From stage to screen: performance language mediation and audience engagement in Chinese and Anglo-American musical theater film adaptations.

Adapting musical theater into film involves the mediation of performance language from stage to screen. While stage language depends on live singing, spatial ensemble, and performer-audience co-presence, screen language relies on framing, editing, and audiovisual control. Although musical theater film adaptation has attracted increasing scholarly attention, audience-based research on how this transformation is perceived remains limited, especially in Chinese and Anglo-American contexts. This study examines how stage language is transformed into screen language through four stage-to-screen cases: the musical theater Les Misérables, first staged in 1980, and its 2012 film adaptation; the musical theater Dear Evan Hansen, first staged in 2017, and its 2021 film adaptation; the original Chinese musical theater Jinsha, first staged in 2005, and its 2023 film adaptation; and the original Chinese musical theater The Long Night, first performed in 2021, and its 2022 screen version. Guided by the Cultural Adaptability Symbolic Stratification (CASS) model, the study adopts a mixed-methods approach combining case analysis, content analysis, questionnaires, and focus group discussions with 27 participants. The findings identify three pathways of transformation: Cinematic Translation, Direct Transplantation, and Fragmented Reconfiguration. Among them, Cinematic Translation generated the strongest audience engagement, especially in emotional immersion and narrative clarity. Direct Transplantation preserved visible stage conventions but often weakened narrative and emotional coherence. Fragmented Reconfiguration produced more variable responses, depending on viewers' interpretive expectations and familiarity with non-linear form. Some age-related tendencies also appeared within this sample, but these should be treated cautiously given the limited number of middle-aged and older participants. Overall, the study shows that successful adaptation depends less on preserving theatrical form than on cinematically reorganizing performance language. It also refines the application of the CASS model to performance analysis and offers practical insight into the adaptation of Chinese original musical theater works into musical theater film.