The Bifurcated Theater: Urban Space, Operatic Entertainment, and Cultural Politics in Shanghai, 1900s-1930s

Abstract

Centering on commercial theaters, this dissertation examines the evolution of Peking opera entertainment culture in early twentieth-century Shanghai. It illustrates how the city?s rapidly changing extra-theatrical circumstances affected theater life, and probes into the implications of public operatic activities on local society. It argues that while the modern conditions of Shanghai greatly reshaped Peking opera entertainment life, the latter in turn significantly contributed to the reorganization of social relations as the city, and China as a whole, modernized economically and politically. In particular, when theatergoing became a vehicle for ordinary people to construct modern identities, local elites forged an aesthetic hierarchy in Peking opera entertainment in order to secure and strengthen their dominant social status, which caused the increasing bifurcation of operatic entertainment culture. These dynamic sociocultural dimensions of Peking opera entertainment, rather than the genre?s intrinsic aesthetic features or artistic value, underpinned its high prosperity in early twentieth-century Shanghai.