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GERMAN PLAY: Beijing People’s Art Theatre brings German drama The Butcher to the Chinese stage in 2005, starring Zhu Xu (right)
MASTER ROLE: Pu Cunxin (front left), Vice President of Beijing People’s Art Theatre and renowned theater actor, performs in a drama titled Li Bai
This September, the best of China’s youngest and oldest theater artists will perform side by side in a special drama called Jia Zi Yuan, featuring a cast with a wide range of experience—from new actors born in the 1990s to stage legends still active in their 90s.
The show will be produced by the Beijing People’s Art Theatre (BPAT), China’s top national theater company, at the Capital Theatre on the famously bustling Wangfujing Street.
“This is not only an artistic creation process composed of team building, rehearsal and performance, but also a lesson of passing on the spirit, working style and traditions of the company,” said Zhang Heping, President of BPAT and artistic director of the drama.
The wide age gap of the performers gives the drama a deep sense of legacy. Founded on June 12, 1952, by drama master Cao Yu(1910-96), the theater has produced nearly 300 dramas of differing styles, entertaining audiences both at home and abroad. This year marks its 60th anniversary, and drama will play a central role in the celebration of this special moment.
Establishment
BPAT was first established in 1950, in the second year after the People’s Republic of China was established. At that time, it was a comprehensive art group consisting of opera, drama and dance.
Later on in 1952, the organization joined forces with the Central Academy of Drama(CAD), and the two together formed BPAT.
The newly established body was not the only member of the Chinese drama family, but came to be seen as the most dynamic one.
In the 1950s, many Chinese provinces and municipalities started their own local art theaters, including Liaoning Province, Tianjin, Shanghai and others. None of them, however, has had long-lasting success. Shanghai People’s Art Theatre closed several years ago, while those in Liaoning and Tianjin shifted to producing TV series in the 1980s, putting on few stage performances in recent years.
In contrast, BPAT has persistently thrived. With a group of top actors and playwrights, it has continuously put on high-quality perfor- mances both in China and overseas. Many of their productions have won state-level awards, leaving their counterparts far behind.
In July of this year, it presented 19 performances in Shanghai within half a month. The shows were so popular that tickets sold out three months in advance.
Its major stage, of course, is in its home base of Beijing at the Capital Theatre. It has long been a cultural landmark and revered center of the arts for Beijing and the whole country, much like the Bolshoi Theatre for Russia and the John F. Kennedy Center for the United States.
For Chinese drama professionals, it is the bastion that defends and promotes national theater arts, and the cultural landmark that best exemplifies this art form in the country. For audiences, it is a place portraying beautiful expressions of life.
Spirit
At the rehearsal hall of the Capital Theatre, there hangs a work of Chinese calligraphy with the four characters Xi Bi Tian Da—“Art always comes first.” The phrase was championed by founder Cao Yu, who has been described as China’s Shakespeare by the British media.
“BPAT has a rich history, but more important is the artists’ deep love and persistent pursuit for the art of drama,” said the drama master a year before he passed away.
Placing art above all strikes at the core of their spirit. The theater has exercised this motto with careful devotion.
“This motto inspires our team to have a reverence for art and aspire to excellence in their performances,” said Ren Ming, one of the directors of Jia Zi Yuan and Vice President of BPAT.
Indeed, pursuit of excellence has penetrated into every facet of the organization’s art direction.
The exquisite shows are possible thanks to hard practice and strict attention to detail, said Cui Ning, another Vice President of BPAT.
Depending on the actors’ experience level, it generally takes about 10 days to memorize a drama script. But the theater’s policy is to rehearse for 60 days before the release of a new drama. Thus, the actors have to recite the lines repeatedly until they are totally immersed in the story.
“Art always comes first” is followed by another mantra within the theater: “There can be no lines, but mustn’t be no performance.” Shu Xiuwen, an old playwright, has exemplified this artistic ethic throughout her long career. In the 1950s, she was already a top performer. But when she performed in a Soviet drama called The Man With a Gun, she was willing to play a small non-speaking role as a secretary.
