Wang-Ngai Siu

Chinese opera embraces over 360 different styles of theatre that make one of the richest performance arts in the world. It combines music, speech, poetry, mime, acrobatics, stage fighting, vivid face-painting and exquisite costumes. First experiences of Chinese opera can be baffling because its vocabulary of stagecraft is familiar only to the seasoned aficionado. Chinese Opera: The Actor's Craft makes the experience more accessible for everyone. This book uses breath-taking images of Chinese opera in performance by Hong Kong photographer Siu Wang-Ngai to illustrate and explain Chinese opera stage technique. The book explores costumes, gestures, mime, acrobatics, props and stage techniques. Each explanation is accompanied by an example of its use in an opera and is illustrated by in-performance photographs. Chinese Opera: The Actor's Craft provides the reader with a basic grammar for understanding uniquely Chinese solutions to staging drama.

Chinese Opera looks at Chinese society through an excitingseries of photographs of operatic performances from many regions of thecountry. The book introduces the reader to this unique theatrical formand tells the traditional stories that are its narrative foundation.Siu Wang-Ngai's extraordinary images, taken in natural light duringperformances, lovingly reveal the visual excitement of Chinese operaand point to the differences in costuming and presentation thatdistinguish each regional style and character type. Through Peter Lovrick's engaging text, Chinese Operaprovides a brief anecdotal history of the development of Chinese operaand introduces a language of theatrical convention entirely new to theWesterner. It also identifies the hallmarks of the dozen or so regionalopera styles found in this collection. As well, the book arranges thestories in a rough chain of being, from heaven, through the wholesocial structure on earth from emperor to outlaw, to ghosts in thenether world, offering a revealing view of Chinese social tradition andexperience. Chinese opera has a rich repertoire drawn from history,legends, folk tales, and classic novels. Chinese Opera opens a door onto the wealth of Chinesetraditional drama in a way that will interest drama aficionados,admirers of theatrical photography, students of Chinese drama, thoseinterested in the culture of China, and everyone who enjoys a livelystory. Siu Wang-Ngai's photographic record of opera performancesmakes these stories come alive.