Secrets Of The Chinese Drama
Cód:
491_9781443731065
A COMPLETE EXPLANATORY GUIDE TO ACTIONS AND SYMBOLS AS SEEN IN THE PERFORMANCE OF CHINESE DRAMAS by CECILIA S. L. ZUNG. With Synopses of Fifty Popular Chinese Plays and 240 illustrations. PLAY. The Heroic Maid Cheng Yen-tsius Writing a of Explanation. IF I remember rightly, I was taken to the theatre, when I was a child not more than four years old. My interest in the Chinese drama has grown with my years. No matter how heavy my days programme has been I fall under the spell of good plays, especially those in which a tan see p. 37 takes the leading part. Though my friends are not surprised to hear me boasting that there is not a single play in the repertoire of Mei Lan-fang 1f ffi , Chinas most famous female impersonator, and his pupil, Cheng Yen-tsiu H 5 t, which I have not seen, yet they do reprimand me for being so foolish as to continue attending the same performances by the same actors. With such fondness for the theatre I would have written earlier on Chinese drama had I not been overcome by the great difficulty of putting into a foreign language the complicated technique of acting on the Chinese stage, and the feeling of my lack in literary style. To the best of my knowledge no one else has attempted to interpret in English the Chinese stage technique. And now, it is only through the strong encouragement and help of interested friends that I have ventured to undertake this work. Here I wish to make the following acknowledgments and explana tions 1. Most of the material in Part II has been collected by Professor J. S. Chi jf in tU but the gestures were personally demon strated for me by Mei Lan-fang. 2. Dr. Mei has kindly permitted me to use his pictures to illustrate some of the more interesting movements. In addition there are some other movements interpreted by other artists and by myself. 3. I desire to express my gratitude to the firm of T. Chuang, Architects, Shanghai, for the theatre plans see pp. 7-l i which they have drawn for me. 4. The pictures of t
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