Few thought the role left any room for creativity, but she made it possible. Rather than mechanically “ticking” on the typewriter, she altered the noises of the typing sounds for the stage.
Of the 100-year history of the Chinese drama, BPAT represents half of its history. The group’s masters, excellent works and outstanding actors lent the theater a unique status as a legend in the artistic community.
Goal
According to theater lore, the organization’s success is owed in large part to a 42-hourlong discussion of the four founders several days after the theater was established.
“Those 42 hours were so important because it determined the appearance and direction of the organization in the following 60 years,” said Xie Xizhang, a Chinese cultural critic.
Shortly after the theater was founded in 1952, the four leaders of the organization—President Cao, Vice President Jiao Juyin(1905-75), Vice President Ouyang Shanzun(1914-2009) and Party Secretary Zhao Qiyang(1918-96) held a marathon brainstorming session. The four were China’s leading dramatic artists of the day.
After the exhausting debate, they agreed on the theater’s mission: To build BPAT into a world-class institution with its own unique style and theoretical system as well as distinguished national characteristics, much like Russia’s Bolshoi Theatre.
The theater staff has stayed true to the founders’ ideals, continually pushing the theater forward in today’s rapidly changing society.
Creative realism is a prominent style of the theater. An example was the performance of Long Xu Gou 50 years ago, in a drama written by China’s great writer Laoshe (1899-1966). The play told a story about how the government handled the Longxugou drainage ditch and improved local people’s life.
To understand the reality of the characters in the drama, the production team went to Longxugou, a drainage ditch in the south of downtown Beijing where the story was set. The performers saw firsthand how residents of that area lived, and went on to present a vivid show.
The successful performance of Long Xu Gou not only illustrated the fate of a group of ordinary people, but also set a standard for the theater in its pursuit of realistic portrayals of everyday life in China.
Highlights
“Looking at the hundred-year history of Chinese drama, two things stand out the most: One is the work of Cao, and the other is the performing school created by Jiao,” said Tian Benxiang, a renowned scholar who once served as head of the Drama Institute at the Chinese National Academy of Arts.
Cao, founder of the theater, was a genius playwright. He published his first dramatic work entitled Thunderstorm, regarded as the groundbreaking work of Chinese drama, at the age of 22. When the play was performed on stage in Shanghai in 1936, audiences were shocked.
Nearly 80 years later, it remains the most frequently performed drama by most theater groups. Even world-famous kungfu master and actor Bruce Lee once performed a role in it.
Many have praised Cao’s storied career, first as a performer and later as a playwright. He once played as the hero in a drama based on A Doll’s House by Henrik Johan Ibsen. Cao himself reserved praise for an accomplished peer in the theater business, once saying that “BPAT can go without me, but it can’t go without Jiao.”
Jiao of BPAT was like Stanislavski for the Bolshoi Theatre of Russia. Jiao was a master of the Chinese dramatic stage arts, said Tian.
Born in December 1905, Jiao was a famous director, drama theorist and translator. In 1931, he founded the Chinese Opera Junior College and boldly adopted a new education system and teaching methods, cultivating a group of illustrious performers of Peking Opera.
Jiao studied English, French, Russian and Latin, and in 1935 he went to Paris University in France to study European drama theory, with an emphasis on the Stanislavski system—a series of techniques used to train actors to convey believable emotions in their performances.
When BPAT was founded in 1952, he became its vice president.
While directing Long Xu Gou, Jiao for the first time implemented the Theory of Inner Vision, drawing forth inspiration from real life into his stage characters.
“The actors should first carefully observe and experience life to form inner visions deep within their heart, and then use their imagination to master these visions from the outside,”said Jiao.
Applying these theoretical techniques to the stage made the performance of Long Xu Gou starring Yu Shizhi and Yezi an unprecedented success.
Laoshe, the original writer of the drama, earned the title of People’s Artist, the highest honor for the Chinese literature and art circles.
And the people living in the real Longxugou, a drainage ditch in the south of downtown Beijing where the story was set, were amazed by the play’s accurate depiction of real life. “The characters seemed to have walked right out of our neighborhood and onto the stage,” a resident once said.
