Ibsen's mermaid in China: adapting The lady from the sea for the traditional Yue theatre

• Main Author: Terry Siu-han Yip
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Septentrio Academic Publishing 2015-02-01
• Series: Nordlit: Tidsskrift i litteratur og kultur
• Subjects: Ibsen; cultural transformation; operatic adaptation; Chinese Yue opera; Confucian morality; gender
• Online Access: https://septentrio.uit.no/index.php/nordlit/article/view/3380

Ibsen has created Ellida Wangel in The Lady from the Sea as a “mermaid” stranded on land, feeling trapped in her marriage with Dr Wangel and suffocated by her restrictive gender roles as wife and step-mother. The play focuses on Ellida the dying mermaid’s process of individuation as she struggles to seek happiness, freedom and self-fulfilment in life. Through Ellida’s entangled relationship with the Stranger and her husband, Ibsen has created a living “mermaid”, who enables him to explore gender relations, individual freedom and choice, as well as the liberation of the self.             However, when The Lady from the Sea was transposed from Norway to China and adapted for the traditional Chinese theatre, the Chinese Yue theatre in this case, Ellida had undergone drastic changes in order to suit the traditional Yue theatregoers’ expectations and taste, as well as to fit the socio-cultural norm of traditional Yue opera.             Instead of examining those technical alterations such as rearrangement of scenes (Ye, 2011, 20), the use of symbols (Wu, 2011, 80), the setting (Wu, 2011, 78), or theatrical performance and devices (Qing Yun, 2010, 32) adopted in the Chinese operatic adaptation of The Lady from the Sea, this article focuses on the cultural re-presentation of Ellida and the re-constitution of her character, the purpose of which is to make her plausible as a Chinese woman on the traditional Yue stage. A close study of the cultural transformation of Ellida and her re-orientation on the traditional Yue stage adaptation will enable the reader to better understand the Chinese cultural emphasis on didacticism, Confucian morality and propriety in traditional drama and theatre, as well as the difficulties involved in transporting Ibsen’s mermaid to the Chinese traditional Yue stage.