Gradually superseded by other alternative media and means of entertainment, Chinese opera has stepped into an era of decline. Chinese opera is at the crossroad of staying conservative or developing new ways. The earliest adaptation of foreign classics into traditional Chinese operas can be traced back to 1909 Beijing opera New Camellia in twentieth century, adapted by Feng Zihe (Chen and Yan 116). Among the increasing amount of adaptation works during the last two decades, several attempts have been made towards the adaptation of Chinese opera through the accompaniment of Western instruments, contemporary light and sound design, plots from Western literature and theatres, or a combination of the above all. In this blog, I am interested in the experimental Beijing Opera Oedipus the King (King Edi) adapted from Oedipus the King. Produced by Zhejiang Peking Opera Troupe and Shanghai Theatre Academy, the play was adapted by William Huizhu Sun and Weng Guosheng, who also stars as the protagonist Edi. The play has attracted much attention from Beijing opera enthusiasts as well as scholars in related fields.
The direct introduction of classical Greek drama in China did not happen until modern times, in forms of published translations, e.g. Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound (1926), The Persians (1936), and Agamemnon (1937); Sophocles’ Oedipus the King (1936) and Antigone (1937); and Euripides’ Medea (1937) and The Trojan Women (1938) (Qi and Zhang 2). During the last two decades, efforts have been made to adapt Greek tragedies into traditional Chinese opera. By the end of 2016, Chinese adaptation and performance of ancient Greek tragedies are limited to Hebei clapper opera, Beijing opera, and Ping opera, namely, Hebei Clapper Opera Medea (美狄亚) and Thebes City (忒拜城), three Beijing operas Bacchae (巴凯), King Oedi(pus) (王者俄狄), and Mingyue and Zihan (明月与子翰) adapted from Antigone, and Ping opera Legend of Two Cities (城邦恩仇) from Oresteia (Chen and Yan 117). In particular, Chinese theatre artists commonly approach adaptation via three modes, i.e., fidelity (faithful to the original play in story, structure, and production), indigenization (appropriating a Greek classic as source material to make a new traditional Chinese play), and hybridization (interfusing two distinctive dramatic traditions into the same theatric event) (Qi and Zhang 5).
To fully understand the mechanism behind the adaptation process, I have evaluated multiple secondary sources. Among them I found Linda Hutcheon’s book A Theory of Adaptation extremely useful. Hutcheon has defined adaptation as a word that “refers to both a product and a process of creation and reception” (Hutcheon, xvi). Following her perspective, much resemblance can be found between adaptation and translation theory, which is often problematic in terms of definitive distinctions according to Michael Emmerich. According to Raw and Gurr, however, the representation of adaptation studies as a subaltern discipline to translation studies should be looked at in evolutionary terms (Raw and Gurr 104). Similarly, in terms of actual practice, the word “adaptation” can hardly be defined properly as a consequence of the variation of cultural contexts, language changes, or media and genres. When analyzing the specific production of King Edi, I would like to narrow down my scope by focusing on the adaptation of Western literatures and theatres into Beijing opera. Within this framework, I would like to address the juxtaposition of the sources and the target cultural contexts through aspects of linguistics, theatrical conventions, shifted cultural ideology, and audience reactions.
Secondary Source Review
Hutcheon, Linda, and Siobhan O’Flynn. A Theory of Adaptation. 2nd ed., Routledge, 2013, doi:10.4324/9780203095010.
As an introductory guide to adaptation theory, Linda Hutcheon’s A Theory of Adaptation thoroughly examines the general phenomenon of adaptation through diverse cultural practices. In contrast to many scholarly works on adaptation which focusing on some specific kind of media or genre (Anderson, In search of adaptation: Proust and film, Brady, Principles of adaptation for film and television, Cardwell, Adaptation revisited: Television and the classic novel, Moore, Adaptation and new media, etc.), Hutcheon’s book regards adaptation as a process from the creation and recreation of the original to the perception and reception of the audience which associates with different aspects of spatiotemporality. To theorize such phenomenon, Hutcheon develops her arguments from the what, who, why, how where, and when of the process of adaptation based on examples and previous scholarly work and analysis. Each chapter is generally organized by the chronological order of the development of adaptation. Thus, readers could develop a clearer idea of the issues arising from the process and how they have been addressed throughout history. In the last chapter, Hutcheon further refines her scope by discussing two questions “what is not an adaptation” and “what is the appeal of adaptations”. Such questions are of universal significance and the answers would vary regarding different space and time.
