“Nothing Is Greater Than the Show”, A Paradox in History: WU Zu-Guang and the Movement of Chinese Opera Reform (1951-1967)

• Main Authors: Liu, Liang-Yen, 劉亮延
• Other Authors: 劉紀蕙
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/8qtd7r

博士 === 國立交通大學 === 社會與文化研究所 === 103 === Developed from discourses on “national character”, “national style” and “folk character” in current Chinese Modernity issues of East Asia Studies, this dissertation expands the literature reviews of “the Movement of Chinese Opera Reform”(1951-1967). It relocates the plays and thinkings by Zu-Guang Wu (1917-2003), a Chinese playwright, regarded as the Chinese Tennessee Williams. Divided into three chapters, this dissertation analyses seven plays by Wu, <The Phoenix Town>(1937), <Return On A Snowy Night>(1942), <Cowherd and Girl Weaver>(1942), <The Journey of Young Men>(1944), <The Goddess Chang's fly to the Moon>(1947), <Tao San-Chun’s Marriage>(1962), <The Traveling Troupe>(1979); and shapes into three perspectives, (1) the relations between urban romance and student movement, (2) the effects of troupe reformation onto the value-form of actor’s career identity, (3) the psyche of Wu’s “Fans-ism” behind new chronicle plays and historical narrations. It explains, as a playwright, how did Wu response to the struggle of Chinese modernization, and how did he encounter certain intensity and paradox under the triangular structure of “nation”, “prose drama” and “Chinese opera”. And it argues that the scream of “Nothing Is Greater Than the Show” from the folk artists presented by three perspectives as above in Wu’s participation, is not only an epistemic turn, but also a psychic form. It concludes as a retreat on “the Movement of Chinese Opera Reform”, that during the Korean War, along with the beginning of Opera Reform Movement, the underclass in Chinese society suffered certain sense of dismiss of the Other, as well as Japan; and there was once upon a flash of Fascistic fanaticism appeared; these aspects are inherited by contemporary Chinese cultural governance and the collective consciousness.