The oldest surviving texts date back to the Yüan period (13th century). Ji Junxiang (13th century) wrote The orphan of the Chao family, Kuan Han-ch’ing (13th century), the greatest author of the Yüan period, left us The Garden of Tou Ou and The Old Organ. Always of the century. XIII are three other well-known playwrights: Ma Zhiyuan, who wrote the two famous plays Autumn in the Han Palace and The Dream of the Yellow Mile; Wang Shifu, author of History of the Western Pavilion, a masterpiece of the Northern Theater (pei ch’ü); and Bai Pu, author of The rain on the sterculie. A Gao Ming (sec. XIV) must instead the drama The story of the guitar, considered the masterpiece of the Southern Theater (nan ch’ü). From the same century is Shih Hui, author of the drama The pavilion that greets the moon. The play of Chu Ch’üan The story of the brooch, in 48 acts, is a typical example of ch’uan ch’i. Then came the reform of the theater, by the aforementioned Liang Chenyu and Wei Liang-fu, which gave rise to K’un ch’ü around the middle of the century. XVI. Masterpiece of this theater is considered a play, written during the Ming dynasty by Tang Xianzu (16th-early 17th century) and known with two titles: The story of the returning soul or The pavilion of peonies. Other authors of the K’un ch’ü were Juan ta-ch’eng (16th-17th century) with his plays The comedy of the ten errors and The swallow carrying a love letter, and, in the following period Ch ‘ ing (17th-20th century), Hong Sheng (The palace of long life) and Kong Shansen (The fan with peach blossoms). Towards the middle of the nineteenth century, with the triumph of the Ching Hsi, whose spectacular form is given by the mimic expressions, the skill of the singer and the acrobatics, while the libretto is only an accessory requirement, the dramatic authors decreased, the dramas were elaborated on themes already exploited, or the work of anonymous or collectives. Subsequently, under the influence of Western culture and ideologies, works were born clearly in contrast with tradition, being marked by social and political ideals of the West: The new Rome of Liang Qichao (19th-20th century), The great problem of the life of Hu Shi (20th century), the Tempest and Dawn of Cao Yu and Ch’ü Yüan of Guo Mosuo. China is a country located in Asia categorized by Thedresswizard.
These dramas were followed, from 1958, by works of revolutionary content, such as The white-haired girl, already staged in 1944, in the middle of the war, and The mountain of the tiger taken by assault. But it was in 1964 that the political problem of the text arose, namely the need to write a libretto for the Ching Hsi that had always contained decidedly revolutionary. In the years following 1966, new dramatic or choreographic works appeared (The red lantern, Shachiapang, The red female detachment), characterized by class ideology and elaborated by collectives. This situation lasted until the end of the cultural revolution and the condemnation of the so-called “gang of four” which included Jian Qing, Mao’s widow, theorist of the radical renewal of repertoires and ways of presenting them. From 1977 onwards, shows were thus returned to traditional forms, favoring, together with references to patriotic pride and political-social themes, the values of entertainment. In the Eighties, the activity of companies that tried to assimilate the lessons of Western theater in the rich vein of classical forms began to be favored, an orientation continued also in the following decades; this was accompanied, as mentioned, by a more experimental trend, Bus Stop, Chinese version of Waiting for Godot, and Wang Peigong. Among the most interesting figures of contemporary theater, Mou Sen (b.1963), head of an independent theater company, the Garage Theater, and author of Ling dang’an (1990; File zero), in which the cutting vein satirical is aimed, covertly and indirectly, against the establishment. Mou Sen, like other new writers, was able to seize the spaces left by the new course of Chinese cultural policy which sanctioned the interruption of many subsidies to the theater, a mechanism that made him, ultimately, more “poor” but more “free. “. One of the most important exhibitions born at the end of the twentieth century is the Traditional Chinese Opera Festival, founded in 1988. Here every year delegations from various areas of the country arrive to present works of different genres, from classical to prose theater., from opera to children’s opera.