In terms of methodology, Hutcheon mentions in the preface to the first edition that she favors what is known as “intertextuality” or the dialogic relations among texts (XIV). Such an approach correlates with the nature of adaptation as well as the existing studies of adaptation theory and can be detected multiple times in the book. As Hutcheon states that there is no superiority between the so-called original and the reimagination, the interrelationship between the two can be viewed as a dialogue across time and space. Therefore, intertextuality serves as a great tool to compare adaptation works especially across different types of media. In Chapter 2 What? (Forms), for example, the author classifies adaptation works into three modes of engagement, i.e., telling-showing, showing-showing, and interacting-telling or showing. By analyzing the dialogic relations between every two forms, it can be illustrated that how changes in media and audience expectations would affect the direction of the transition. Similarly, in Chapter 5 Where? When? (Contexts), the author broadens the scope of cultural contexts by creating a dialogue between the society in which adaptation works are produced and that in which they are received (149). This kind of dialogue would bridge the differences in history, linguistics, politics, economics, etc. By analyzing the processes of transcultural adaptation and indigenization, Hutcheon investigates how adapters and audiences in different cultural contexts perceive the same source and the corresponding solutions to address such differences. On the other hand, since the field of adaptation consists of a variety of topics on mediums, genres, modes, and specific productions, the approach of intertextuality also facilitates the integration of different aspects of adaptation theory for the author to review previous scholarly works and to develop her own arguments. The dialogues between research on different subjects expand the conversation horizontally.
As was pointed out earlier in this article, Hutcheon views adaptation as a process. From the historical point of view, the development of adaptation theory is a collaborative work of the original authors, the adapters, and the audiences. All three parties contribute to the methodology, content, and aesthetics of a specific adaptation production. In Chapter 3. Who? Why? (Adapters) and Chapter 4. How? (Audiences), the author successfully unites the two seemingly opposite perspectives to discuss the motives, intentionality, and psychology within the adaptation process. While the disposition of human beings would constantly shape the ideology and the interpretation of adaptation theory, multiple concerns outside the realm of art like copyright issues, legal constraints, and contemporary market and profit are also addressed. The interrelationship among the three parties provides a dynamic in various cultural contexts and thus formulates a comprehensive model to interpret adaptation works. By inspecting relative factors rigorously from different standpoints, Hutcheon provides an overview of the roles of each stakeholder in the development of adaptation. Moreover, in Chapter 6. Final Questions, Hutcheon further refines her scope of the definition of an adaptation and the appeal of adaptations through the audiences’ perspective while leaving much room for open discussion.
Linda Hutcheon’s arguments are strongly supported in the book by a variety of secondary sources and some primary sources including philosophical and political theory, novels, and movies. As an academic work, the book is clearly written and accessible. Each chapter is well organized with section divisions and proper subtitles. The book serves as a great guide to understanding the development of adaptation theory under different temporal and cultural contexts. While providing a comprehensive analysis of the adaptation process, the author emphasizes on the general phenomenon and has left plenty of space for discussions on the future changes in media, technology, aesthetics, and cultural capital. From a reader’s point of view, however, based on the separation of different stages, a few examples of some specific adaptation productions would be great supplements for the analysis in the book to demonstrate the entirety of the whole adaptation process. Although the book purports to be a theoretical study as indicated in the title, adaptation is nevertheless a product-oriented process. Such case studies not only could better support the author’s arguments, but they also have reference values for future analysis following Hutcheon’s approach. Meanwhile, in Chapter 5. Where? When? (Contexts), a wide range of cultural contexts are discussed without giving an explicit reference to the boundary or definition of a specific culture. Furthermore, in this chapter Hutcheon focuses on the influence on and of a single cultural context, but in reality such contexts often overlap and intersect with each other, for example, race and nationality. In that case, what is the relationship between the identities of the authors and the adapters and these of the audiences? Is there going to be a dominating force? If so, what constitutes the driving force? If not, who are the audiences and how do they shape the adaptation works?
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The primary sources I have reviewed consist of both textual and visual materials. Textual sources include the original work of Sophocles and various news reports and blog posts commenting on the adaptation work. The main visual sources I used include recordings of King Edi on YouTube, interview videos, and stage photographs. Below I have analyzed one report from the website Zhejiang Beijing Opera Troupe and the video recording of King Edi to demonstrate my usage of these materials.
Primary Source Review
Youtube Video, 实验京剧 《王者俄狄》浙江京剧团演出 – 1, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oah3W8sKwOo.
Youtube Video, Peking Opera 实验京剧 《王者俄狄》浙江京剧团演出 2, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9z1zwnpKzU.
浙江京剧团. 浙京实验京剧《王者俄狄》昨晚热演深圳文博会国际艺术节，京剧“俄狄浦斯王”震撼深圳观众. 28 May 2020, http://www.zjjjzj.com/Exchange/info/id/1655.
