A Study Of Xu Banmei’s Theatrical Concepts And Huaju Writing

Xu Banmei was a well-known theater activist in the history of early Chinese drama.His contributions to early Huaju are manifold.His view of theater seems unique compared to those of his time.He offered his views on theatrical performance,theatrical texts,theatrical theory and the demands on the audience.A large number of his plays showed his bold practice of his theatrical views.From 1909 until 1942,he translated and compiled many plays.In his scripts,we can see both signs of approaching the world’s most cutting-edge theatre.At the same time,he was a writer of the "Xingwei" and had a strong sense of the people.His works reflected his concern for kinds of people in China.Influenced by artistry and commerce,he also tried to combine theater with other artistic disciplines,such as fiction and cinema.By examining his life history and trying to collect some historical documents which were missing in previous studies,this thesis tries to explore his theatrical concepts and their causes.The first chapter will provide an overview of his life history and important events.First of all,the article argues that his involvement in theater as a non-professional dramatist.He was a teacher who tried to use theater to educate people and enlighten them.Secondly,he was deeply influenced by the Japanese Xinpai Drama,as well as by the A.D.C.Theatre Company’s performances.In order to learn Japanese language and Japanese culture,he usually went to the theater.This became the beginning of a subtle connection between him and theater activities later in his life.Then,he made friends with some famous playwright,such as Lu Jingruo,Zheng Zhengqiu,and there were some similarities with them.Finally,his complicated pseudonyms are difficult to study,but at the same time,it maybe open up new research ideas,as they refered to his multiple domain identities and pointed to himself.In the second chapter,this paper will sort out Xu Banmei’s comments and discussions related to theater,and summarize his view of theater.He was influenced by the realism concept of the Japanese Xinpai Drama and the A.D.C.Theatre Company acting in China.His plays were true to the life of the citizens and have a realistic character,focusing on the psychology of the characters.He advocated the text of the play,and presented a lot of experience in the creation of dramatic texts.He emphasized the act of the play,Promoted popular acting.He also tried to unite theater,fiction and film.These theatrical concepts were of great significance to the development of early Huaju.The periods of Xu Banmei’s creation of drama can be divided into approximately three parts:1909 to 1921 as the early period,1922 to 1930 as the middle period,and1935 to 1942 as the late period.Through an in-depth analysis of his dramatic works in this three periods,we attempt to not only sketch the different styles of his dramatic creations in different periods,but also reveal the cultural connotations and artistic qualities of his dramatic creations.We believe that Xu Banmei’s early Huaju were extremely mixed.On the one hand,due to some translated works,the boundaries between their Translations,Compilations and Creations are not clear enough.We try to discover the value of his translated works by comparing the differences between his translated plays and the original ones.On the other hand,he had created different types of plays,such as tragedies,comedies,funny plays,family plays,factory plays,juvenile plays and other genres with different themes.He also created some comic works to catch the audience’s interest,resulting in the low standard of these plays.The real value of his theatrical production of this period was buried.In middle period,Xu Banmei’s comedies tended to flirt with current trends.Compared with the new playwrights who emerged at the same time,he had gradually shown a tendency to lag behind the times.But he boldly explored the association between theater and different media in this period,and his dramatic creations in this period were of significant value in the exploration of dramatic forms and time.According to the current historical data,the number of his late plays was relatively small.The content of the plays was not surprising,mostly focusing on novelty or romantic stories,less thoughtful,and deviated from the direction of the development of that times.This thesis argues that the value of Xu Banmei’s plays was multifaceted.His multiple attempts in the field of Huaju.The hybridity,theatrical consciousness with modernity and anti-modernity in his plays,searching for the awareness and union of different art media,reflect the uniqueness of Xu Banmei’s theatrical concepts and the significant value of his theatrical practice.