Second Looks: Adapting History, Myth, and Icon on the Sinophone Stage

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel Proposal Application

Abstract

This panel examines how Sinophone playwrights and theater troupes have adapted iconic texts, stories, and events for the modern stage. It focuses on four plays that provoked audiences with daring staging, characterization, and reinterpretations of famous icons in symbolically-resonant locales. In the early Nanjing decade, the bilingual writer Lin Yutang wrote "Confucius Saw Nanzi," a “tragicomedy” inspired by a classical anecdote about the Sage’s encounter with a woman of dubious morals. When, in 1929, a student theater troupe had the gall to stage this irreverent play in Confucius’s hometown of Qufu, the ensuing controversy made national headlines. In 1945, shortly following the end of the Anti-Japanese War, the playwright Chen Baichen completed "Promotion Scheme," a farce about thieves impersonating government officials. The production was a hit, combining stereotypical representations of officials with thematic elements inspired by Chinese popular culture and Nikolai Gogol’s 1830s play "The Government Inspector." Two years later, in 1947, Li Jianwu’s new play "Women and Peace" reached even farther back, adapting Aristophanes’ "Lysistrata" and "The Frogs" to comment on the chaos of the Chinese Civil War. More recently, in 2005 and 2006, Golden Bough Theatre troupe adapted the Trojan War into the Hoklo epic "Troy, Troy…Taiwan," performed at historical sites of Taiwan’s besiegement by outside forces. Each of these works asserted the continuing relevance of ancient icons, events, and ideas. Why is it that such adaptations have been—and continue to be—so important in modern Chinese-language theater?

Area of Study

• China and Inner Asia

Session Organizer

• Christopher Rea, The University of British Columbia

Chair

• Alexa Huang, The George Washington University

Individual Presentations

• Drama and the Conflict Between Morality and Art in May Fourth Era China: The Controversy over the Performance of "Confucius Saw Nanzi" in 1929 - Diran John Sohigian, Shih Chien University Kaohsiung Campus

• The Clothes Make the Mandarin: Chen Baichen and the Art of Masquerade - Christopher Rea, The University of British Columbia

• Aristophanic Ideas and Huaju’s Cultural Identity - Joscha Chung, National Taipei University

• Imagining Cross-Cultural Identities in "Troy, Troy…Taiwan" - Sophia Yashih Liu, National Taiwan University

Discussant

• Alexa Huang, The George Washington University