CHIN 361 Chinese Traditional Theater

This course introduces the canonical works of Chinese drama, and it trains students to appreciate the theatrical music and performance of the Kung Opera and modern Peking Opera. The course material will include texts, music, and performance which are the essential features in traditional operatic theater. The traditional theater of China represents a crucial intersection of many elements within the culture. Theatrical texts include prose, poetry, and illustration, while performance is enlivened by music and dance. During the Ming era especially, drama culture reached beyond the theatre to embrace a huge constituency of readers, importantly influencing the development of the publishing industry. We thus need to draw together poetry, prose, criticism, music, dance, art, and history to develop a clear picture of traditional Chinese drama. In class we will examine performance footage, music and dramatic texts. Knowledge of the Chinese language is not a requirement.  VP, BN, WB.