Contemporary Chinese Theatre

Research/ History – Contemporary Chinese Theatre This paper will explore contemporary Chinese theatre, from the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976 to the twenty-first century. Chinese theatre of this period was characterized by a search for identity in the post-Mao era, exemplified by the tension between the traditional and the contemporary, and between the local and the foreign. This resulted in a synthesizing of foreign influences, particularly those from Western theatre, with traditional Chinese art forms. To provide some context, this paper will first give a brief history of Chinese theatre from the early twentieth century to the end of the revolution. Prior to the twentieth century, xiqu (Chinese opera) was the main form of Chinese theatre, with jingju (Beijing opera) as possibly the most popular one (Mackerras 2). The early twentieth century saw the development of huaju, or “spoken drama,” with the first huaju commonly known to be the play Heinu yutian lu (The Black Slave’s Cry to Heaven), performed in June 1907 (2). Huaju came in tandem with the “revolutionary upsurge of the late Qing” dynasty, and the desire to overthrow the Manchu regime (16). In the 1930s and during the World War II period, “drama reflected the patriotism of the time” (16), and nationalism was a key feature in huaju. During the rule of Mao Zedong, theatre became heavily politicized, and Mao “regarded the arts, including drama, as propaganda either for or against the revolutionary cause” (4). Theatre under Mao’s rule was for the sole purpose of perpetuating Communist ideas, and they all strove to “show the masses in a good light and the ruling class in a negative one” (4). After the Cultural Revolution, there was a “revival of the traditional repertoire, the rebuilding of old companies… the rediscovery of foreign literature and music, and a general liberalizing of attitudes” (Gantner 137-138). A common emphasis in huaju during this period was the “condemnation of the massive political persecution enforced during the Cultural Revolution” (qtd. in Mackerras 5). In fact, some artists made it their goal to “[venture] outside of established artistic conventions and [disrupt] audience expectations that have been shaped by the experience of years of politically correct art” (Labedzka 94). During this period, theories of drama and acting were also imported from overseas, particularly those of Brecht, Meyerhold, Artaud, and Grotowsky (Min 178), as well as Theatre of the Absurd (Mackerras 19). One reason that the Western theatre had so much influence in China after the Cultural Revolution, besides its novelty, was that the Chinese artists “feared they might never catch up,” after “thirty years of isolation [which] caused the Chinese to fall drastically behind the rest of the world” (Chen 202). In addition, the Chinese identity was in a flux, and the country was facing a “crisis of values, in which the social order and its Maoist ideology appeared to be collapsing” (Labedzka 100). In terms of content, the immediate post-Cultural Revolution Chinese theatre had a “clear didactic function”, and theatre “did not seek to merely be a representation of life as it is lived, but a vehicle for social, moral and political education of the people” (Gantner 140). One of the most important messages was “the need to improve the treatment of women and raise their status within society” (Mackerras 7). This instructive nature of theatre was reflected in the architecture – “bare concrete auditoria and foyers,” and “stern wooden seating and lack of heating,” which reveals the “Chinese perception of the theatre as a functional space like a school class-room” (Gantner 140). From the ‘90s onwards, the themes that huaju explored tended towards contemporary social issues such as technology and isolation. For instance, the 2000 production www.com dealt with “social problems and human alienation associated with the craze for the Internet” (Mackerras 12). Before the period of the ‘80s, “Chinese huaju was dominated by Ibsenite dramaturgy and the Stanislavsky System of acting, characterized by its pursuit of illusionism in staging and psychological realism in acting” (Min 176). However, due to the increasing influence of other theatrical forms such as Epic Theatre and Theatre of the Absurd, there was a gradual deviation away from Stanislavsky and Ibsen realism. Several theatre practitioners encouraged this change, for instance Huang Zuolin, who asserted that remaining in the confines of naturalism and illusionism would “[annihilate] the creativity of Chinese artists” (qtd. in Min 176). Hu Weimin, a huaju director, further reinforced this point, stressing that “Chinese huaju must break through the orthodoxy of realism that had degenerated into stale naturalism” (qtd. in Min 176). Playwrights and directors sought to combine contemporary Western theatre theories with traditional Chinese theatre in different permutations. Director Huang Zuolin experimented with the ideal form of Chinese theatre as a combination of “Stanislavsky’s ‘introspective empathy,’ Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt, and Mei Lanfang’s ‘conventionalism’” (Min 177). Huang attempted to blend these seemingly contradictory ideas in his 1987 production of Zhongguo Meng (China Dream), which explores the relationship between a Chinese woman and a Caucasian man. It uses techniques and elements from xiqu, such as the actors’ direct address to the audience, as well as the “free and