Learn how theatre and globalization have affected each other over the past century, and how to conduct your own research on global theatre histories.
Shanghai
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From the course by Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU)
Theatre and Globalization
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From the lesson
Global Hubs and Local Theatres
Theatre Buildings as 'Cultural Hubs' and 'Contact Zones'; methodologies and concepts for approaching theatres as places where different people, languages, and cultures met and interacted.
Meet the Instructors
Christopher BalmeProfessor
Institut für Theaterwissenschaft / Department of Theatre Studies
Like Manila,
the port city of Shanghai can be considered a quintessential cultural hub.
In the second half of the 19th century,
Shanghai international settlement was established.
A western expatriate zone with British, Russian,
American, German, Japanese, and French concessions.
The settlement had institutional autonomy with it's own police force,
fire brigade, schools, and soon its own theater.
In 1874 the first Lyceum Theater was built for the amateur dramatic club of Shanghai.
Although, primarily a venue for Europeans,
the Lyceum later came to play an important role as a contact zone where it helped
introduce European-style theater to China.
At the Lyceum,
some Chinese spectators had their first encounter with European musical theater.
In 1876, one Chinese spectator saw the Gilbert and
Sullivan light opera, Trial by Jury, and this is what he wrote.
Westerners told me this was a story about a lawsuit over a broken marriage promise.
At first, the male plaintiff appeared to make a speech.
After a long time, four women appeared with the accused.
They sang and talked, which again lasted a long time.
The judge tore up the file.
Threw it to the ground and talked and sang with the jury.
While I could not understand the language.
Judging from the Westerners' applause, foot thumping, and
laughter, it must have been quite entertaining.
Entertaining indeed, admittedly, even for Western spectators, an encounter
with Gilbert and Sullivan can be a highly exotic and bewildering experience.
In Gilbert and Sullivan everybody sings, and dances almost all of the time.
And what they sing about often sounds like nonsense.
In terms of it's social and cultural function,
the Lyceum was quite different to Chinese theater such as Beijing style
Jungju or Kunqu theater performed in traditional tea houses.
The Chinese theater here was characterized by noise,
cigarette sellers, melon seeds and peanuts.
With candy peddlers shuffling back and forth between the spectators.
A visit to the Lyceum Theater was a more formal occasion.
People dressed smartly and the usher bowed spectators into the theater.
The first professional Chinese dramatic theater Chunyang She,
the Spring Sun Troupe, was established in 1907, in Shanghai.
They rented the Lyceum Theater and performed an adaptation of
Uncle Tom's Cabin, entitled The Black Slaves Cry For Freedom.
Being in Chinese, many local people now went to the Lyceum Theater for
the first time to see a Chinese performance.
Particularly significant was the encounter with western theater architecture,
especially the proscenium stage and theater technology.
They were significantly different from the teahouse style theaters.
This encounter prompted Chinese theater entrepreneurs to build
western style theaters in Shanghai.
The first being opened only one year later.
We should also not forget the important mediating role of Japan in this process.
Not only was Japan the country where many students from Asia first encountered
western modernization including theater,
technical assistance in building these new theaters also came from Japan.
And we're going to talk now about another area of your expertise and
that's Shanghai.
>> Yes.
>> The city of Shanghai late 19th, early 20th Century.
Is it justifiable to call Shanghai in this period
a cultural theatrical hub in terms of intercultural exchange.
>> Absolutely.
I mean, that little place was so active in the late 19th Century,
it is mind boggling how many theatrical
intercultural activities going on.
It was during the Taiping Wars, the 1850 to 1860,
great amount of refugees from the rich culturally
vibrant tsannang, the southern culture.
People with means, flock
to the international concession because that was protected by international law.
So it was the Chinese capital.
And the Chinese visitors and the Chinese laborers together with
Western administration basically, English administration,
built up this beginning of this city.
So, from the very beginning, unlike other treaty ports,
this city was very unique with Chinese and Westerners living side by side.
Living together.
Doing business together.
Shanghai didn't have a theater tradition because it was a very small town,
it was not very significant.
So when the war ended, the Taiping war ended in
1860 they imported Peking opera from Peking.
Together with the architecture of the,
the Peking Tea House structure was introduced to Shanghai.
>> Okay.
>> And, and that could sit you know, hundreds of people,
which Shanghai never had you know, in that sense.
And it was actually a cultural import from the North.
>> So Chinese so Peking opera and
European theater were both imported into Shanghai at about the same time.
>> Yes.
Exactly.
And that's what is so interesting because they had their own laws.
That means women, unlike the rest of the empire,
were allowed to enter entertainment venues.
To be entertainers, to go onstage and perform, to be story tellers.
So this was almost unique in Chinese cities.
The second very interesting aspect of
this intercultural hub is the 24 hour day.
Is the seven week calendar.
Which started to divide, and that was, brand new in Chinese culture.
Start to divide time into labor time and leisure time.
That concept of the Saturday.
You know, there is a magazine later on,
the beginning of 20th Century called "Saturday".
Right? Because it's such an interesting concept.
Saturday you don't work, you sit down and you read this magazine.
With your lover, right?
So of course Sunday, Westerners went to church, the Chinese went to play.
Shanghai was described by Chinese as the paradise.
No war, wealth, Western clean streets, infrastructure, the beginning of lights,
right, which lit up the theater unlike any place else in the empire.
The Lyceum, I think it was built 1866.
It's even earlier.
And the first performance was March 1st, 1867.
So quite early.
And soon after that, well in the newspaper you can see
visiting troops start to arrive at the Lyceum.
In the early Shanghai, guys in the late 19th century.
In Chinese, right?
They were saying, if you go to the Western Theater, this is how you behave.
Don't spit on the ground.
>> Don't, you know, eat,
don't start eating things.
Don't shout.
Yeah.
Don't make loud noises.
So there is a whole series of how you go to a.
Western theatre is really very interesting.
But but there are other venues where I think that are even
more popular with the Chinese audience, that is the acrobats.
The acrobats, the American acrobat companies coming to
Shanghai is a event, and they stay there for weeks on end.
Big tent is set up, everybody goes, because of course,
you don't need a language to understand.
That kind of communication.
And then silent film came very, very early, 1909.
Shanghai already had what they call
shadow film, so there is lot of interaction
of the city with Western theater structure,
Western theater concept.
And Western theater behavior, so to speak.
>> All this theatrical activity is going on in Shanghai.
Does this then have an impact on other parts of China,
on the theatrical culture in other parts of China?
Does it sort of emanate out from Shanghai or does Shanghai remain a,
very much an isolated hub in that sense?
>> Well, I think Shanghai had two prominent impact on the,
cultural life of the country.
I think that Lyceum probably had a huge impact on how
Shanghai Peking opera developed later on.
And of a very much
of a flamboyant and facial
expression oriented acting technique.
This became the Shanghai style.
That obviously has something to do with interaction with Western theater.
So in the south, at least Shanghai was a huge engine of
what they called transmission, right?
Hub of redirecting new ideas and
new thoughts to to the rest of China.
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