Abstract
This chapter discusses the issue of repositioning audiences in intercultural xiqu. To begin with, it introduces the causes—transformed theatre architecture and creative system—of reshaped stage-audience relationship since the early twentieth century, and prepares for a new attempt at reframing audience experiences by reassessing the relationship between xiqu and illusionistic theatre. As case studies, the following section analyses Sichuan Haoren (The Good Person of Sichuan) (1987), a chuanju adaptation of Brecht’s The Good Person of Szechwan, in terms of its mis/use of Brechtian ideas which derive from the mis/interpretation of xiqu. Subsequently, this chapter studies the metatheatrical elements in the Guoguang Opera Company’s jingju adaptation of Antony and Cleopatra (2012) and their effects. Through its unreflective imposition of estrangement techniques onto the Chinese stage, the chuanju adaptation reveals the cultural inferiority of the Chinese theatre. Equally, in the latter case study, the use of metatheatricality shares the same mechanism of imposition without much engagement with either jingju’s content or form. Thus, in this case, the repositioning of the audience becomes little more than a game with metatheatricality.
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09 January 2021
The book was inadvertently published with a few incorrect sentences. The corrections have now been carried out as follows:
Notes
- 1.
As argued in Chap. 1, this is a direct consequence of the New Culture Movement and the CCP’s policy that arts work for politics. Enlightenment was abused in many plays as ideological indoctrination.
- 2.
Apparently, Xue ignores temporary stages of travelling troupes, possibly because those stages are too crude to be called ‘stages.’ Permanent theatres hardly exist in rural areas because peasants, unlike urban residents, cannot afford the time and money necessary to watch plays. As ‘the nature of rural xiqu is a performing art which combines rituals, rites and theatre’ (Tanaka 2002, 2), there are fixed dates and holidays to perform for ritualistic and entertaining purposes. On these occasions, temporary or travelling theatre groups would perform for several days in a village, without a demand for a permanent theatre house. The stage is always sited on a farmland, in a temple square, in a courtyard, or in a conference room capable of holding hundreds of spectators. More recently, the stage may be set on the truck of the travelling companies.
- 3.
It must be stressed that not all xiqu’s stage space has been transformed according to Western styles. In rural areas, traditional types of stage still exist.
- 4.
For instance, Li Chang observes that in Beijing, the domination of the proscenium stage restrains the development of theatre forms. Even though some major theatres built black boxes, they are too crude and thoughtlessly located to produce real influence (C. Li 1997, 266).
- 5.
According to Zhou Huabin, this type of theatre and its configuration were established in goulan (odeum) in the Song dynasty and remained almost unchanged even through the Qing dynasty (H. Zhou 2003, 105).
- 6.
Audiences were prohibited to move about or drink tea or talk, so that they could concentrate on the performance, which ‘transformed theatre’s function from socializing and entertainment to aural and visual enjoyment’ (Tang 2012, 103). The inclined seating arrangement ensured visibility for audiences in the back rows. Removing the two pillars at the front stage and darkening the auditorium also facilitated viewing. Tang Xueying provides an introduction to the proscenium stage’s influences and reforms (with the New Stage as an example) (Tang 2012, 100–105).
- 7.
Outdoor performances might have preserved the more interactive stage-audience relationship.
- 8.
This situation is being aggravated by the construction of grand theatres across China ‘to improve and upgrade the city image, … to promote the city as an international metropolis, … to build world-class cultural facilities in comparison with other existing landmarks, … to attract public attentions’ (C. Q. Xue 2019, xix). Those theatres are designed or inspired by famous foreign architects and companies because that would make the city ‘recognized as an international city and notable to the world’ (C. Q. Xue 2019, xix). However, venues in such grand theatres normally do not differentiate types of performance, because they host local and touring companies specialized in dance, opera, musical, spoken drama, xiqu, acrobatics, among many others. Therefore, the design of space and the auditorium would by no means specifically address the concerns of a xiqu piece. For example, seats in a venue could easily exceed 1000 (Lu 2008, 282), which would be too alienating for xiqu performances. Such a deprivation of xiqu’s subjectivity lies in an inherent and prevailing problem in China, namely, authorities’ intervention in theatre design, which results from art’s subordination to politics (Lu 2008, 180).