Yezi was later chosen as a representative of the Municipal People’s Congress of Beijing.
Luminary
When speaking of BPAT, the first thing that comes to mind is Yu Shizhi, star of Long Xu Gou. In the drama, he played the part of a poor artist who was driven crazy by the absurd society that preceded the People’s Republic of China.
His successful stage career included a starring role as the Chinese leader Mao Zedong (1893-1976) in opera Long March.
As a practitioner and teacher of the Theory of Inner Vision, he was an outstanding representative of BPAT’s performance style.
Born in Tangshan, north China’s Hebei Province, on July 9, 1927, Yu was regarded as a highly accomplished actor. Though he left the stage many years ago, his legacy continues. His expressions on stage have become part of the curriculum at drama schools, and his performances have been adopted and modified by many other actors.
“Experienced actors can form a unique personal charm through their inner refinement, as well as their interpretation, understanding and imagination of performance arts. You can see this kind of quality in the older generations of actors at BPAT,” said Yang Qianwu, Vice Chairman and Secretary General of Beijing Dramatists Association.
“The audience isn’t just appreciating a character; they’re also appreciating the actor’s personal charisma. An actor without stage presence is dull,” said Yang.
Yu’s peak performance was in Teahouse, a drama written by Laoshe known for boasting the highest achievement of BPAT.
Published in 1957 and brought to stage in 1958, Teahouse is not only Laoshe’s best dramatic piece but also a monumental work in the history of modern Chinese drama.
But few people know that Yu also made significant contributions to the creation of the script. For instance, he suggested Laoshe change the ending as a discussion between three old men and make his characters commit suicide in despair. Yu’s suggestions strengthened the drama’s sense of tragedy and formed a memorable climax at the ending.
The play depicts 70 characters over a period of 50 years spanning three dynastic periods. It is an epic play with a high degree of artistic integrity, conspicuous national characteristics and historical accuracy.
Though the play has few major events, nor much suspense or conflict, it managed to grasp the audiences’ attention via the characters, dialogues and acting.
Performed abroad since the 1980s, the drama has been well received in the United States and European countries.
Innovation
“Even today, when we play a role, we think of how Mr. Yu and his fellow actors would deal with this character if they were still here,” said Pu Cunxin, a popular actor star- ring in the coming Jia Zi Yuan and the revival of Teahouse, in an interview with Beijing Review. Pu is also vice president of BPAT.
In 2005, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Jiao’s birth, the theater once again performed Teahouse. It was the first time the theater presented the classic drama since Yu bid farewell to the stage in 1991.
Pursuing innovation onstage while upholding the essence of the past has always been a principle of the theater.
“While we try to stay true to the original, we also want to make today’s audience relate to the story. We want to surpass previous performances to revitalize the traditional drama. This is the best inheritance,” said Lin Zhaohua, director of the new edition of Teahouse.
Several years ago, in fact, then Vice President Yu suggested that Lin re-release Teahouse and approved of his fresh approach to the story.
Lin has been regarded as a pioneer in theatrical innovation. In September of 1982, he directed a breakthrough play called Jue Dui Xin Hao (Signals). The storyline itself was not novel: It tells the story of passengers on a train hijacked by robbers.
To express the psychological experiences of the characters, Lin used a stream of consciousness style, a technique popular in the West but still new in China at that time. The timeline of the play alternated between the actual time and space and the characters’ mental time and space. The drama also tackled the controversial topic of unemployment and the“lost” younger generation.
The play’s debut was met with tepid reviews, but Yu and other elder artists supported the then 46-year-old Lin’s direction. The play went on to become a major success.
Following the play’s 100th performance, Cao sent Lin a congratulatory message, praising him as the “pride of BPAT.” His reputation as a maverick, however, lives on even to today. At 76 years old, Lin is still producing innovative new plays.
Lin’s fearless approach to the stage has garnered support both inside and out of BPAT.
