Wang Dahua

Also known as Also known as Duanmu Yan

Wang Dahua, also known as Duanmu Yan, was born in Weifang, Shandong, in 1919. In 1936 he entered the National Drama School in Nanjing to study stage design, and he was also a woodcut artist. As a drama teacher at the Lu Xun Academy of Arts he premiered the yangge play Brother and Sister Open the Wasteland with his student Li Bo in Yan'an at the 1943 Spring Festival, playing the brother Wang Xiao'er; staged as yangge song and dance, it drew huge crowds and made him the best-known performer of the new yangge theatre. He later also directed and designed for touring troupes. On 21 December 1946 he died in a fall from a vehicle while travelling to Nehe to collect folk material, aged twenty-seven.