After the Reunion

Introduction

Adapted by Chen Renjian from the traditional play Shi Tianwen and first staged in Xianyou in 1956

After the Reunion is a celebrated play of Puxian opera from Fujian, adapted in 1956 by the playwright Chen Renjian from the traditional Puxian play Shi Tianwen, also known as The Bride of Three Days Who Wronged Her Mother-in-Law. The Lisheng troupe of Xianyou County gave the first performance the same year, and the play became the treasure of the company. It was taken to Beijing in 1959, and the next year the Changchun Film Studio made it into an opera film of the same name. Tian Han called it another victory for the reworking of the traditional repertoire after Fifteen Strings of Cash and compared it to a Shakespearean tragedy. Chen Renjian saw his hero Shi Yisheng as a victim of the old code of propriety in his circumstances and yet a rebel against it in his own mind. The play was later taken into Yue opera, where Yin Guifang adapted the story as Hatred Between Father and Son, and in 2019 the Fanghua Yue Opera Theatre of Fujian staged After the Reunion to mark the centenary of her birth.

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