Performers › Dramatists and Directors
Wu Zuguang
Playwright and director who wrote the spoken dramas Phoenix City and Return on a Snowy Night, adapted the pingju film Flowers as Matchmaker and directed Peking opera films such as The Goddess of the Luo River.
In a workshop, one person sits with their back turned at a long table, pointing a thin rod at a model stage with painted scenery; scripts bound in cord and a brush pot lie in the foreground, a ring of white dots marks the floor, and two drums and hanging cloths stand at the right.
Wu Zuguang was born in Beijing on 21 April 1917; his family came from Wujin in Jiangsu. He left the arts faculty of Sino-French University in 1936 without graduating, wrote the spoken drama Phoenix City in 1937 and that year worked and lectured at the National Drama School in Nanjing. During the war he directed and wrote for theatre troupes in Chongqing; his best-known plays include Return on a Snowy Night and The Soul of the Nation, and he also wrote Roaming the Rivers and Lakes. In 1946 he edited the literary supplement of the Xinmin Evening News and the magazine Qingming, and in 1947 he wrote and directed for the Great China and Yung Hwa film companies in Hong Kong. After 1949 he was a director at the Central Film Bureau and the Beijing Film Studio, making the Peking opera films The Goddess of the Luo River and The Stage Art of Mei Lanfang (both 1955) and Tears of the Desolate Mountain (1956). He adapted the script for the 1963 pingju film Flowers as Matchmaker and wrote the Peking opera Three Beatings of Tao Sanchun, filmed in 1983. His writings were collected in six volumes. In 1951 he married the pingju performer Xin Fengxia. He died in Beijing on 9 April 2003.
Life and times
Dates 1917–2003