Human Doors, Ghost Doors: Entrances and Exits in Qing Court Theater

Abstract:The control of exits and entrances may be fundamental to theater the world over, but as Zhou Yibai observed long ago, the absolute weight placed on the entrances and exits of actors to construct the stage is of paramount importance in Chinese traditional drama. This essay examines how stage space was reconfigured in Qing court "grand opera" through major changes in the uses of exits and entrances, as laid out in unprecedented detail in stage directions included in the lengthy scripts. In particular, this essay focuses on Zhang Zhao's Golden Standard for Exhortation to Virtue (Quanshan jinke 勸善金科) from the early years of the Qianlong emperor's reign (1740 or 1741). As the first of the Qing grand operas to be composed and printed, The Golden Standard helped shape all subsequent grand opera scripts, while the success of its performance led to the construction of permanent three-tiered stages in Qing palaces, two of which are still extant today. The Golden Standard is also especially valuable as an intermediate work between the way exits and entrances are handled in the printed play texts of monumental chuanqi like The Peony Pavilion (Mudan ting 牡丹亭) and The Palace of Lasting Life (Changsheng dian 長生殿) and in the grand opera genre as a whole. Finally, since The Golden Standard is a play that enacts the Buddhist story of Mulian rescuing his mother from hell, ghosts and the underworld play a disproportionately large role in the action. As I argue, it is particularly in the reconceiving of the ontological and spatial relationship between ghosts and the stage that Zhang Zhao's innovations were at their most radical.