After King Edi staged in Shenzhen Grand Theatre on May 25 & 27, 2019, the production company Zhejiang Beijing Opera Troupe posted a short review of the performance on their official website on May 28, 2019. Founded in 1969, the troupe is government-owned is the only Beijing opera troupe in Zhejiang Province. The current troupe leader is Weng Guosheng, who is the protagonist of King Edi. The troupe is famous for creating modern Beijing opera as well as reimagining Western literature and dramas to create experimental adaptation works. The exact author of the report is not identified, which is common in such organizations where each piece of media and post represents the collective voice.
Under a rather long title, “The experimental Beijing opera “King Edi” was performed at the Shenzhen Art Festival last night and audiences in Shenzhen were impressed by the Beijing opera version of Oedipus the King”, the report mainly consists of three parts. Firstly, the author briefly goes over the production history of King Edi, stating that the play has staged 128 times in multiple countries around the world. Secondly, the author highlights some intriguing features of the play including shuixiu (the skill of water sleeve), light and sound effects, and acrobatics performance. In the last part, the author addresses the audience’s reactions to the play through the long applause, multiple rounds of encores, and selective audience interviews. In addition to the texts, the author also inserts four photographs of the performance.
Although it delves into details of many aspects of the play, the report nevertheless admits certain limitations. First of all, common catachresis can be found in the text. For example, the literary meaning of the Chinese term fen mo deng chang (粉墨登场) was used in the article to indicate performers who wear makeup appearing on the stage, while the term commonly refers to the fact that evil people participate in politics under the disguise. Such mistakes may result in readers’ perceptions of unprofessional writings and thus undermine the positive publicity of the play. On the other hand, since the report was produced by the production troupe and it purports to serve as a means to gain publicity both for the adaptation and the troupe, the review focuses largely on the positive feedback of the play while avoiding negative or controversial ones altogether. Therefore, when using the source to build my argument, I need to be mindful of the nature of the review and look for well-rounded comments and feedback from other sources.
The main visual source I used is the video recording of King Edi. Available on YouTube, the video consisting of two parts was uploaded by the YouTuber “Low Henry” on July 19, 2013. The same video is also available on Bilibili, a Chinese video-sharing website primarily focusing on games and animation. The two video platforms target different groups of audiences geographically since YouTube is not accessible in China. Meanwhile, the staging of the production in multiple theatre and art festivals also attracted worldwide attention from scholars and theatre enthusiasts. The subtitles are in both English and Simplified Chinese. Terms and appellations in the play are translated through a mixture of transliteration and cultural transposition. Character names are adapted to fit in the Chinese naming conventions The indigenized naming system serves as an accessible reference to Chinese-speaking audiences as well as a proper device for the playwrights to adapt the story into the techniques and rhythms of traditional Beijing opera singing and speech in terms of performance.
In terms of theatrical conventions, roles, props, makeup, and costumes basically follow the traditional conventions of Beijing opera. To better fit in the framework of Beijing opera, several characters are erased in this production including the Olympian gods and the prophet Teiresias mentioned before, Oedipus’ daughters/half-sisters Antigone and Ismene, the oracles, etc. Such reductions may have led to a loss of complexity of the story, but a clearer timeline and storyline would better fit in the mode of Beijing opera and better appeal to the audience. In addition, traditional Chinese opera usually entails historical stories or pieces in famous literature and drama works. Therefore, audiences usually have a basic sense of the storyline of the play they are going to see before going to the theatre. Considering the possible unfamiliarity of the background story of Oedipus the King among Chinese audiences, a brief prologue is included at the very beginning of the play. The offstage narration accompanied by traditional Chinese instruments xiao (vertical bamboo flute) and zhong (bell) tells the story that Edi, a beloved king of Ti country (Thebes), is facing a countrywide lethal plague and a potential dreadful calamity. Furthermore, contemporary audio and visual technologies, Western voice, and choreographic techniques are integrated into highly stylized performance. On the one hand, the production is nevertheless easily distinguishable as a Beijing opera piece. On the other hand, the story is adapted to utilize the strength of Beijing opera while keeping faithful to the original story by Sophocles as much as possible.
The ideology of the play also shifted during the adaptation process from individual heroism featured by Oedipus’ fight against his own fate to Edi’s self-sacrifice in order to find the cure of the plague in Ti country. In King Edi, Edi carries responsibilities to his country, his citizens, his wife, and himself. Instead of describing his unremitting effort in changing his fate, he faces his lethal fate willingly and sacrifices himself for the public good. In Edi’s last aria, he mentions that “as a sinner I should poke my eyes, say thank you to all the minister, say goodbye to my people, say sorry to the world, say farewell to my beloved country.” Edi thus becomes a sympathetic character.
