Performing Friendship: The White-Haired Girl and Sino-Soviet Theatrical Exchanges in the 1950s

• In Event: Provincializing Internationalism: Periodicals, Publishers and Practices III: Envisioning

Abstract

The performing arts played a central role in Sino-Soviet cultural diplomacy of the 1950s. In addition to high-profile tours by leading performance groups, productions of Soviet plays in China and Chinese plays in the USSR tested the boundaries of “national form” and the adaptability of performance styles across national borders in the socialist world. While the influence of Russian theatre and ballet in 1950s China is well documented, this paper reconstructs the forgotten history of Chinese plays staged by Soviet theatres in this period. I focus in particular on the Vakhtangov Theatre’s 1952 production of The White-Haired Girl (Sedaia devushka, in Chinese 白毛女 Bai mao nü — an iconic realization of the Maoist cultural line in theatre). Drawing on archival materials, this paper shows how a Chinese musical drama was adapted into a spoken-word drama for Soviet audiences through a complex process of negotiation involving institutional actors from the Vakhtangov Theatre and the Foreign Commission of the Soviet Writers’ Union, as well as Chinese interlocutors. The result was a production that deviated from orthodox Stanislavskian theatrical realism in its embrace of direct audience address, an attempt to “translate” Chinese scenic conventions for a Soviet audience.

Author

• Edward Tyerman, UC Berkeley