Realism in the Modern American and Chinese American Theater 1880-1920

Modern American society took pride in its scientific inventiveness and realism. Audiences demanded innovation and realism on stage as well as in everyday life.

The evolving modern American environment induced radical changes in the San Francisco Chinatown community. Still the largest Chinese settlement in the nation, Chinatown was a largely traditional working-class bachelor ghetto dominate by a small, old-fashioned merchant elite. It turned gradually into an increasingly modern, middle class community forming new community organizations of a democratic nature. These reached out for increasing contacts with the larger surrounding society. Like the rest of American society, modern Chinatown also wanted more realism in it theatre.

Cantonese Operas staged in San Francisco from 1852 to the 1880s differed little from those staged in China at that time. By the 1920s, as these photographs from the old Chinatown May Photographic Studio show, new stage effects and themes were introduced special to the San Francisco opera theatres, the Great China and the Mandarin.