suggestive presentation of different locations on a bare stage,” to produce the alienation effect in Epic Theatre (Min 187). Instead of using a linear plot, Zhongguo Meng “constantly shifts among diverse temporal and geographical spaces,” a device often found in xiqu, and utilizes “one actor to play six different roles,” which is common in Brechtian productions, but its acting is nonetheless realistic and reminiscent of the Stanislavsky system (Chen 214). Gao Xingjian, one of the most prominent playwrights in China in the post-Mao era, drew inspiration from Artaud, Grotowsky, Brecht, and Meyerhold (Min 178). He proposed an idea of “total theatre that emphasizes theatricality, narrative method, the central role of the actor’s performance, and the audience’s physical participation” (178). Like Artaud and Grotowsky, Gao desired “a return to the roots and origins of the theatre,” and in doing so looked towards “folk forms of ritual theater and dance in China” (Labedzka 98), including “nuo (shamanism) and other indigenous forms” (Min 178). This was Gao’s way of fusing the Western theatre styles with traditional Chinese art, and in doing so, he created works that constituted “a cultural and intellectual sphere in which an interaction of different cultures take place” (qtd. in Mackerras 12). His play Chezhan (Bus Stop; 1983) is often compared to Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. However, “despite [its] seeming borrowing of absurdist theatre elements from the West,” Chezhan “constituted political and ideological reactions to the traumatic years of the Cultural Revolution” (Chen 203). This is evidenced in the plot and the characters’ interactions. Unlike the characters in Waiting for Godot, the characters in Chezhan have an “aspired direction,” and the topic of their conversations revolve around “when and how they should move on” (qtd. in Chen 203). There is “a definite moral undertone: unite and work together, but be careful not to neglect the importance and value of the individual” (qtd. in Chen 203). By extension, Gao combined the forms of Western theatre, but was nonetheless careful not to lose sight of his roots. Interestingly, this drawing of influence was not simply a one-way road. There appears to be a “cross-fertilization of both Brecht’s play and the Chinese theatre” (qtd. in Min 186). While the Chinese artists drew inspiration from Brecht, Brecht also interpreted and used the Chinese xiqu, and wrote extensively about it (Min 182). In his 1936 essay, Brecht mentioned the way in which xiqu produces the “A-effect” (qtd. in Min 182). This instilled confidence in Chinese theatre practitioners, who began to place more value on their traditional art form, as this discovery provided them with “a rationale for the… re-evaluation and innovation of their own traditional theatre and a model for their avant-garde experiments in spoken drama” (Min 182). Thus, “modernizing xiqu by appropriating Brecht’s modern philosophical and aesthetic ideas [transformed] xiqu into a form that integrates nationality and modernity” (qtd. in Min 186). Foreign influences were utilized as a new lens with which Chinese theatre artists could observe their traditional art forms, and hence transform the latter into something that is relevant to audiences in this day and age. One play where this was successfully done is Pan Jinlian (1985), an experimental play written by Wei Minglun. Wei describes his play as “absurd theatre in the chuanju (Sichuan opera) style” (Chen 205). In Pan Jinlian, “characters from different countries and various historical periods… comment on the tragic story of Pan Jinlian, one of the most notorious female characters in Chinese literature” (Chen 205). It includes historical figures such as Wu Zetian, who was the only female emperor of China and who ruled from 690 to 705 (Wills), as well as characters from traditional Chinese repertoires such as Jia Baoyu, the principal character in Hong Loumeng (Dream of the Red Chamber) (Edwards). The play is surrealistic, transcending time and space, but what attracted an overwhelming number of Chinese audience to it was perhaps its “rewriting [of] stories from the traditional repertoires” (qtd. in Chen 207). Pan Jinlian retells these stories from a feminist slant, and the adapting of the traditional to suit modern concerns – in this case “contemporary issues of women’s suppression and liberation” (Chen 210) – gave a new life to old stories, and reignited the interest of the Chinese audience. Post-Mao Chinese theatre saw artists held back by self-imposed historical obligations, while at the same time possessing a desire to experiment with contemporary artistic forms from overseas. There were frequent “[debates] over how much of the traditional style and content to preserve, balanced against the need for reform” (Mackerras 6). Eventually, they discovered that they did not have to choose one over the other, and that they could instead synthesize the two. As such, most theatre artists allowed foreign ideas to inform the creation of their works, while at the same time looked towards the traditional Chinese art forms to give them a sense of identity, as well as contemporary Chinese issues to provide them with a relevant context for their works.  WORKS CITED Chen, Xiaomei. "A Stage in Search of a Tradition: The Dynamics of Form and Content in Post-Maoist Theatre." Asian Theatre Journal 18.2 (2001): 200-18. ProQuest Central. Web. 13 May 2016. Edwards, Louise. 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