Staging revolution: Actresses, realism and the New Woman movement in Chinese spoken drama and film, 1919-1949

This dissertation dealt with the intricate relationship between actresses' activities, the New Woman movement and the Chinese pursuit of realism in spoken drama and film from 1919 to 1949. My purposes are to challenge the presupposed pro-feminist position that had been attributed to those modern drama pieces and film works by mainstream male artists; and to explore the development of modern Chinese performance theories in this period. My methods include to reconsider the literacy texts by mainstream male artists, uncovering the hidden meaning of the xin nuxing roles they created on stage; and to examine the actual productions of their works, particularly how directors' treatment of realism made them to practice the new technique of gender appropriate casting, and how had that affected actresses' performances both on and off stage or screen. I consider actresses' activities 'alternative text' to male writers' works because the modern actresses were very much influenced by the New Woman type of roles constructed by male writers. Women dramatists and screenwriters' works are definitely another kind of alternative texts which I include in my study to challenge the mainstream male writers' representation of New Woman. The mass media's reception is another important indicator of how the New Woman was received in popular culture and by general public. The media's comments sometimes corresponded the theatrical and cinematic representation of New Woman by radical male writers and women performers, and some other times, they contested, or even contradicted modern performing artists' approach to New Woman. The mass media are therefore important to our understanding of whether the changes in New Woman discourse challenged or reinforced the dominant patriarchal assumption. I therefore examines in relationship to one and another the various texts--play and screen scripts, stage photographs and film works, critics' writings, the media's comments and my interview with actresses and other modern performers.