It has long been acknowledged by the academia that theatre originates from rituals. Nevertheless, the difficulty and complexity of the transition from rituals to theatre have not attracted sufficient attention. This essay aims to deal with this issue from the following aspects: 1. The difficult transformation from the narrative style to the representative style; 2. The relationship between the sluggish progress of China』s theatre and systematized prohibition of theatre; 3. The evolvement of folk Mulian drama to court Mulian drama and its relation to the ideology; 4. The comparative study of the development lines of folk Mulian drama and court Mulian drama shows that emphasis should be put on the complete understanding of the traditional culture and the development of the cultural heritage.