Second Creation Of "peony Pavilion"

Written by Ming dynasty dramatist Tang Xianzu, the 'Peony Pavilion' is one of the most famous legends of Chinese classical literature, which has been passed down for over 400 years. Ever since the turn of the century, people have been attaching great importance to this play, much greater than that in any period of the last century. In April 2004, a new adaptation of the'Peony Pavilion'targeting a young audience, designed by Taiwan writer Bai Xianyong and performed by Suzhou Kunqu Theater, made its debut in Taiwan National Theater. Apart from this, the previous American version and Shanghai version of this play had already stirred up an upsurge in the opera field of US and Shanghai. Recently, the youth version of the'Peony Pavilion'has been planning to hold performances in some related American universities, which is surely to be a most wonderful scene in its 400-year stage history. Each of the three versions above has its unique merits, namely, deletion and reordering of acts, adaptation of soliloquy, addition and deletion of certain lines, depiction of characters, use of dialects, as well as differences of stage designs. This paper tries to compare, from the perspectives of transcripts, stage presentation, and acting performances, the different contemporary interpretations of this art treasure --- the'Peony Pavilion'in the three versions, so that a proposal or a speculation might be put forward as to how to adapt Kunqu opera to the new standard of appreciation. The creativity of this paper lies in that it analyses and studies both the original transcript and the stage performance, in order to solve the problem of how to inherit classical Kunqu opera in this modern society.