To Shape the Minds of the Rural Masses: The Opera Reform and Everyday Experience of Grassroots Opera Actors in the Early PRC

On the eve of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese Communist Party initiated a comprehensive reform of Chinese opera. The revised form of opera and its practitioners were tasked with the responsibility of educating the Chinese public, with the goal of fostering ideological and moral virtues that align with the ideals of the new society in the PRC. With a focus on the perspectives of high-ranking officials and nationally-renowned opera actors, existing academic discussions on the PRC opera reform have mainly taken two approaches: either emphasizing the Party-state’s control over the artistic realms or highlighting the Party’s inability to align the goals of the socialist revolution with artistic and aesthetic principles. However, the experiences of grassroots opera actors during the ongoing campaigns of the opera reform in the early years of the PRC have received limited attention.

Based on county-level archival documents and oral interviews, this paper explores the PRC opera reform with a focus on the daily experience of grassroots opera actors in the Chinese countryside. It demonstrates that while the contemporary discussions surrounding the artistry and aesthetics of Chinese opera among urban-based artists, intellectuals, and Party officials were fervent, opera actors at the ground level were largely indifferent to these elite-focused themes and topics. Instead, they focused more on their daily skirmishes with the local population, resulting in substantial detriment to their overall health and well-being. Further, this paper demonstrates that the ongoing campaigns and meetings surrounding the opera reform had emerged as a crucial platform for grassroots opera performers to voice their concerns regarding the prevalent disrespectful attitudes and actions displayed by rural communities towards them. The objective of these efforts was to secure improvements in their working conditions during performance tours and to obtain new negotiating power with the rural audience.