“The Brightest Sun, The Darkest Shadow”: Ideology and the Study of Chinese Theatre in the West during the Cold War

Abstract

This is the new Communist drama, and the picture is frequently artless and sterile, without depth, without truth, and without reality.-Walter and Ruth Meserve, 1970 1Peking opera now is a mixture of drama, music, dance, acrobatics, poetry, propaganda and revolutionary history, with indefatigable heroes (more adroit than James Bond, and with a purpose he never dreamed of) and fabulously wicked villains-the whole socking out a message of exemplary struggle and courage.-Lois Wheeler Snow, 1972 2