Village Festival And Pattern Of Classical Drama

Religious procession is the old practice of offering a sacrifice to gods. It is a way of expressing appreciation because local god of the land gives blessing to people. Religious procession can be traced back to sacrifice and village festive activities. Gradually, ancient sacrifice and village festive activities mix together village sacrifice and ritual for praying for rain. All kinds of religious local customs related to agricultural production have been assimilated, so large scale and rich religious procession formed.Village festival often happens in sacrificial rites. The regular procedure rite in sacrificial rites needs our special attention. The most outstanding rite is Etiquette when drinking liquor in ancient times. The solemn ceremony and performance are held simultaneously. Ceremony and performance infiltrate into each other. The performance is given from place to place, and restricted to the date; time, place and fixed procedure. The performance is always carried on in shrine. This is indicating of sacrificial races. The ceremony prescribes the actor's performance and audience mentality when enjoy the performance.There is no aesthetic distance between actors and audience . The worship of ancestors and gods resulted in the audience's deep participation in the performance.The rite regulates the content and form of performance. The performance is inseparable part of rite. More importantly, the content and background of the religious rite play an important role in the form of performance. The specific characteristic of performance which includes the content theme, date, place, purpose and function of performance can be found in the background of the sacrifice rite.Brothel is the main body of performance. We can have a better understanding of this dramatic phenomenon in a cultural view. Brothel's active influence on religious procession can be examined from society and human being's point of view. Just because of this special group, special living conditions, social role and special inheritance and performance, they turn into the active preservation of village festival. The phenomenon of living fossil of drama is brought to light undoubtedly.Because of the relative's stability and seriousness of ceremony and brothel's special inheritance, some old performance has been preserved like living fossil in eastern and southern areas, Shanxi province.For example, some musical patterns and group dancing can be traced back to imperial group dancing in Tang dynasty. The origin and development track of classical drama in Song and Jin Dynasties can be found now. It can be said that those ancient patterns of classical drama provide an important clue for development of Chinese drama history. They are development history of folk drama.Village festival itself is a religious activity and filled with pan-religious beliefs. It gradually develops into all kinds of folk customs.It extends to all sides of lives such as marriage and funeral, Lateran Festival and temple fairing this way village festival has been preserved so far.