“We should strive to evolve while building BPAT as a world-class theater with a solid academic influence,” said Zhang, President of BPAT at the celebration of its 60th anniversary.
MASTER ROLE: Pu Cunxin (front left), Vice President of Beijing People’s Art Theatre and renowned theater actor, performs in a drama titled Li Bai
This September, the best of China’s youngest and oldest theater artists will perform side by side in a special drama called Jia Zi Yuan, featuring a cast with a wide range of experience—from new actors born in the 1990s to stage legends still active in their 90s.
The show will be produced by the Beijing People’s Art Theatre (BPAT), China’s top national theater company, at the Capital Theatre on the famously bustling Wangfujing Street.
“This is not only an artistic creation process composed of team building, rehearsal and performance, but also a lesson of passing on the spirit, working style and traditions of the company,” said Zhang Heping, President of BPAT and artistic director of the drama.
The wide age gap of the performers gives the drama a deep sense of legacy. Founded on June 12, 1952, by drama master Cao Yu(1910-96), the theater has produced nearly 300 dramas of differing styles, entertaining audiences both at home and abroad. This year marks its 60th anniversary, and drama will play a central role in the celebration of this special moment.
Establishment
BPAT was first established in 1950, in the second year after the People’s Republic of China was established. At that time, it was a comprehensive art group consisting of opera, drama and dance.
Later on in 1952, the organization joined forces with the Central Academy of Drama(CAD), and the two together formed BPAT.
The newly established body was not the only member of the Chinese drama family, but came to be seen as the most dynamic one.
In the 1950s, many Chinese provinces and municipalities started their own local art theaters, including Liaoning Province, Tianjin, Shanghai and others. None of them, however, has had long-lasting success. Shanghai People’s Art Theatre closed several years ago, while those in Liaoning and Tianjin shifted to producing TV series in the 1980s, putting on few stage performances in recent years.
In contrast, BPAT has persistently thrived. With a group of top actors and playwrights, it has continuously put on high-quality perfor- mances both in China and overseas. Many of their productions have won state-level awards, leaving their counterparts far behind.
In July of this year, it presented 19 performances in Shanghai within half a month. The shows were so popular that tickets sold out three months in advance.
Its major stage, of course, is in its home base of Beijing at the Capital Theatre. It has long been a cultural landmark and revered center of the arts for Beijing and the whole country, much like the Bolshoi Theatre for Russia and the John F. Kennedy Center for the United States.
For Chinese drama professionals, it is the bastion that defends and promotes national theater arts, and the cultural landmark that best exemplifies this art form in the country. For audiences, it is a place portraying beautiful expressions of life.
Spirit
At the rehearsal hall of the Capital Theatre, there hangs a work of Chinese calligraphy with the four characters Xi Bi Tian Da—“Art always comes first.” The phrase was championed by founder Cao Yu, who has been described as China’s Shakespeare by the British media.
“BPAT has a rich history, but more important is the artists’ deep love and persistent pursuit for the art of drama,” said the drama master a year before he passed away.
Placing art above all strikes at the core of their spirit. The theater has exercised this motto with careful devotion.
“This motto inspires our team to have a reverence for art and aspire to excellence in their performances,” said Ren Ming, one of the directors of Jia Zi Yuan and Vice President of BPAT.
Indeed, pursuit of excellence has penetrated into every facet of the organization’s art direction.
The exquisite shows are possible thanks to hard practice and strict attention to detail, said Cui Ning, another Vice President of BPAT.
Depending on the actors’ experience level, it generally takes about 10 days to memorize a drama script. But the theater’s policy is to rehearse for 60 days before the release of a new drama. Thus, the actors have to recite the lines repeatedly until they are totally immersed in the story.
“Art always comes first” is followed by another mantra within the theater: “There can be no lines, but mustn’t be no performance.” Shu Xiuwen, an old playwright, has exemplified this artistic ethic throughout her long career. In the 1950s, she was already a top performer. But when she performed in a Soviet drama called The Man With a Gun, she was willing to play a small non-speaking role as a secretary.
