A Study On The Use And Significance Of Colour In Classical Chinese Plays

Based on the physiological structure and the life environment, human and nature get the same way toexpress themselves through colors. No matter a single color or a group of colors, they can convey us thesame feelings and same spiritual tendency, which have become the social concept even the national colorconnotations under the conventional social cognition background. The traditional Chinese opera with thecultural color language in it has been regarded as a useful communication instrument between the operaactors and the audience, because it has multiple expressive functions that we can learn much about ournational culture and opera performance forms.This thesis takes the opera stage color as the object of study. By virtue of literature researches andarchaeological methods，the three chapters mentioned above sort out the track of Chinese opera-stage coloras well as the visual presentation；besides, they also discuss the internal relation between color andperformance by taking the developmental pattern of Chinese opera into consideration. During the longopera development process, colors, the visual signs, are used by all kinds of opera actors frequently, andwith the opera role-changing and opera form-changing, colors show the a wide choice scope for us. InPre-Qin period, people at that time through Wunuo etiquette performance showed their worship to thenatural colors; in Han dynasty the comedians respect the colors of the five elements; in Sui-Tang period thesinging and dancing performance in opera chose the colors by re-structing them. Colors have become animportant part in performance make-up and dressing for the actors.Operas in Song and Yuan dynasties focus on the shoes-color-division system, which determined thequality and performance form of Chinese traditional operas, and it is also the symbol of a developed opera.Meantime the color-division system affords some useful methods to help most operas developing in highlevel and becoming the core of traditional opera stage color ornament. People would never judge acharacter by the color they dress but shoes they wear.The Miscellaneous plays in Song-Jin dynasty not only make a break through in the superiors andinferiors sense which are the main trend of actor status dressing based on the five elements’ colors but also in the integration of the five elements’ colors. On choosing color, Southern Miscellaneous plays, withan acting style of interwoven performance together and interchanged roles, can reveal roles’characteristics and dramatic conflicts by deep integration of folk customs and visual tendency and habits,thus leading to the formation of symbolic color with a strong folk flavor and concept of mutualrecognition between actors and inspectors, as well as building up the accessible communication andstrengthening the position of the inspectors in the theater and gaining conducive development of the part’sinteraction.Not only did the Yuan Miscellaneous plays form into a kind of text paradigm characterized with fourparts and a musical system featuring in the combination of Qu and Pai, it also gradually established thecorresponding stage performance procedures as well as the relevant rules on the make-up of character andchoice of color. The traditional opera performance finally came back to the audio visual feelings which putstage in the center place and the narration of story. The application of color and the design of styleintegrated with stage settings. This not only created a virtual space independent from the worldly life, butalso formed a newly relation between stage order and time-space through visual symbols. Hence, itproduced a relatively independent system about opera stage color which accords with national aesthetichabits and adapts to the virtual space.The maturity of the stage performance forms in Ming and Qing opera diverts people’s attention fromthe storyline to the performance skills, but also shifts decorative colors function from the individualcharacterization, the costume and makeup to the overall visual arrangement and the construction ofaesthetic style, and to the detachment of the visual forms from the story and its moral evaluation to securerelatively independent appreciation and aesthetic perception. With exquisite and gorgeous visualarrangement, Ming and Qing royal court opera extends the visual beauty and arrangement to inspectorsthrough recreation of the virtual world as well as the change of choreography style in the miscellaneousplay, all these above mentioned forming a tendency of stage coloring in strong aestheticism. The flourish ofthe four famous opera tune patterns initiate a legendary era centering on southern tunes, either the elegantand refined Kunshan opera in pavilion or the rough and roaring Yiyang one; when varying from singing,performing, and the audience, the four have distinctive and distinct coloring principles and collocation, thus instilling themselves separately with organization rules to create a stage order, at the same time layingconcrete and solid foundation for the finalization of the stage color design. On the basis of stageperformance of Ming and Qing legendry, Qing royal court opera integrates the coloring principles fromvarious tune operas in order to meet the performance of large scenes and complex plots foreshadowing. Inthe meantime, it manages, with featured color patterns, to create visual order, scenes of time and space byforming the norms and rules of stage coloring for characters’ costumes and makeup.From the personal "acting" as the core in early operas, then to the "character" oriented, and even the"stage"-based visual display, with the development of the opera itself, color evolves from simple tocomplex, at random to in order, realistic to impressionistic, objective imitation to subjunctiverearrangement, which becomes the main technique of the visual order creation. At the same time, apart forthe opera, the color choosing is inevitably subject to social and cultural environment, indicating stageperformance function, assorted folk conventions, profound culture and implications of classical aesthetics.Book II, made up of four chapters, attempts to expound the intervening factors and ecologicalenvironment in the evolution of ancient opera color from the perspective of performance studies, folklore,culturology, aesthetics respectively. In performance studies, opera color is of affective, beautifying,symbolic function and features, by which there come performance interaction and psychological empathyfrom the responsive audience, thus creating freehand and fantastic scenes and orderly symbols system.From the aspect of folklore, either exorcism or ancestor worship, color, as a symbol of the primitive beliefs,alludes to reverence and praise to ancestors, but also is fraught with real-to-imaginary emotional experienceand catharsis. Ranging from the sanguine compassionate ‘color carnival’ to self-protect color as‘camouflage’, color based on the seasonal folk customs regulates characters’ performing emotion andaudience’s visual reaction. The color worship of national tradition, the color selection of various regions,the usual practice of coloring, present audience with splendid stage effects and also becomes the veryhallmarks of different operas. From the cultural perspective, opera color constructs the stage order inaccordance with the theory of Yin-yang and the Five Elements, creating color imagery by the Confucianismcolor concept, that is, to paint comes after the plain and white; and by abiding to the Taoism color theory ofstaying obscure wisely and also the good and evil in the color symbolism and the hierarchical order within to connect the moral evaluation, then forming the visual order matching the Five Colors. An aesthetic pointof view is that in opera color there exists performance and conversion between "means" and "imagery","simple" and "complex "," refined " and "rustic ". No matter in color creating like "formless similarity"and "coloring according to the kinds", in color conveying from "simple" to "overlaboured", even in colorrecognizing from the "refined" to "rustic", the opera color establishes in line with classical aesthetics thebeauty of the stage. With the core of ‘acting’, the opera color on the stage embodies the visual forms andperformance-and-appreciation habits of all kinds as well as reflects the color tradition and folk taboos indifferent cultural environments.