The Red Lantern: A Study of the Impact of the Cultural Revolution on Drama in China

THE RED LANTERN: A STUDY OF THE IMPACT OF THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION ON DRAMA IN CHlNA THE PROMOTION OF THE DRAMA-ON-CONTEMPORY-THEMES or "hsien-taihsi " has been a major movement in the literary scene in Communist China since the early 1960's, and it has been an integral part of the Great Cultural Revolution commenced in 1965. The Chinese dramatist , or "drama-worker" as he is called today, must reflect in his play contemporary reality and topical themes, and he must fulfill the task of portraying a positive hero, the bearer of the Communist ideal of the world's transformation. Since the early 1960's hundreds of plays on contemporary themes have been written and performed, but few have ever successfully presented to the audience an impressive and memorable hero as a model for the Communist society. One of the few plays that has created such positive heroes is The Red Lantern or Hung Teng Chi. The writing of The Red Lantern has been a painstaking assignm~nt for the Chinese drama-workers under the pressure of the Cultural Revolution. The play, with its two versions, the 1965 and the 1970, shows distinctly the evidence of the impact of the Cultural Revolution on the drama of Communist China today. Dramaturgically, The Red Lantern is probably the best play ever produced in Communist China.1 Li Yii-ho, the main character in the play, has become a representative accomplishment of the Chinese drama-workers in the task of creating a positive hero. As a play in the highly stylized form of the Peking opera, The Red Lantern derives its plot originally from a Shanghai opera (hu chii) which was first performed in 1963. This play, because of its dramatic potential, was soon adopted by the Chinese Peking Opera Company (chung-kuo ching-chii yuan) into the Peking Opera repertoire, and was successfully performed in the 1964 Peking Opera on Contemporary Themes Festival (ching-chii hsien-tai-hsi kuan-mo yen-ch'u ta-hui) in Peking. An accepted version of The Red Lantern in the Peking opera appeared in 1965. But as the Great Cultural Revolution was geared into violent tempo, The Red Lantern inevitably came under close scrutiny 1 Professor A. C. Scott was perhaps the first scholar of drama in the West to notice the significant theatrical innovations of The Red Lantern, and had an article, "Hung Teng Chi: The Red Lantern, An Example of Contemporary Chinese Dramatic Experimentation," in Modern Drama, IX, 4 (February, 1967), 404411 . 44 1972 The Red Lantern 45 and was subjected to constant revisions in order to meet the prevailing political need. The most recent version of the play was based on the performance given by the China Peking Opera Company in May, 1970.2 The fact that The Red Lantern has been under such laborious and careful revision shows the Communist Party's awareness of the ideological significance as well as the dramatic potential of this play which has proved itself a theatrical success with bold and original innovations. The play tells the heroic story of a family of three devoted Communist revolutionists, Li Yii-ho, Granny and T'ieh-mei. The plot takes place in Manchuria (in the 1965 version) or in north China (in the 1970 version) in 1939 (the '70 version gives no date) during the war against the Japanese. Li Yii-ho, who is the father of T'ieh-mei and the son of Granny, is the hero in the play. He is an undereground Communist, and works as a switchman on a Japanese-controlled railway . Li is given the important mission of delivering a secret telegraph code to a Communist guerrilla band hiding in the nearby mountains. But he is betrayed by his comrade and fellow-worker, Inspector Wang Lien-chii. Consequently, Li is arrested and his family is placed under the surveillance of the Japanese detectives. T'iehmei , a girl of seventeen, is only vaguely aware of what has been going on. In order to arouse the young girl's revolutionary spirit and to strengthen her proletarian class consciousness so that she wilI continue the struggle, Granny begins to tell T'ieh-mei of the...