ABSTRACT
This chapter explores that although A House of Stars may help the Shanghai Yueju Company (SYC) to achieve its market goals temporarily, it could not truly revive the SYC in its long-term development. It gives an historical account of Chinese opera and then the birth and evolution of Shanghai yueju, to illustrate the difficulties in negotiating traditional and modern production methods and style through the process of Chinese opera modernization. The historical Chinese opera golden age in the Yuan dynasty ironically coincided with the most severe intellectual repression, when Mongolian rulers regulated the Confucian civil service system. On the eve of the establishment of the Peoples Republic of China, following the essence of the Actors Theatre, an all-female yueju art world was established. In the era of marketization, whilst the SYC is jostling between the historical burden of representing the working class identity and reaching out to the young middle class, the ZB has clear focus on artistic development path.
