No chance to catch more than a few glimpses of Chinese performance on an Asia Education Foundation tour this January (since not all teachers on such a tour have performing arts as their main focus) but they were fascinating glimpses.
You would not want to do any outdoor theatre in Beijing in winter. Luckily, unless you want to join outdoor dancing or singing groups in China (which, like swimming in holes cut in the ice of the canals, do happen…), theatre seems to take place indoors.
You would not want to do any outdoor theatre in Beijing in winter. Luckily, unless you want to join outdoor dancing or singing groups in China (which, like swimming in holes cut in the ice of the canals, do happen…), theatre seems to take place indoors.
In order to get inside any public building like a theatre or a shop you have to fight your way past a couple of blanket-like panels in the doorway, ‘fight’ sometimes feeling a rather appropriate word in a country where the queue is not a custom and elbowing your way through crowds is the norm. The ‘blankets’ are there to keep the heat in; a very welcome thought in minus temperatures.
Lao She Tearoom is the place to see variety, although they also do Beijing opera. Upstairs inside the theatre revealed itself to be long and narrow, with lots of painted decoration and the audience at tables and a conventional stage at one end. We were up on a raised platform toward the back and visibility was a bit difficult what with waiters coming and going but that didn’t matter once the show got under way. While drinking copious amounts of tea we watched a succession of variety acts, ranging from some very delicate shadow puppets to long humorous songs, an adroit magician, some Chinese ‘stand up’, acrobatics and the ‘face changing’ act.
This last is quite puzzling. A performer in colourful robes and head dress changes opera ‘mask’ makeup in a flash, not revealing the secret even when coming right up to the tables. We could not figure it out. Quick silk mask changes? Face contortions to reveal a different makeup? Hugely skilled stuff.
Another night we went off to the acrobats. This time the theatre was a large conventional barn with an end on stage and pretty sensitive combinations of moving and fixed lighting (The real masters of this kind of lighting are probably the designers of the Siam Nirimit show in Bangkok but that’s another story.) Cheerfully skilful stuff, with all the usual routines including chair stacks and spinning plates and bicycles with multiple riders as well as large performing birds alarming the audience by flying across the auditorium. Unlike the Lao She show there seemed to be a much higher proportion of foreigners and expats in this audience.
The best of all, however, was the Beijing opera episode at the Huguang Guild Hall. Built in 1807, this exquisitely decorated theatre was where the Kuomintang was founded by Dr Sun Yat Sen in 1912.
(A couple of years ago I found another thread of this story in the form of a Chinese cemetery up on the Thai-Lao border where some KMT soldiers settled after China became Communist)
(A couple of years ago I found another thread of this story in the form of a Chinese cemetery up on the Thai-Lao border where some KMT soldiers settled after China became Communist)
The Huguang Guild Hall has an Elizabethan feeling to it, with balconies running round on three sides and a large canopied square stage thrusting out into the audience. Once again it was tea and snacks as Monkey took the stage, the episode being the one where he steals from Heaven the peaches that grant immortality. Lively, full of fights and comedy and, despite our lack of Chinese, very understandable to people who had once watched a certain TV series…
And here he is…
Alanna Maclean