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Drama Works of Cao Yu

Cao Yu is a famous playwright and drama educator in China born in 1910 and passed away in the year of 1996. His original name was Wan Jiabao and original family home was in Qianjiang in Hubei province. Born on September 24th in 1910 in Tianjin, Coa Yu lived in a feudal bureaucrat family. What Cao Yu experienced in his young ages had great influence on the formation of his thoughts of anti-feudal and patriotism as well as the creation in his lifetime.

He entered Nankai Middle School in the year of 1922 and joined in Nankai New Drama Troupe three years later and then become the backbone. In 1928, he studied in Nankai University, majoring in Political Science and then transferred to foreign languages school in Qinghua University. He began to teach drama in the national drama school in August of 1936. When the Anti-Japanese War began, he moved to Sichuan and returned to Shanghai in 1946. Later, he was invited to the United States to give lectures on drama and came back in January in 1947.

In early 1949, Cao Yu accepted the arrangement of underground organization of the Communist Party and went to Beijing from Shanghai and then joined in the Chinese people‘s political consultative conference and participated in the preparations for the Congress of national literature and art workers. Some students who study in intensive Mandarin course in China may be told that Cao Yu was elected as one of the bureau members in the Congress of national literature and art workers held in July of 1949.

In 1950 and 1952, Cao Yu was appointed as the assistant dean of Central Academy of Drama and the president of Beijing People‘s Art Theatre respectively. Cao Yu was a dramatist continued with the past and open up the future. Since the pioneers of drama regarded drama as the instrument to publicize the thought of democracy revolution, there was no chance to pay attention to the artistic issue of drama. But Cao Yu inherited the traditional democracy thought and increased the drama art into a high level by absorbing the expression forms of Chinese drama arts and modern European drama.

If the overseas students who are learning in Chinese language school are interested in Chinese drama, they must have heard the famous works of him like Thunderstorm and Sunrise. The works of Cao Yu also had profound influence on directors and performing art and state art, making drama become the real comprehensive art.

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