Social Performance: The Neixiang Wan Bang Play Production And Consumption

This paper is a case survey of Wanbang, a traditional local drama. Wanbang is a genre of drama of three-hundred-year history, which is widespreaded in the southwest of Henan province. In its long history, Wanbang has developed integrated art forms and become a popular genre of drama that the natives love to see and hear. Now it has successfully declared state-level immaterial cultural heritage. Although many traditional local dramas have withered or even become extinct, Wanbang is surprisingly popular. Does its prosperous appearance mean its fate is in the sun, however? For the natives, whether Wanbang, a genre of old art form, has any meaning other than entertainment? Or in another word, what kind of position does it occupy in the cultural network of the natives? If Wanbang does contain this kind of meaning, is it an extension of historical memory or an invention of tradition? This paper tries to answer these questions through a historical retrospect of Wanbang and concrete analysis of contemporary performance occasions.Methodologically speaking, I mainly adopt fieldwork survey combined with literature research. During the spring festival and autumn dramaturgic period of 2004, I followed the troupe and made the investigation over a month, participating in various typical performance occasions, interviewing the members and the ganger of the troupe and the audience individually, and visiting retired old members to learn the history of the troupe. In addition, I referred to literatures for the information about the area in which Wanbang is spreaded, the history and the art features of Wanbang, and so on so as to learn and unfold as much as possible.Chapter 1 is the introduction, which mainly explains the significance and target of this survey and makes retrospect of theories and achievement related to drama research. Chapter 2 introduces the general information of my fieldwork site, and clears up the literature relating the origin and the features of Wanbang as well as the organization and performance occasions of squad in pre-troupe period. Chapter 3 puts emphasis on the changes of the genres of the drama and the fate of the troupe in the time after the establishment of P.R.C and before the reform and openness. Chapter 4 focuses on the period since the reform and openness, detailing how Wanbang troupes return to folk drama market, presenting the cotemporary operation of the troupe and the living status of its member. Chapter 5 is the key chapter of this paper. In this part, the meaning of Wanbang...