Strives For Survival: The Chinese Drama Under The Context Of Market

Being an indispensably topic given by our age, it is necessary to discuss the survival and development of Chinese Drama under the context of market.There is a big obstacle for Chinese drama which has a glorious history in the evening of 20th century: How can this art form create a better living condition and advance healthily with satisfying both its inner rules and the need of socialist market economy? The problem is not only troubling the traditional opera but also Chinese Drama under its transformation ?to end with pride or to strive for existence by means of reforms and development?This article uses Marxism's "Art Production Theory" as method to analysis the way for Chinese drama to maintain existence under market economy. Specifically, the article spreads its ideas in three chapters:Chapter one provides theoretical support of relative notions. By studying the concept of Max's "Art Production" and the development on it from the other western Marxian, we know that the art creation is a special form of productive activity. As a spiritual production, the art creation is composed of such factors as producer, product and consumer, just the same as that of material production. The difference between which is that the artist as producer, the artwork as production and the audience as consumer establish a relationship of art production. Under the orientation of the Art Production Theory, we can ascertain the commodity character of drama products, and further analyze its ideological particularity in art production and consumption. When drama enters the market currency as a production, it must be directed and regulated by the market value rules. Therefore it will be logical necessary to use relevant techniques, management and running strategies to transform the aesthetic values of drama into market exchange values.The second chapter bases its discussion on the comparison of two respective managing models of Euramerican Musical and Chinese traditional drama. First the Euramerican Musical has a sophisticated system of management in commercial operation and established a stable market. The successful running brings a win-win achievement both in art value and in commercial value. On the other hand, though china has gone a long and tough road towards the commercializing of traditional opera, the successful cases of the GoulanWashe of Song-yuan Dynasty , Liyu's Jiaban of Ming-qing Dynasty, along with the Meilanfang's visit to U.S. does provide us with illuminations. Experiences from both these two cases are references to the market running of our Chinese drama under the transformation.The crisis of Chinese drama in the market has complicated reasons. In the third chapter, We start from the angle of aesthetic views to reevaluate the traditional aesthetic criteria of judgment, vanish the prejudice on the art's commercial property from the traditional aesthetic idea and modern elite aesthetic idea, erase the contradiction of aesthetic values and commercial values, to find out a common point of the traditional culture spirit and the contemporary national aesthetic mentality, to let Chinese drama find its direction in the prosperous cultural market and occupy certain share of it. At the end of the dissertation, I will provide several ideas for the running and management of drama according to the successful experiences of foreign and domestic drama management and the reality of the Chinese stage performance market in China as references.