Wang Litang
Lineage & School of Heritage
She began formal study at the age of seven under her grandfather Wang Shaotang and her father Wang Xiaotang, took the stage at ten, was acclaimed as the ten-year-old star, and is the fourth-generation transmitter of the Wang school's Water Margin in Yangzhou storytelling.
Mastery, Signature Works & Repertoire
Female, of the Han ethnic group, born in 1940 in Yangzhou, Jiangsu. Wang Litang was born into a family of Yangzhou storytelling performers. From the 1970s, in order to keep the Wang school's Water Margin alive, she both reconstructed the repertoire from memory and recorded it, collating the school's representative books Wu Song, Song Jiang, Shi Xiu and Lu Junyi in forty chapters and more than four million characters, published in 1995. The Wang school's Water Margin employs superb Yangzhou dialect and a meticulous art of narration to open up the inner lives of its figures; aided by facial expression and gaze, it shapes lively and vivid characters within a humorous narrative. Her performance is supple and free, her enunciation clear, her pacing well modulated, her language polished and her flavour inexhaustible. Beyond the heroes of Liangshan, the portrayal of figures from every social stratum, especially the humble people at the bottom of society, is a hallmark of the Wang school's Water Margin. Wang Litang has inherited the school's fine depiction of scenes of social custom and its successful interpolation of traditional devices such as poetry, couplets and lantern riddles. Her representative works include Water Margin (Shuihu) and Red Crag: The Two-Gun Old Woman (Hongyan: Shuang Qiang Laotai Po).
Honors & Recognition
National representative bearer of Yangzhou Storytelling, a second-batch national intangible cultural heritage project; a first-class actor of the Jiangsu Provincial Song and Dance Theatre; and a recipient of the special government allowance of the State Council.
References & Archival Sources
Representative Items of This Bearer
Profile
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