Content area
Full Text
BEIJING OPERA COSTUMES: THE VISUAL COMMUNICATION OF CHARACTER AND CULTURE. By Alexandra B. Bonds. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2008. xxii, 350 pp. Cloth, $50.00.
The product of eighteen years of painstaking research undertaken in Taipei, Beijing, Honolulu, and Oregon, this book is the first comprehensive study of the costumes of jingju (Beijing opera), encompassing both techniques and aesthetics. Jingju, China's national theatre, was established during the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) and has experienced significant changes, particularly after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. The book focuses on the traditional jingju repertoire that is performed in China today, although contemporary Chinese stages also feature newly written historical and modern plays created after 1949.
The book contains eight chapters with more than 250 colorful photographs and black-and-white costume pattern drafts. The first chapter, "The World of Traditional Jingju," provides readers with basic knowledge to understand the mysterious world of jingju costumes. The chapter begins with the historical context of the theatrical form. Successively, it discusses jingju's role types, plays, and visual components (including the stage, settings, staging, and lighting) and then explicates the historical background and the four major categories of jingju costumes. The chapter ends with the aesthetic principles and aims of jingju.
Chapter 2, "The World of Traditional Jingju Costumes," explores the costumes' relationship to actors and their performances. Jingju is a unique form of song-and-dance theatre in which the core is the actor's performance, which is both stylized and conventionalized. It follows then that the main function of the conventionalized costumes is to highlight the visual image of character, thereby supporting actor's performance. As the author describes, jingju costumes do not specify the period, season, or region in which the play takes place, but do emphasize characters' gender, age, social status, and mood. Through examples of water sleeves, feathers, sashes, hairstyles, and beards the author depicts how...