Bashu Traditional Theater Building

There were no sole theater buildings in Chinese traditional architecture. In most cases, theaters were contained in palaces, dwelling houses, temples and guild buildings. It is necessary to study traditional theater building as a kind of architecture, because of its cultural meaning, space character and decoration, which have shown strong characteristic. Traditional theater buildings had played an important role in the past, which also had a close relationship with society, religion, technique, etc. In folk-custom and art study, drama is an indispensable part. In this point of view, more importance should be attached to traditional theater buildings in the study of Chinese traditional architecture.The study of Bashu traditional theater building is based on the cases in Sichuan & Chongqing. The content stresses on the culture, space and construction of theater building, which central clue is the character and social background of drama. The whole dissertation can be divided into three parts. The first part which comprises the 2nd and 3rd chapters, is the general description of Bashu traditional theater building. In this part, Bashu traditional theater building is put in the whole background of the interaction of Chinese drama and theater building, to analyze the general character. The second part is the detailed study of such kind of buildings, which comprise the 4th, 5th and 6th chapters. Firstly the space is studied, in which the solution to a good relation between the function of performance and auditoria and how to make good use of terrain are analyzed. Secondly, there are lots of cases shown to study theater buildings' system, scale and the performance and auditoria effect, especially about the stage's columns system and arrangement of stages. Further more, there are some description of traditional construction technology that shown the local characteristic clearly. In the end of this part, details of theater buildings is studied which reflect the folk custom in Bashu area.The third part, the 7th chapter, is the conclusion of the dissertation. According to the above study and the author's survey, as well as the present cases, constructive idea and measures are put forward.