Cross-gender playing techniques: Actresses and innovation in the portrayal of female 'Jingju' (Beijing / Peking opera) roles

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Title Cross-gender playing techniques: Actresses and innovation in the portrayal of female 'Jingju' (Beijing / Peking opera) roles
Creator Contributors
Abstract/Description In the study of World Theatre, 'jingju' (Beijing/ Peking opera) sits at an important intersection of gender and performance. Jingju is a major traditional performance form in which female performers had crucial influence on the transformation of conventional techniques originated while women were banned from the stage, into methods appropriate to the portrayal of modern female characters unbound by feudal social constraints. This article considers innovation by two twenty-first-century jingju actresses as a reflection of key developments in twentieth- century creative practice. The article will discuss the following actresses: 1) Li Yuru, working in the late republican/ early Mao era; 2) Huang Xiaoci, working in the late twentieth-century, post-Mao era; and 3) Zhao Huan and Geng Lu, working in a twenty-first-century, globalised performance network.
Subjects
Source Australasian Drama Studies, ADSA, VIC
Issue 75
Page 233-258
Date Issued December 2019
Language English
Citation Megan Evans, Cross-gender playing techniques: Actresses and innovation in the portrayal of female 'Jingju' (Beijing / Peking opera) roles, Australasian Drama Studies, 75, December 2019, 233-258
Data Set AusStage
Resource Identifier 69331