Transcultural Aesthetics in the Plays of Gao Xingjian

T. Coulter

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137440747
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Performing Arts

Gao Xingjian has been lauded for his inventive use of Chinese culture in his paintings, plays, and cinema, however he denies that his current work participates in any notion of Chinese. This book traces the development of these forms and how the relate and interact in the French language plays of the Nobel Laureate.

1

Reactive Theater: State Theater and New Voices in China and France

Abstract: The chapter concentrates on the relationship between theater and the state and how this interaction influenced aesthetic innovations during the twentieth century. The chapter shows how the Chinese state used theater and performance to put forward specifically political goals and how playwrights in France steered theater toward politics. The rise of Absurdism in both countries is detailed. It is in this chapter that I discuss aesthetic influences on Gao like Samuel Beckett. Emphasis is placed on the freedom artists found in Absurdism to work within and beyond prescribed aesthetics. The chapter provides the reader with an understanding of the political consequences of playwriting in Gao’s career.

Coulter, Todd J. Transcultural Aesthetics in the Plays of Gao Xingjian. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI: 10.1057/9781137440747.0004.

The dramatic work produced in China in the early years of Mao Zedong’s rule toed the party line. The plays and performances portrayed group conflict and resolution centered on a historically significant incident or era. This was a sharp turn away from the new spoken drama (huaju) being developed from approximately 1900 to 1950. The playwrights of this genre were educated in American and European universities, where they invariably were taught of the individual’s importance over the group. As Mao gained more power, these plays were denounced as embracing bourgeois principles and departing too drastically from the established and sanctioned form of the Beijing Opera. While the plays of spoken drama lost favor with the state, Beijing Opera was not the only form of theater to become a tool of the state. The Maoist state assimilated ballet to suit its new aesthetic. Chinese ballet and opera were easily used as theatrical forms as they echoed traditional music drama. The history play became a bourgeoning form of theater that seemingly fit well into the mold of Socialist Realism. The Maoist regime regulated theater to such an extent that only five revolutionary operas, two ballets, and one symphony were sanctioned for performance. Discussing the integration of these pieces into the daily lives of China, Chen Xiaomei states, “The majority of the people were compelled to see these plays for the sake of their political education; sometimes performances preceded or came at the end of political meetings.”¹ So pervasive were these state performances that “the masses were encouraged to imitate the protagonists of the model theater by watching and even performing model theatrical pieces.”² The aim of such imitation was to ensure that all old traditions would be eradicated from the new society.

Mao’s death and the end of the Cultural Revolution witnessed a short but intense renaissance in dramatic literature. The immediate reaction represented in these works of the late 1970s criticized the oppression leveled during the ten years of the Cultural Revolution. These new plays and the early spoken drama of the century did not overtly condemn the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Rather, they attempted to rekindle the promise and idealism the party originally represented. Haiping Yan considers this moment in her introduction to Theater and Society, noting, “The tears in the eyes of theatergoers when these dramas premiered marked one of the most intense moments in the nation’s contemporary emotional and cultural life.”³ The plays of this new generation put contemporary society onstage that “generated debates over the present and its relation to the past and the future.”⁴ While these new plays retained the spirit of inquiry that we have witnessed throughout Chinese theater history, they were not without a sense of hope and openness. It was in this vein of exploration that Chinese playwrights began to look again to Western styles. The (re)turn to Western forms echoed the trend of the first half of the century when playwrights openly mimicked the style of Henrik Ibsen and Eugene O’Neill. Rather than looking at the early modernists, they considered Europe’s reaction to the modernist project, namely absurdism.

Absurdism in China

China’s emergence from the Cultural Revolution was vaguely analogous to Europe’s from WWII. They both were forced to recognize the failure of grand, sociopolitical projects. Chinese playwright and critic Ma Sen recognizes this phenomenon in both cultures. In respect to Europe, Ma states:

The post-World War II generation in the West not only felt pangs for a lost homeland, but, more seriously, lost faith in God. In seeking the meaning of life, they saw nothing but “nothingness.” When a man loses direction, “absurdity” becomes the best word to describe and explain everything.⁵

Later when Ma Sen turns to the emergence of Absurdist works in China, he remembers reactions to a lecture he delivered in several universities and government institutions to make the parallel observation of China’s response to absurdism. He states, “The audience understood the purposes and techniques of the Theater of the Absurd, especially with their bitter experience during the ‘Cultural Revolution.’ They were fully aware of the fact that what happened in their society was even more absurd than what they were seeing on stage.”⁶ This inherent understanding stemming from a remembrance of the Cultural Revolution caught the interest of more than Ma Sen’s audience. It was as early as 1980 that playwrights like Jia Hongyuan in Shanghai began writing in an absurdist style, and this influence soon spread to Beijing.⁷ It is in this context in 1983 that Gao Xingjian created one of the first truly absurd Chinese plays, The Bus Stop (Chezhan). The play immediately caught the attention of critics. Some praised it as groundbreaking, while others found it dissentious and troubling. In Theater and Society, Yan describes the range of reaction to the play:

