Brian James DeMare's Mao's Cultural Army is a very welcome addition to the expanding scholarship that is deepening our understanding of the early decades of China's socialist revolution. Spanning from the late 1920s launch of the Red Drama movement to the troupe rectification and registration drives of the early 1950s, DeMare's study covers an important, yet understudied, period of contemporary Chinese theater history—a time when drama did not just represent tumultuous events like war and class struggle but participated directly in them. Because of this historical context, DeMare's book is about drama troupes but is anything but conventional theater history. Instead, he shows us that to study theater in this time in China is to study the very process of revolution.
The central argument of DeMare's book is that theater played a fundamental role in bringing about the transformation of rural China at the heart of the Chinese revolution. Borrowing a Geertzian model of cultural representations as simultaneously reflections of and guidebooks for reality (the well-known “models of and models for” concept), DeMare argues convincingly that drama troupes helped realize China's socialist revolution by teaching rural communities how to become revolutionary agents in real life. It was through the new words, characters, conflicts, and storylines that they encountered in drama that China's rural residents learned to see themselves in new ways and to change their communities. DeMare repeats this argument in various ways throughout the book, but it is most powerful in his treatment of land reform opera, when dramatists achieved what he calls “the tight synchronization between cultural and political performances” (p. 193). Through his in-depth accounts of the activities of rural drama troupes, DeMare shows how, just as military-affiliated drama troupes were often called upon to assist in combat operations, cultural teams active during land reform also took part directly in the political work of organizing village struggle sessions and redistributing land. Because participation in land reform provided subject matter for new plays, political action and dramatic creation were mutually reinforcing.
Mao's Cultural Army is thoroughly researched and commands a vast array of previously unexamined sources. It also demonstrates a thorough knowledge of and engagement with the secondary scholarship on wartime history and rural China. What I enjoyed most is the way DeMare deploys his material to center obscure people—from child actors who are lost en route while serving in battlefront performance teams to peasant cultural activists who transform the stories of their local communities into land reform drama scripts. More so than theater per se, one has the sense that DeMare's true passion in writing this book is for telling the stories of rural communities and low-level cultural workers, whom he affectionately calls “the rank and file” (p. 220). This is a true social history, as he is interested in how average people participated in drama as a revolutionary activity, whether they were actors in a little-known amateur drama troupe in rural Hubei or audience members who traveled hours to see a theatrical production in a Shanxi village. He also shows limitations on the impact of revolutionary drama, one of which was audience reception. The agency of rural audiences, especially their ability to influence theatrical repertoires, is a point DeMare drives home effectively throughout the book. Regardless of how powerful revolutionary theater was in launching Mao's revolution or how hard Chinese Communist Party leaders worked to guide theatrical practice, he shows that rural audiences continued to be discerning and often stubborn critics who never hesitated to make their cultural demands known. Rural audiences’ unwavering love for traditional local opera repertoire proved a formidable obstacle in party efforts to promote modern shows.
Each chapter of Mao's Cultural Army is packed with insightful analyses specific to the historical period, place, or events examined. Through DeMare's engaging and often witty prose, one gets a sense not only of the larger picture of drama in China's revolution but also of important regional and local variations. The only disappointment for me in reading this book was what came across as a generally cynical tone about some of the book's core themes. While DeMare expresses deep respect for the bravery of the Red Army ensembles and the ingenuity involved in making rural theater work with limited resources, he shows much more ambivalence, at times even disdain, for the larger projects of land reform, revolutionary narratives, and folk-inspired modern theater. Given that these are in fact a main focus of the book, it is unfortunate that DeMare often appears to have little esteem for their value as serious political and artistic endeavors, at least in my reading. Beyond this minor issue, Mao's Cultural Army is an important and highly original work that makes a major contribution to twentieth-century Chinese studies. I recommend it enthusiastically to all those interested in modern Chinese history; Chinese theater; and the intersections of cultural work, art, and political activism.
