Street Theater and Subject Formation in Wartime China: Toward a New Form of Public Art

Abstract

Based on archival research, this article presents a succinct history of the street theater movement in China through the 1930s. It examines how complex discourses and competing visions, as well as historical events and practices-in particular the War of Resistance against Japan-both shaped and propelled the movement. The author focuses on theoretical and practical issues that promoters and practitioners of street theater dealt with and reflected on in three succeeding stages. Observing that the street theater movement hastened the formation of a modern national imagination, the author argues that the movement presented a paradigmatic development as it foregrounded the imperative to engage rural China as well as the need for participants to acquire new subject positions.

Visual Arts, Representations and Interventions in Contemporary China

“…Cultural activism is certainly not a new phenomenon in China. We can trace back its precedents in the New Culture Movement since the 1910s (Schwarcz 1986;Yeh 1994;Weston 1998;Fung 2010: 27-58;Pickowicz 2016), the Modern Woodcut Movement from the 1920s onwards (Tang 2008), and street theatre in the 1930s (Tang 2016), among others. Yet, it is the contemporary manifestations that is our focus in this study.…”

Untitled

“…Esta idea de unificar propaganda política y arte se expandió rápidamente por varios continentes. En China, por ejemplo, casi una década antes del estallido de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, con el objeto de concienciar a la población para resistir ante la ofensiva japonesa, el teatro abandona los escenarios para que los campesinos tomen conciencia del problema al que su nación se enfrenta (Tang 2016). El modelo de acercar el teatro al pueblo llevándolo a la calle ocurre unas décadas después en Brasil, en los años 1960, como propuesta de Augusto Boal (1931Boal ( -2009 para concienciar al pueblo y ayudarle a cambiar su situación.…”