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 * At the Crossroads: Peking Opera in Taiwan Today **. Ching-Hsi Perng. __Asian Theatre Journal__, Fall 1989. 26.2. 124-144.

This article focuses on the Peking Opera in Taiwan and how it currently (as of the article’s publication in the late 1980s) fails to live up to its label as //kuo-chü// (“national theatre of China”). Perng repeatedly emphasizes that supporters of this theatre form work against art by proclaiming Peking Opera //kuo-chü// and standardizing its practice; doing so stifles the performance and alienates it from modern Taiwanese—the very audiences who should appreciate it most—and suppresses the natural evolution and cycles of prominence of traditional theatre as a whole. The author presents the basic errors to which Peking Opera adamantly clings, along with possible alterations that would refresh this type of performance. He also briefly compares a popular Peking Opera play to its Yuan dynasty forefather and points out the immense lack of depth in the later product. Primarily Perng seeks to convince those who support Peking Opera to allow “traditional theatre” to grow and change with the times instead of structuring art so harshly.

Perng first reveals a few of his definitions for theatre forms in Taiwan and China, and he touches on the history Chinese theatre from the last few centuries—the era of Peking Opera’s inception and prominence. The author considers “traditional theatre” anything descended from classical Chinese theatre forms and retains its music, action, and symbolism, pointing out that includes various local theatre forms which have evolved over hundreds of years through the present. He goes on to explain that “to establish Peking opera—or any other theatre form, for that matter—as the national theatre is to deprive it of the incentive to evolve, the opportunity to interact with other competing forms (traditional or otherwise), and the chance to remain vitally in touch with the audiences and the times” (127). Peking Opera receives immense nationwide support through military, public schooling, television, and the National Fu-hsing Academy of Chinese Drama, and this focus leaves other theatre arts to languish. //Kuo-chü // scripts draw directly on plots from folklore or other plays and expand those dramas into aria-driven episodes with little action, and Perng blames habit as the root of much of the genre’s failings. This diminishes the original source until only a flat veneer remains, which happened when Peking Opera performers evaporated the //tsa-chü// play //Injustice to Tou O// into the popular //Snow in Midsummer//. //Snow// essentially replaces the play’s soul with an actress’s whining, thereby removing the emotion and thought evoked from the audience (over the trampling of virtue, the portrayal of females, or the bitterness of Tou’s revenge) in favor of an aria marathon.

Modern audiences noticeably decline enthusiasm for Peking Opera, which Perng attributes to its outdated ways, and he offers a handful of courses for the art form to take in order to appeal to the nation it claims to represent. Foremost, the author points out, the //kuo-chü// currently demands too much of its audience: it uses outdated language (often requiring subtitles), cacophonous music, deficient dramatic scripts, and irrelevant themes. He expands on the ideas of Meng Yao twenty years earlier, who believed that scripts ought to be complete dramas instead of episodic, that characters need to be unique instead of stereotypes, and that symbolic presentation should be abandoned for the realistic. Perng wholeheartedly agrees with her first two thoughts, but insists that in addition to moving away from eventless, actor-focused productions, Peking Opera must use subjects and themes that pull at contemporary viewers.

Perng’s call to modernize Taiwan’s //kuo-chü// makes more sense to me than allowing the Peking Opera to further stagnate and cripple all of the nation’s traditional theatre. His suggestion to include Western theatre—as Wei Tzu-yun did by adapting a Eugene Ionesco play to Peking Opera in 1981 Taipei—along with foreign musical instruments initially makes me uneasy because it reminds me of the imperialism east Asia struggled to throw off, but Perng points out that even the instruments used in the Peking Opera now arrived from other parts of the world. I admire the author for fighting in the name of today’s population’s right to create their own theatre; art is meant to express, not to suppress. He poetically likens the //kuo-chü// to a seasoned actor taking a final bow, knowing that soon the next great actor will claim the stage.

A decline of Peking Opera does not mean the death of traditional theatre in Taiwan—in fact, its decline would only be a natural way for a great art form to relinquish its title as “national theatre” in order for a new performance art to emerge from a generation. Perng urges those who support the current //kuo-chü// to let the Peking Opera change with the times in order to enliven it once more, and he warns that unless Taiwan allows room for theatre to evolve, it will never have a theatre form that truly reflects the spirit of its people.