A Study Of The Yue Opera Amateur Performers Community And Its Activities In Wenling,Taizhou

In the Wenling area of Taizhou,Yue Opera has been performed for a long time.In the old days,due to the lack of material resources,Yue Opera was only sung on important occasions and the local people had great enthusiasm for it,accumulating a large fan base.In the last century,although people enjoyed watching Yue Opera performances,there was a prejudice against the actors’ profession and most young girls were not able to become professional Yue Opera actors as they would have liked.Nowadays,as society becomes more tolerant and opera fans can dispose of their own time and energy,more and more fans are not only limited to listening to and watching opera,but are also gradually learning to sing,a group that calls itself amateur performers.After the emergence of the Yue Opera amateur performers,they began to spread throughout the region,and the community continued to grow,even forming formal organised forms of opera clubs and associations in the area,with Yue Opera amateur performers becoming increasingly active on the Yue Opera stage and in everyday life.Although the area around Wenling in Taizhou was not the birthplace of Yue Opera,nor did it play an important role in the reform of modern Yue Opera,it has developed a large community of Yue Opera amateur performers,and various activities were carried out in full swing in grassroots society.Against the background of the decline of traditional opera due to the impact of popular culture,the active presence of Yue Opera amateur performers in Wenling,Taizhou,is a phenomenon worthy of attention and consideration in itself.In addition,as one of the first National Intangible Cultural Heritage,Yueju Opera does not have an intangible heritage protection unit in Taizhou,nor does it have a representative inheritor,relying mainly on the participation of the amateur performers community to promote the heritage of Yue Opera.This kind of intangible heritage practice without the promotion of an intangible heritage protection unit and without the practice of intangible heritage inheritors has important implications for the heritage development of intangible cultural heritage of theatre in China.This paper takes the amateur performers community in the Wenling area of Taizhou as the object of study,describing the natural and human environment in which it sprang up;explaining the process of its emergence and development and its different types of activities;and analysing the characteristics of the activity and exploring its value for the living transmission of intangible heritage.This paper is based on the author’s experiences growing up in Taizhou and fieldwork in the Wenling area of Taizhou,supplemented by a literature review and analysis.Field research is the main way to obtain information,mainly using methods such as participant observation and interviews to obtain first-hand information and then explore it.In the introductory section,the origins of the topic and the significance of the research are explained,the results of previous research are sorted out,and the concepts of " Yue Opera in the Wenling area of Taizhou" and "amateur performers community" are defined in the title of the article,and the main research methods are described.The first part is an introduction to the field sites,including the physical geography and historical and humanistic background of Taizhou and Wenling.In this part,the basic conditions of the field sites are used to analyse how local Yue Opera took root,grew and developed,and to outline the many elements that gave rise to the creation of the amateur performers community.In the second part,the form of the amateur performers community and its formation process are described,including the "singing group" and the grassroots opera clubs and associations,taking the Clover Opera Club as an example.In the third part,the content and form of the activities of the group are discussed,including both folk-spontaneous and official-promoted activities.In the fourth part,the characteristics of the activities of amateur performers are summarised and found to be spontaneous,group-oriented and flexible.The fifth section explores the inspiration and lessons for the living transmission of the intangible heritage in the light of the specific process,types and characteristics of the activities of the amateur performers.The final part is a concluding remark,which summarises the whole piece.