Few thought the role left any room for creativity, but she made it possible. Rather than mechanically “ticking” on the typewriter, she altered the noises of the typing sounds for the stage.
Of the 100-year history of the Chinese drama, BPAT represents half of its history. The group’s masters, excellent works and outstanding actors lent the theater a unique status as a legend in the artistic community.
Goal
According to theater lore, the organization’s success is owed in large part to a 42-hourlong discussion of the four founders several days after the theater was established.
“Those 42 hours were so important because it determined the appearance and direction of the organization in the following 60 years,” said Xie Xizhang, a Chinese cultural critic.
Shortly after the theater was founded in 1952, the four leaders of the organization—President Cao, Vice President Jiao Juyin(1905-75), Vice President Ouyang Shanzun(1914-2009) and Party Secretary Zhao Qiyang(1918-96) held a marathon brainstorming session. The four were China’s leading dramatic artists of the day.
After the exhausting debate, they agreed on the theater’s mission: To build BPAT into a world-class institution with its own unique style and theoretical system as well as distinguished national characteristics, much like Russia’s Bolshoi Theatre.
The theater staff has stayed true to the founders’ ideals, continually pushing the theater forward in today’s rapidly changing society.
Creative realism is a prominent style of the theater. An example was the performance of Long Xu Gou 50 years ago, in a drama written by China’s great writer Laoshe (1899-1966). The play told a story about how the government handled the Longxugou drainage ditch and improved local people’s life.
To understand the reality of the characters in the drama, the production team went to Longxugou, a drainage ditch in the south of downtown Beijing where the story was set. The performers saw firsthand how residents of that area lived, and went on to present a vivid show.
The successful performance of Long Xu Gou not only illustrated the fate of a group of ordinary people, but also set a standard for the theater in its pursuit of realistic portrayals of everyday life in China.
Highlights
“Looking at the hundred-year history of Chinese drama, two things stand out the most: One is the work of Cao, and the other is the performing school created by Jiao,” said Tian Benxiang, a renowned scholar who once served as head of the Drama Institute at the Chinese National Academy of Arts.
Cao, founder of the theater, was a genius playwright. He published his first dramatic work entitled Thunderstorm, regarded as the groundbreaking work of Chinese drama, at the age of 22. When the play was performed on stage in Shanghai in 1936, audiences were shocked.
Nearly 80 years later, it remains the most frequently performed drama by most theater groups. Even world-famous kungfu master and actor Bruce Lee once performed a role in it.
Many have praised Cao’s storied career, first as a performer and later as a playwright. He once played as the hero in a drama based on A Doll’s House by Henrik Johan Ibsen. Cao himself reserved praise for an accomplished peer in the theater business, once saying that “BPAT can go without me, but it can’t go without Jiao.”
Jiao of BPAT was like Stanislavski for the Bolshoi Theatre of Russia. Jiao was a master of the Chinese dramatic stage arts, said Tian.
Born in December 1905, Jiao was a famous director, drama theorist and translator. In 1931, he founded the Chinese Opera Junior College and boldly adopted a new education system and teaching methods, cultivating a group of illustrious performers of Peking Opera.
Jiao studied English, French, Russian and Latin, and in 1935 he went to Paris University in France to study European drama theory, with an emphasis on the Stanislavski system—a series of techniques used to train actors to convey believable emotions in their performances.
When BPAT was founded in 1952, he became its vice president.
While directing Long Xu Gou, Jiao for the first time implemented the Theory of Inner Vision, drawing forth inspiration from real life into his stage characters.
“The actors should first carefully observe and experience life to form inner visions deep within their heart, and then use their imagination to master these visions from the outside,”said Jiao.
Applying these theoretical techniques to the stage made the performance of Long Xu Gou starring Yu Shizhi and Yezi an unprecedented success.
Laoshe, the original writer of the drama, earned the title of People’s Artist, the highest honor for the Chinese literature and art circles.
And the people living in the real Longxugou, a drainage ditch in the south of downtown Beijing where the story was set, were amazed by the play’s accurate depiction of real life. “The characters seemed to have walked right out of our neighborhood and onto the stage,” a resident once said.
