for voices is absorbed; and TangYing also applied some singing ways of local operas. By learning from folk signing skills, TangYing not only enriched on-stage performances but also activated the atmosphere. His stage music is therefore more theatricalized and interesting, and managed to make his operas vivid and active in the same time, without losing the elegance as it is in kun-opera. One may well say such attempts and reforms achieved multiple purposes.Generally speaking, TangYing’s operas are very meaningful in terms of both scripts and on-stage performing. On the basis of on-stage performing, and by holding on to the details of TangYing’s scripts and analyzing it, the thesis would try its best to thoroughly re-exhibit TangYing’s stage art. If the inadequacies of previous studies could be made up for, the thesis is considered to be fulfilling its target, which is to make whatever contributions it could to the research of TangYing’s operas.