Minutes of "Evening to Sum Up the Conclusions from the Stay of the Theatre of Mei Lanfang in the Soviet Union" at The All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (VOKS) on Sunday, 14 April 1935

Risum, Janne

doi:10.1353/atj.2020.0032

Cited by 1 publication

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“…29 Tretyakov, who wrote numerous reviews about Mei's performances, also functioned as 'a key connecting link in organizing Mei's Soviet tour'. 30 Along with Meyerhold and Eisenstein, he was probably one of the most enthusiastic theatrical champions of Mei's visit.…”

Section: Contextualizing the Tours: Aims And Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Antiquity to Modernity: Mei Lanfang’s Preparatory and Presentational Strategies for his American and Soviet Visits

Feng¹,

Pi²

2022

New Theatre Quarterly

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The Chinese actor Mei Lanfang and his retinue prepared several documents for his visits to the USA in 1930 and the USSR in 1935. Using these primary sources, this article explores the reasons why Mei presented traditional Chinese theatre differently in each context. One reason was winning popularity among specifically targeted audiences, as indicated by the carefully selected programmes, explanatory discourses, and illustrations from promotional materials. Through a comparative examination, this article argues that, for the American tour, Mei made traditional Chinese theatre an emblem of ancient Chinese art, while, for the Soviet tour, he endorsed the Soviet Union’s social and artistic enterprises, labelling traditional Chinese theatre a modern art. Both images, one static and the other dynamic, were authentic representations of the multifaceted contemporary Chinese theatre as it underwent modernization. Wei Feng received his PhD in Theatre Studies from Trinity College Dublin and teaches in the School of Foreign Languages and Literature at Shandong University. He is the author of Intercultural Aesthetics in Traditional Chinese Theatre: From 1978 to the Present (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). Ye Pi (corresponding author) teaches in the School of Foreign Languages and Literature at Shandong University, specializing in Russian literature.

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Section: Contextualizing the Tours: Aims And Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 99%