Investigation And Research On The Temple Theatre In Gaoping, Shanxi Province

Temple theatre refers to a temple that has both stage andauditorium. As a mainly part of a temple theatre, the stage isaccompanied with Chinese opera’s beginning, development andmaturity, and they are influenced each other. In the Jin and Yuandynasties, specialized stage constructions in temple theatresappeared. In Ming dynasty, on the basis of the previous generation,temple theatre made a huge reform------the gate stages were createand were gradually popular and specialized auditorium wereappeared. To the period of Qing dynasty and Republic of China, templetheatre showed a great prosperity. There are a huge number of templetheater buildings, inscriptions and other cultural relics in Gaoping.Today, there are342ancient temple theaters in Gaoping which arefrom Song and Jin dynasties to the period of Republic of China. Theyare so complete that should become the key area of temple theatreStudies.This article will be divided into two directions to talk about templetheatres in Gaoping. One is about the evolution of performance placewhose carrier is the ancient stage, the other is about the auditoriumwhose carrier is Kanlou. This article gives the deserved attention to the auditoriums as well as the research of the ancient stages. And theevolution process of temple theater buildings in Gaoping is dividedinto different periods such as creation, reformation and development,and there are representative temple theatres in Gaoping as theexamples of each period. What’s more, the data of Gaoping templetheatres are presented in tabular form in AppendixDue to various reasons, most of the temple theater buildings areno longer in use and gradually fade out and will rapidly die. However,to the researchers on traditional opera, these solid cultural relicscontain the development and prosperity of Chinese Opera and theyare the “living fossils” on the research of traditional opera. Relying oneach temple theatre, this article tries to integrate all the data thatcome from field trips, literatures and folk oral information to they canhelp the related research in the future and reflect temple theatres’vitality in their solid basis.