Message from jmitchell

[Anonymous]

This sounds like an interesting film. I plan to try to find it and will offer a review. I found a beautiful and informative book on the Chinese opera by Siu Wang-Ngai. I was looking for images for "Flower Drum Song" and the book is full of incredible photographs by Sui Wang-Nui but the text by Peter Lovrick is equally amazing. It provides brief glimses of various performance traditions and their regional origins in China. It recounts a number of regional folk tales that have become traditional performance pieces. and discusses the connection between regional performance and regional culture. I wll find this extremely useful in the unit I teach on East asian theatrical traditions which has been limited in scope to say the least. I plan to have groups select a story/play from the brief synopses provided in the text. Discuss the historical and cultural context of the work and create a performance piece for presentation to the class that incorporates at least three of the "conventions" discussed in the text. For more advanced students I will have them examine this book and two texts on Commedia dell' Arte and compare the two theatrical forms and what they reveal about the respective cultures.
I'm new to tthis forum and to "forums" in general and so I don't know if this should be two entries, one on the film, one on the book or what? please advise or I guess I will figure it out as I spend more time in the forums