DURING THE PLAY

Stageplay...

"Kill the villain! Kill him!"

"The girl is so pitiful. *sob, sob*. Guys are always like that, never stay true for one girl."

Looks like the crowds are getting emotional over the play. People here seem to know the play very well. One grandma even told me she had been here every night since the play started. Looks like we got an avid supporter here.

Stage play in opera is not difficult to understand. The roles in the Peking and all other Chinese operas, although immensely varied, are generally divided into four classes: males (sh'eng), females (tan), villains (ch'ing) and clowns (ch'ou). Within each class there are further subdivisions: dignified old men, young warriors, old warriors, flirtatious young women, virtuous young women, virtuous married women and so on. The most interesting of ch'ing or villainous characters are the da-hua-nian, whose name literally means "flowery face" who wear extraordinary ornate and brilliant make-up which has a mask-like effect.

The characters of Wayang

Aren't we pretty?

Because of the specialisation demanded by any operatic role, actors and actresses are normally trained for only one part, since the body movements and style of speech (and even the music) are different for everyday different role. It can take years to perfect the playing a sh'eng or a tan; an actor who has trained to be a da-hua-nian may only portray villainous characters. Even in the late Ch'ing Dynasty women in China were not allowed to show their faces in public, let alone on a stage, and female roles were therefore performed by men. These "female impersonators" became so skilled in the art- right down to the swaying gait unique to real women with the "golden lotus" or bound feet- that when women were at last permitted to act, they had to be taught the art of female role-playing by these veteran male actors!

Looks like the show has finished since all the people around me had disappeared. Looks like I missed a lot of the show.