Before the 1950s, opera performers belong to one theatrical company or another. Even today, companies of different opera types are active in rural and remotes parts of the country.
A traditional theatrical company usually consisted of members of a clan, who passed on
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| A group photo of girl students learning Peking Opera in the Chong Ya Opera School in Beijing. | performing skills on the basis of a master-apprentice relationship. A company borrowed elements of other opera types and kept improving performance to suit the taste of audiences in different localities. And it needed to have a rich repertoire so that it would not run out of plays at one location.
A professional theatrical company earned its living by going to places to put up performances. Generally speaking, members of the company lived on a makeshift stage or in tents, and the company paid for its own transportation. Owing to competition between companies as well as natural and human disasters, it was not rare for a company of no particular fame to get into dire financial difficulties. Many performers knew about the hardships of life in a theatrical company and would not let their offspring take the road they had taken. Despite their dissatisfaction with their life, performers, to earn a living, had to do thick makeup, put on colorful costume and played one character after another emotionally on the stage. Such is the life of performers, generation after generation.
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| Shang Xiaoyun, one of the four great players of dan, founded Rongchun Opera School in 1936 in Beijing. |
A strict hierarchy existed in an old-style theatrical company. A company's manager is called ban zhu, or company owner. Opera teachers had the highest artistic status in a company. They served as playwright, music composer and director. Teaching child apprentices the art of performance was their responsibility, and they decided whether to reward or penalize a child apprentice; and they were principal dispensers of physical punishment against child apprentices. Their artistic and skill levels largely determined the artistic level of the theatrical company they served. There was another kind of people in a company called "masters." These were fairly good actors who were free in person and employed by the ban zhu through a contract. An apprentice who had learned to play a role at the expiration of his indenture would acquire the status of a "master" and drew a salary in another company that had hired him.
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| Ma Lianliang, who was president of the Bijing Opera School in the 1960s, gave a demonstrative lecture to his students. |
Those with the lowest status were child apprentices. Many of them were sold to theatrical companies by their families out of poverty. At the time of sale, their parents would sign an indenture, which stipulates not only the price and time limit but also the term that the death of an apprentice had nothing to do with the company. Once sold, a child apprentice lost his personal freedom, nor were his parents allowed to see him. Kids in a theatrical company began to learn acting and singing before they could read. They learned acting and singing from their performer parents or old performers and learned to read and write at the same time. This cruel system was abolished after the 1950s.
Theatrical companies were divided into two major types: the wen (Singing- oriented) company that was good at singing; and the wu (acrobatic-fighting-oriented) company that was good at acrobatic fighting. A singing company might hire an actor from an acrobatic fighting company to
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| The music score of Story of the Jade Hairpin (yu zan ji). | increase the appeal of its shows to the audience.
In an early date, a theatrical company was composed of artists good at different role categories and different plays. Artistic level of Performers of a company were more or less equal. They supported one another in role playing and their incomes were more or less the same. Later, this system was replaced by a leading actor-chooses-the-cast system. Under the new system, the cast of a play was led by a famous, popular actor, who naturally played the lead. A leading actor had not only an exclusive jinghu (Peking Opera fiddle) player and an exclusive drummer serving him but also a person taking care of his stage props. If the actor played the dan role, he would have an exclusive "hair doer." Incomes of actors were calculated according to the proportion of acting they did in a particular play. This promoted competition among performers as well as performer movement between theatrical companies.
Many outstanding performers not only played lead roles on the stage but were also bosses of opera companies. They were involved in the creation of every new play, from its writing and direction to music composition and the design of stage art. And playwrights and composers did their best to suit plays to performers who were to play the lead roles so that the latter were able to give play to their performing skills to the fullest extent.
During the time of performance by a theatrical company, there were some backstage rules that show social customs at the time.
1. Women were forbidden to come onto the stage or backstage.
2. The God of Fortune mask must not be put face up; a person holding the mask must not speak to another person.
3. Lifting the curtain for a peep at the audience was forbidden.
4. Gambling was prohibited backstage.
5. Sitting on the drummer's seat was forbidden (to prevent unauthorized drum beating).
6. No authorized handling of theatrical swords.
7. No seating on trunks containing props.
8. No making up before the clown- role player has finished doing his makeup (few colors are used for the clown role; this makes painting brushes easier to clean for doing makeup for others).
9. Actor playing female role must not reveal body after finishing his facial makeup. And
10. Abusive language was prohibited.
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| Newlyweds wearing red wedding garment. | With Peking Opera becoming more mature, there appeared old-style schools specializing in training Peking Opera performers in the latter half of the 19th century. In the last years of the 19~ century and the early years of the 20~ century, there appeared a number of old- style Peking Opera schools of considerable sizes. In Beijing, these included the well-known Fu Lian Cheng School (formerly known as Xi Lian Cheng) set up by Ye Chunshan and Qing Yi School set up by Yu Zhenting. Many graduates of the schools went on to become pertbrmers of national fame. The next 40 years saw the emergence of other schools, including Rong Chun School set up by Shang Xiaoyun, a well-known dan player, Ming Chun School set up by Li Wanchun, a famous wu sheng player, and the China Opera School, of which Jiao Juyin and Jin Zhongsun served successively as president. Old- style opera schools of fairly big sizes were also set up in Shanghai, Xi'an and Tianjin.
Compared with master-apprentice teaching, learning in an old-style opera school called keban was more regularized and specialized. It had full-time teachers and a systematic teaching-learning schedule, allowing kids to receive systematic, solid basic training and have a broader grasp of singing and acting skills. Many of their graduates became outstanding performers. In its 44-year history, the Fu Lian Cheng School trained seven classes of close to 700 students. Every class offered celebrity performers active on the Peking Opera stage for dozens of years. Fu Lian Cheng is the old- style school that had the longest history, was biggest in scale and trained the greatest number of performers in the history of Peking Opera. In addition, the school preserved, sorted out and created a great number of fine plays, contributing greatly to the development of Peking Opera.
After the founding of New China in 1949, theatrical education received support from the government. The year of 1950 saw the establishment in Beijing of the first national institution for opera education, the Opera Experimental School, which was later renamed China Opera School. Teachers from old-style opera schools taught classes at the school. The school also invited well-known actors, including Mei Lanfang , Shang Xiaoyun, Cheng Yanqiu and Xun Huisheng, to give lectures to students. Since the 1950s, the school has trained close to 5,000 people, who have been active in every field of Peking Opera as a performing art. In 1978 the school was made into China Opera Institute to become the only institution of tertiary education dedicated to opera education in China. In addition, opera schools have been set up in Shanghai, Tianjin, Shanxi, Hebei, Shandong and Jiangsu. These schools also enroll foreign students. |
