Teaching American Students the “Essence” of Chinese Theatre at the National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts (Zhongguo Xiqu Xueyuan)

TEACHING AMERICAN STUDENTS THE “ESSENCE” OF CHINESE THEATRE AT THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF CHINESE THEATRE ARTS (ZHONGGUO XIQU XUEYUAN) ROSE JANG The Evergreen State College From May 5 to June 2, 2012, twenty-nine students from The Evergreen State College, Washington, studied and practiced traditional Chinese theatre at the National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts (Zhongguo xiqu xueyuan 中國戲曲學院; hereafter, NACTA)1 in Beijing, China, as the culmination of a China studies program begun the previous fall that I designed and taught. Three other faculty members from the college and I lived and attended classes taught by academy personnel together with the students. This article is meant to be a report and summary of ourcollective experiences and artistic journey at NACTA, with a brief reflection at the end. Taking students to China to study traditional Chinese theatre at a historically and artistically prestigious institution like NACTA had long been on my radar. Knowing that I would have the opportunity to add a study-abroad component to my 2011– 2012 teaching, I began to explore the possibility of establishing a partnership program with NACTA, taking advantage of their facilities, personnel, and artistic resources. I paid the school a visit during my sabbatical in May 2010. Through the introduction of Professor Hai Zhen 海震, former chair of the music department and now director of the library at NACTA, whom I had met at a theatre conference in New York City, I got to sit down and talk to the chair of the Jingju 京劇 (Beijing opera) department, Zhang Yao 張堯,2 an extremely amicable and articulate gentleman who performed xiaosheng 小生 (young male) roles before devoting most of his time to administrative work. He told me that his department would happily support my proposal of a study-abroad program to guide American students into the heart and essence of Chinese traditional theatre. Granted, China study trips and exchange programs with Chinese institutions have become regular features in American universities for the last two decades. # The Permanent Conference on Chinese Oral and Performing Literature, Inc. 2015 DOI: 10.1179/0193777415Z.00000000027 1 Besides its main website, http://nacta.edu.cn/, NACTA also has one designed to attract international students, http://international.nacta.edu.cn/en/. A 2007 promotional video in Chinese has been posted: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v¼pn-nu51TZ3c, accessed July 4, 2015. It completely lacks narration, however. 2 Professor Zhang has taken on the administrative position of Curriculum Dean for the whole academy since September 3, 2014. The current chair of the Jingju department is Professor Shu Tong 舒桐. CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature 34.1 (July 2015): 22–40 But this Evergreen study-abroad program was unique in its scale, focus, and intensity in Chinese theatre training within a professional theatre academy. Besides, when I sat in Professor Zhang’s office two years before the trip, I had absolutely no idea what kind of students I would get for this rare and wonderful opportunity, and whether their interest, talents, skills, stamina, intelligence, and sensitivity were up to such a challenge. Evergreen is a unique liberal arts institution that does not have departments or majors. The students who would enroll themselves in the proposed program two years hence could come from diverse backgrounds and interests. Could I respond to Professor Zhang’s generosity with any guarantee of dedication and concentration from my American students? PREPARATION FOR THE TRIP I believe that a long, patient, and incremental preparatory process in the US made a huge difference in students’ later engagement at NACTA. Although these students were not theatre or music majors (in fact, many had had no previous theatrical experience before this program), they stayed in the program for an entire academic year starting from the fall quarter, during which time a lot of effort was made toward systematically grooming them to meet the demands of the study abroad component in the spring quarter. Perhaps because they did not see themselves as first and foremost “actors,” “musicians,” or “theatre artists,” they acquired both a broader knowledge base and developed a kind of cultural adaptability that would come in handy in China. For me, the real difficulty was the nearly overwhelming amount of negotiation...