Different from performances of Western operas or symphony orchestras, traditional Beijing opera requires a certain degree of audience participation. One of the most common forms is the shout of approval, known as jiaohao. The explosive sound of “hao” may occur in many situations, for example, when a famous performer first enters the stage, after the performers first strike the stylized pose (liangxiang), after an extraordinary performance of a piece of singing, speech, or acrobatics, etc. However, since the audience’s responses to the play were deliberately muted in the video except for the end-of-play applause in order to emphasize the performance on stage, it is a pity that I am not able to detect the real-time audience’s reactions to the play. For audiences who are new to Beijing opera and are not familiar with the stage language, such reactions from the “seasoned goers” can serve as a great reference to keep track of the marvelous moments on stage as well as the parts that have been done wrong.
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Visualizations
I am interested in visualizing the content and the production history of the Beijing opera adaptation of Oedipus the King. Renamed Wangzhe Edi (King Edi), the opera was produced by Zhejiang Peking Opera Troupe and Shanghai Theatre Academy in 2008. It was a bodacious attempt that integrated Western accompaniment, contemporary light and sound technologies, Western choreographic techniques, and plots from Western literature and theatres into the traditional Beijing opera stage featured by the minimalized stage setting, traditional roles, makeup, costumes, and highly expressive stylized performance.
In terms of visualizing the content, I used a video annotation tool VideoAnt produced by the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota. I divide the annotations into two categories. On the one hand, I keep track of the adapted elements including the indigenized nomenclature, Sinicized plot designs, stagecraft, etc. On the other hand, I cite Weihong Bao’s definition of “the subjunctivity of Chinese opera” and record the theatrical conventions, audience’s habits of reception, and actors’ stylized movements. VideoAnt is a convenient tool to use since it is web-based and admits direct import from YouTube video links. By adding annotations to specific points on the video timeline, I am able to visualize the structure of the play in terms of how Chinese and Western, traditional and modern, and original and adapted elements intertwine with each other. In addition, the public permission setting and the comment feature of VideoAnt potentially support interactive communication of feedback and responses, which is also a crucial measurement of audience reactions.
The play Wangzhe Edi is classified as an experimental theatre production and has been largely controversial. To further understand the audience’s reactions to the play, it is necessary to investigate the publicity and the audience composition by tracing the production history. Premiered in September 2008 in Barcelona, the play has staged in multiple countries in the past 12 years. I have assembled a dataset consisting of performance dates, locations, activity titles, photos, and videos. The main source of the data is the news section on the website of Zhejiang Peking Opera Troupe. One of the major difficulties during this process was the translation of terms in Chinese into English. A near-exhaustive search was needed to identify the exact event titles. Meanwhile, names of the theatres in the news were often transliterated into Chinese from local languages including Spanish, English, Greek, Turkish, Japanese, Turkmen. It also took multiple attempts to precisely locate the theatres.
To visualize the timespan as well as places of performance, I decided to create a timeline. The first timeline creation tool I used was the Time Graphics Timeline. Not only did I need to manually enter every piece of information, but the subscription limits also prevented me from reaching an acceptable result. Therefore, I switched to the Timeline JS developed by the Knight Lab at Northwestern University. The platform provides a ready-to-use spreadsheet template along with detailed technical documentation. In the headline column, I entered the event titles specifying whether the performance was staged in a theatre festival or a regular tour. In the corresponding text column, I entered the exact locations of theatres extracted from the news or other online sources. The built-in code will then generate a link to the timeline using the Google sheets URL. One drawback, however, is the limit of inserting only one piece of media at each time point. In the Q&A forum of StoryMapJS, another product of the Knight Lab, the executive director Joe Germuska explained that the concern was largely based on whether the added complexity would properly fit in the automatically created layout. To accommodate this restriction, I had to prioritize some media forms over others. I would choose videos over images since the narrative feature of a video is better at contextualizing an event. If neither videos nor images were available, I would insert Google Maps to visualize specific locations of the theatres.
According to the introduction on the website of Zhejiang Peking Opera Troupe, they have staged over 80 performances by 2013. However, only a small portion of performance information can be traced from the internet. Although it prevented me from building a comprehensive visualization, the fact that a large part of performances cannot be visualized is nevertheless of great importance. Possible reasons including poor publicity, low audience interest, or simply the transient nature of online sources are worth further investigation.