Yezi was later chosen as a representative of the Municipal People’s Congress of Beijing.
Luminary
When speaking of BPAT, the first thing that comes to mind is Yu Shizhi, star of Long Xu Gou. In the drama, he played the part of a poor artist who was driven crazy by the absurd society that preceded the People’s Republic of China.
His successful stage career included a starring role as the Chinese leader Mao Zedong (1893-1976) in opera Long March.
As a practitioner and teacher of the Theory of Inner Vision, he was an outstanding representative of BPAT’s performance style.
Born in Tangshan, north China’s Hebei Province, on July 9, 1927, Yu was regarded as a highly accomplished actor. Though he left the stage many years ago, his legacy continues. His expressions on stage have become part of the curriculum at drama schools, and his performances have been adopted and modified by many other actors.
“Experienced actors can form a unique personal charm through their inner refinement, as well as their interpretation, understanding and imagination of performance arts. You can see this kind of quality in the older generations of actors at BPAT,” said Yang Qianwu, Vice Chairman and Secretary General of Beijing Dramatists Association.
“The audience isn’t just appreciating a character; they’re also appreciating the actor’s personal charisma. An actor without stage presence is dull,” said Yang.
Yu’s peak performance was in Teahouse, a drama written by Laoshe known for boasting the highest achievement of BPAT.
Published in 1957 and brought to stage in 1958, Teahouse is not only Laoshe’s best dramatic piece but also a monumental work in the history of modern Chinese drama.
But few people know that Yu also made significant contributions to the creation of the script. For instance, he suggested Laoshe change the ending as a discussion between three old men and make his characters commit suicide in despair. Yu’s suggestions strengthened the drama’s sense of tragedy and formed a memorable climax at the ending.
The play depicts 70 characters over a period of 50 years spanning three dynastic periods. It is an epic play with a high degree of artistic integrity, conspicuous national characteristics and historical accuracy.
Though the play has few major events, nor much suspense or conflict, it managed to grasp the audiences’ attention via the characters, dialogues and acting.
Performed abroad since the 1980s, the drama has been well received in the United States and European countries.
Innovation
“Even today, when we play a role, we think of how Mr. Yu and his fellow actors would deal with this character if they were still here,” said Pu Cunxin, a popular actor star- ring in the coming Jia Zi Yuan and the revival of Teahouse, in an interview with Beijing Review. Pu is also vice president of BPAT.
In 2005, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Jiao’s birth, the theater once again performed Teahouse. It was the first time the theater presented the classic drama since Yu bid farewell to the stage in 1991.
Pursuing innovation onstage while upholding the essence of the past has always been a principle of the theater.
“While we try to stay true to the original, we also want to make today’s audience relate to the story. We want to surpass previous performances to revitalize the traditional drama. This is the best inheritance,” said Lin Zhaohua, director of the new edition of Teahouse.
Several years ago, in fact, then Vice President Yu suggested that Lin re-release Teahouse and approved of his fresh approach to the story.
Lin has been regarded as a pioneer in theatrical innovation. In September of 1982, he directed a breakthrough play called Jue Dui Xin Hao (Signals). The storyline itself was not novel: It tells the story of passengers on a train hijacked by robbers.
To express the psychological experiences of the characters, Lin used a stream of consciousness style, a technique popular in the West but still new in China at that time. The timeline of the play alternated between the actual time and space and the characters’ mental time and space. The drama also tackled the controversial topic of unemployment and the“lost” younger generation.
The play’s debut was met with tepid reviews, but Yu and other elder artists supported the then 46-year-old Lin’s direction. The play went on to become a major success.
Following the play’s 100th performance, Cao sent Lin a congratulatory message, praising him as the “pride of BPAT.” His reputation as a maverick, however, lives on even to today. At 76 years old, Lin is still producing innovative new plays.
Lin’s fearless approach to the stage has garnered support both inside and out of BPAT.
“We should strive to evolve while building BPAT as a world-class theater with a solid academic influence,” said Zhang, President of BPAT at the celebration of its 60th anniversary.