Provoked immediate controversy in Beijing cultural circles, followed by heated discussion in major cultural centers throughout the nation. Some critics stressed the play’s creativity and hailed its message that people should actively take charge of their lives rather than waste their lives in passive waiting. Other critics contended that the play contained a basic questioning if not a fundamental negation of the organization of contemporary Chinese society, a condescending attitude toward the deluded “pitiable multitude,” and an elitist and individualistic impulse embodied in the “silent man” walking alone to the city.⁸

From the brief account offered in Yan’s introduction, it is clear that the critical response was polarized. Some lauded the play as a breath of fresh air, while others condemned it for its brazen celebration of individualistic impulses. Critic He Wen was perhaps the loudest and most vociferous in his critique. While he unabashedly attacked the play, his critique raises many interesting questions. Considering thematic issues of individual frustration or discontentedness, He argues that these qualities are not reflective of the state but rather of the individual. He states, “But even if they are simply the individual weaknesses of a certain number of people, they still ought to be criticized.”⁹ He stops short of criticizing the specific individualistic impulses he saw in the play, but it is clear that he saw them in production. He Wen admonished Gao’s play for Gao’s apparent inability to move beyond what He recognizes as “the ten years of turbulence” and “the corrosive effect of foreign bourgeois ideology,” claiming that Gao’s thinking has been “for a long time confused and unstable”¹⁰ (391).

The Bus Stop spoke to a contemporary China that stood divided on this new form of theater. The use of absurdism in Chinese theater precipitated many debates about form and content. Logic and causality are not stressed in Absurdist plays, suggesting a sense of struggle to situate oneself in a world where fixity fails and constant flux is the norm. Gao’s place in Chinese theater in the early 1980s dealt with these themes in a new structure that offered no clear solutions or suggestions on how to proceed into the new future open for China in a post-Mao era. While dramatists employed absurdism and other Western structures in the post-Mao era, they “felt obliged to describe the Western other as a ‘passive,’ pessimistic entity in order to make room for the creation of an ‘active,’ optimistic Chinese self” (Chen 295). Thus, from the very beginning of his career after the Cultural Revolution, Gao and his plays were situated in a dynamic of identification in relationship to an “other.” Chen’s observation on creating a “self” based on optimism implies a sense of forward motion of arriving at a distinct location different and thus inherently better. The theater of the 1980s focused on the possibilities and responsibilities China could and ultimately would have to embrace as it emerged from the final and violent holds of Maoism.

Intellectualism and culture

In France, this search for the individual features an intermixture of nationalities centered in Paris, either in the form of expatriate artists or military occupation. Whereas in China, we saw a strong relationship and intermingling of theater and politics, in France, theater sought more of its own course. Undoubtedly, theater and politics in France crossed paths during the twentieth century; however, I focus on theater in its own right until the advent of WWII, where we will see a direct theatrical and intellectual response to the war and the role of the intellectual as a cultural force.

The intellectual would rise as a cultural force in France immediately after WWII. Living under Nazi occupation, the French were forced into clandestine resistance or open collaboration with the enemy. It was in this turbulent environment of foreign occupation and rule that a handful of artists called for direct engagement against the usurping regime. While artists in all genres created works to protest the Nazis’ rule, it was through the public forum of theater that many chose to combat what they saw as social injustice. In Theaters of War, Ted Freeman follows the phenomenon of political protest and advocacy in French theater both during and after the war. Freeman emphasizes the concept of engagement as the force pushing the intellectual cause forward in society. Engagement as a concept in the makeup of the intellectual should be considered in the rather martial sense of entering into a battle for a brief but intense period of time. The plays produced during this period were often hastily composed, sacrificing traditional structure to ensure that the message of the play would engage its public. The plays were polemical to incite public opinion and effect change. Playwrights and philosophers both felt that “the urgency of the debates to which they felt compelled to contribute, requ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction: International Recognition and National Confusion
• 1  Reactive Theater: State Theater and New Voices in China and France
• 2  Physical Division: Jingju in Performance and Theory
• 3  The Actor in Thirds: Gaos Theory of Performance
• 4  An Individual in the Void: Au bord de la vie
• 5  An Individual in Company: Quatre quatuors pour un week-end
• 6  An Individual in Night: Ballade Nocturne and Gaos Philosophical Woman
• Conclusion: The Obligation of Creation
• Bibliography
• Index