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In addition to elements of suppositionality proposed by Weihong Bao, I believe that the third layer of the subjunctive body of adapting Western literature and theatres should be the proximity in terms of space, time, and the relationship to audiences. The proximity of time and space is not necessarily limited to the temporal or cultural settings of the story. As it was suggested by Malcolm Bradbury, even without any temporal updating or any alterations to national or cultural setting, it can take very little time for context to change how a story is received (Hutcheon 142). To put it another way, what producers should consider in adaptation works is not to appropriate the whole story into the target culture and to set contemporary time as the initial moment. Instead, it is necessary to view the story from a perspective in the contemporary cultural context and to adapt it using modern skills and technologies. There is a kind of dialogue between the society in which the works, both the adapted text and adaptation, are produced and that in which they are received, and both are in dialogue with the work themselves (Hutcheon 149). The proximity consists of two parts, i.e., the relationship between audiences and performers, and the relationship between audiences and the adaptation production. To create the proximity between audiences and the adaptation work, it is necessary to have a clear metric for the purpose of reference. Julie Sanders mentions in her Adaptation and Appropriation that, “if readers are to be alert to the comparative and contrastive relationships that Eliot regarded as crucial to the aesthetic process, it goes almost without saying that the texts cited or reworked need to be well known” (97). Since there are very few works that can be regarded as universally known, it is necessary for elements in the adaptation to “serve as part of a shared community of knowledge, both for the interrelationships and interplay to be identifiable and for these in turn to have the required impact on their readership” (Sanders 97). The construction of reference can take forms of translation, plot indigenization, theatrical conventions, etc.
Hutcheon has used the word “immersive” to describe the ideal way for adaptation works to engage audiences (XVI). I believe that certain aesthetics of Chinese opera and Greek tragedies are transnational and I look forward to more new works of adaptation in the future. Finally, I would like to further address the two long-discussed question—whether the adaptations could still be defined as Beijing opera or Greek tragedy or not, and whether adaptation would cause damages to the original work. On this topic, I share Chen and Yan’s opinion that “whether a literary classic would be ruined by imitation, adaptation, re-writing, and anti-writing; whether it would miss the original meaning and be impaired after translation into foreign languages, or staged in foreign artistic form, depends on our attitude towards the changes of texts and language forms—whether we regard these changes as damages of original works, or we view them as an ‘afterlife’ from which the original work enhances its vitality and influence” (122). As long as the discussion continues and there are more new productions, the beauty of these theatre forms would never be neglected, which is probably the most important.
References:
Bao, Weihong. The Politics of Remediation: Mise-En-Scene and the Subjunctive Body in Chinese Opera Film.
Chen, Rongnyu, and Tianjie Yan. “Ancient Greek Tragedy in China: Focusing on Medea Adapted and Performed in Chinese Hebei Clapper Opera.” Neohelicon, vol. 46, no. 1, June 2019, pp. 115–23, doi:10.1007/s11059-018-0452-y.
Emmerich, Michael. “Burning the Bridge.” Readings on Japanese-to-English Translation, compiled by Lynne E. Riggs, International Christian University MCC 236, 2012, pp. 75-83.
Germuska, Joe. Multiple Pieces Of Media. 16 Dec. 2013, https://knightlab.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/211632866-Multiple-pieces-of-media.
Hutcheon, Linda, and Siobhan O’Flynn. A Theory of Adaptation. 2nd ed., Routledge, 2013, doi:10.4324/9780203095010.
Raw, Laurence, and Anthony Gurr. Adaptation Studies and Learning: New Frontiers. Scarecrow Press, Inc, 2013.
Sanders, Julie. Adaptation and Appropriation. Routledge, 2006.
Sophocles, et al. Antigone: Oedipus the King ; Electra. Oxford University Press, 1994.
Qi, Shouhua, and Wei Zhang. “Tragic Hero and Hero Tragedy: Reimagining Oedipus the King as Jingju (Peking Opera) for the Chinese Stage.” Classical Receptions Journal, vol. 11, no. 1, 2019, pp. 1–22, doi:10.1093/crj/cly006.
Youtube Video, 实验京剧 《王者俄狄》浙江京剧团演出 – 1, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oah3W8sKwOo.
Youtube Video, Peking Opera 实验京剧 《王者俄狄》浙江京剧团演出 2, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9z1zwnpKzU.
Youtube Video, 《王者俄狄》海外演出与制作花絮, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNe1fRrFWvc.
浙江京剧团. 浙京实验京剧《王者俄狄》昨晚热演深圳文博会国际艺术节，京剧“俄狄浦斯王”震撼深圳观众. 28 May 2020, http://www.zjjjzj.com/Exchange/info/id/1655.