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Featuring hybridity, transgression, and improvisation, New Concept Kun Opera refers to experimental performances by Ke Jun and other Kun Opera performers since the beginning of the twenty-first century. From telling the ancient stories to expressing the modern self, this new form marks the awakening of the performer's subjectivity and develops a contemporary outlook by rebuilding close connections between Kun Opera and modern life. A synthetic use of intermedial resources contributes to its appeal to today's audiences. Its experimentation succeeds in maintaining the most traditional while exploring the most pioneering, thus providing Kun Opera with the potential for renewal, as well as an alternative future for Chinese opera in general. Chengzhou He is a Yangtze River Distinguished Professor of English and Drama at the School of Foreign Studies and the School of Arts at Nanjing University. He has published widely on Western drama, intercultural theatre, and critical theory in both Chinese and English. Currently, he is the principal investigator for a national key-research project, 'Theories in European and American Theatre and Performance Studies'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses existing English translations of the Chinese opera or Kunqu "The Peony Pavilion" via ostensible purposes and translation strategies. Topics discussed include The Peony Pavilion also named The Return of Soul at the Peony Pavilion created by Tang Xianzu in 1598, scenes of the opera set in the Southern Song Dynasty (1127–1279) and the opera reflects the degeneracy of society under feudalism.

Performing Shakespeare and Tang Xianzu is a vehicle for innovation for Shen Yili, Zhang Jun, Luo Chenxue, and their fellow actors at the Shanghai Kunqu Theatre (SKT). As my case studies of The Story of Bloody Hands (a 1986 adaptation of Macbeth), Zhang's reinterpretation of Tang's Four Dreams , and the SKT's role in the quatercentenary celebrations for Shakespeare and Tang, reveal, these encounters led the artists to re-examine what was previously construed to be the quintessential quality of kunqu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Utilizing theories of Becker's art worlds, Veblen's conspicuous consumption and Bourdieu's capital forms, this article critically examines the formation of a new art world of the traditional Chinese opera Kunqu, with university students turned middle class as identified consumers. It argues that the art world has been developed through the innovation of artists working within the tight ideological control of the market. Only artists who support party-state ideological evolution, allowing access to 'central bank' capital in the forms of university curriculum, opera house resources and land use, may continue to experiment and innovate before a new audience taste is nurtured and a new art world is developed. This article suggests that the rise of Kunqu reflects the political castration of the new millennium Chinese middle class, with their value and identity resting on a fantasized historical leisure class distinction and associated conspicuous consumption. The establishment of a new Kunqu art world exemplifies the characteristics of the Chinese art market, which is developed under party-state 'central bank' monopoly, for continued Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ideological evolution and legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the Toki Experimental Project, a theatrical collaboration between China and Japan that incorporates the traditional Chinese Kunqu and Japanese nō with contemporary Chinese and Japanese dance and theater. It mentions the work of Japanese theater director Sato Makoto and Chinese theater director Danny Yung in beginning the project and describes several of the transnational projects created by Toki.

The conventional view of kunqu as an elite form of traditional Chinese theatre has left its legacy of live performance and the performers' efforts and creativity to keep kunqu alive onstage overlooked. Borrowing the Fan (Jieshan) provides a living and popular example of actable plays (zhezixi), plays created by performers that rework selected scenes from texts of the playwrights and turn them into stand-alone pieces that are actable, complete in themselves, and exciting to watch in performance. The translation is based upon the version shaped and performed by Wang Zhiquan and her colleagues of the Shanghai Kunqu Theatre Troupe (Shanghai Kunju Tuan). With her training in the female martial art role type (wudan), Wang has created a version that not only capitalizes on her virtuoso skills but also develops new and inventive ways of performing that push her and her stage partner to attain a higher level of artistic achievement and bring freshness and excitement to the stage performance of the play. Dongshin Chang is an associate professor in the Department of Theatre at Hunter College, City University of New York. His research interests include intercultural performance and Chinese theatre (especially kunqu). He has published Representing China on the Historical London Stage (2015). His other publications have appeared in the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Stage Actors and Acting, Antigone on the Contemporary World Stage, CHINOPERL Papers, Asian Canadian Theatre, Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, Encyclopedia of Case Study Research, Canadian Theatre Review, and Querying Difference in Theatre History. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a close study of the Sino-Japanese collaboration in Kunqu Opera The Peony Pavilion (2008), this article proposes a different conception of interculturalism onstage in East Asia in comparison with the prevailing East-West paradigm of intercultural performance and theatre. Some of the interesting questions that are raised and discussed in this paper are. How does the Japanese actor Bando Tamasaburo impersonate a young lady Du Liniang in the Chinese classical play without speaking the Chinese language? In what ways does the Sino-Japanese co-production connect and interweave Kunqu Opera and Kabuki? How has the intercultural performance been mediatized, received as well as perceived in China, Japan and elsewhere? The Sino-Japanese co-production features such important notions of interculturalism as connecting instead of othering, sharing instead of influencing, and complementing instead of exploiting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I focus on the professional singing teacher as a new social identity during the late Ming, particularly their social transformation from anonymous grifters to meaningful names in the elite singing culture of kunqu. A close, intertextual reading of different versions of Wei Liangfu’s (fl. 16th century) singing thesis, Nanci yinzheng—combined with historical, fictional, dramatic, and poetic accounts of musical performance given by professional singing masters and their courtesan students—reveals how the professionalization of teaching music resulted in the low rate of musical literacy among commoner- singers and the renowned erotic vocal style of the late Ming. In this process, moral critique, sensual pleasure, and technical criticism were more closely intertwined than has been generally believed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the relations between the stage and history in the scene of kunju, a kind of traditional Chinese theatre, Slaying the Tiger General. Topics discussed include the history of Chinese theatre, the theatrical production management, and the several factors that affects the conception of history such as websites, television, and film.

The Kunqu and Peking Opera are two separate opera genres, with different musical tunes and singing styles. However, parts of their repertoires do overlap. There are some Kunqu plays that are kept in the Peking Opera repertoires, mainly martial arts plays. The subject of this study highlights "song cycles" instead of Kunqu, because martial arts plays of Peking Opera feature both original Kunqu plays and new plays composed by Peking opera troupes. The term "song cycles" stresses the musical characteristics of the martial arts plays and explains why Kunqu performers, schooled by Peking Opera masters, were able to stage these plays and push ahead the eventual independence of martial arts roles sheng and dan. Although martial arts plays are not the most representative type of either Peking Opera or Kunqu, their history of performance and variety illustrate their vitality. I focus on the song cycles of martial arts plays to show their employment in Peking Opera and Kunqu, to shed lights on the development of cross-genre opera dissemination, and the significance of Kunqu martial arts plays. The discussions are in two parts. In the first part, I discuss the employment of song cycles, the origin, formula and structural layout of martial arts plays in Peking Opera. In the second part, I explain the succession of martial arts plays in Kunqu, their development and transformation from Peking Opera to Kunqu, to demonstrate that martial arts plays in contemporary Kunqu neither confine themselves to the Kunqu tradition nor follow precisely the Peking Opera model, but exhibits a specific sophistication and innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]