- 9.
The situation of proscenium’s popularity is still serious in China. Liu Zhenya observes that from 1911 to the 1960s, most proscenium stages in China did not have an apron, which could be used for xiqu performance. Things only started to change recently (Z. Liu 2003, 726). In the National Centre for the Performing Arts completed in 2007, the stage structure of the theatre for spoken drama and xiqu is able to transform from proscenium to traditional protruding stage.
- 10.
Zhang Geng explains that there were chiefly three causes of the actor-centred system. First, the art of the central actor was the primary concern of urban and rural audiences who cared less about literature; second, because of limited human and financial sources, a theatre troupe could only concentrate on one or two role types to play to their strength in a competitive theatre market, which means that all creative members had to focus on improving the art of the central actor; third, non-kunju xiqu genres were less restrained by artistic rules, so that actors could develop their own unique performing style based on individual talents (G. Zhang 1994, 351–52).
- 11.
The star system has returned because of the market economy of China. In recent years, there have emerged numerous xiqu performers who lead a theatre troupe or a play, and become a chief reason for a full house. Wei Hai-min, who is to be introduced later, is such a star.
- 12.
The theme of the first meeting after the founding of the Committee of Theatre Reform was the censorship of plays (G. Zhang 1994, 29), which indicates the priority of theatre reform.
- 13.
The title of the director was absent in traditional xiqu, although actually there were individuals performing the function of directing. This issue has been discussed in Chap. 1, but what is worth adding is that Peng-Chun Chang started to function as a director when Mei Lanfang toured the USA and the USSR. He selected, adapted, and rehearsed plays, devised Mei’s performance, and managed the stage (F. Li 2016, 485–501), and thus he was considered by Mei’s troupe as a director (J. Xu 1994, 154).
- 14.
The condition of yueju in theatre reform, for instance, reveals the consequence of the intrusion of non-xiqu directors and playwrights (Y. Zhang 2016, 137–43).
- 15.
Encouraged by KMT authorities, those plays had clear and stereotyped messages of opposing Communists and the Soviet Union. Writing to a lost homeland, they ‘attempted to consecrate those that should not have been sacred, such as KMT, the KMT government, tradition, and feudalism’ (Chi 2011, 153). For this reason, they were widely attacked later as being ideologically driven and distorting.
- 16.
Ironically, in the 1990s when theatre awards prevailed in China, didacticism returned, but again, the playwright was key to the success of such moral-teaching stories.
- 17.
There are various reasons for this phenomenon. Most prominently, it is the Ministry of Culture of the PRC that subsidizes major theatre groups and decides which should be awarded in contests according to state ideology, politics, and occasionally, artistic value. Theatre groups do not necessarily rely on the market to survive. The result is that many plays have a transient stage life because of bad reception (J. Liu and Tan 2004, 40–43; 46–50). Ma Haili has a detailed introduction to those awards, arguing that they are evaluated by and given out according to state ideology rather than aesthetic success. She further argues that the real patron of those plays is not the people, but the regional government (H. Ma 2015, 61–66). However, on the May 8, 2015, the Ministry of Culture reduced the number of art awards from 41 to 15, and also prohibited or restricted awards at theatre festivals and competitions. This might change a play’s target audiences from scholars and judges to the popular masses.
- 18.
Take Beijing as an example. Beijing has the largest theatre market in China. According to statistics provided by Beijing Statistical Yearbook, the average monthly income for Beijing citizens in 2012 was 3425 RMB (approximately 490 euros) (Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics and NBS Survey Office in Beijing 2013, 191). The ticket price for performances (theatre, concert, opera, etc.) could range from 80 RMB (approximately 12 euros) to 1680 RMB (240 euros) or more, and cheap tickets (80 RMB and 180 RMB) were limited. The average highest price of spoken drama throughout mainland China in 2012 was 764 RMB, while the lowest was 123 RMB and the average price was 360 RMB. In terms of xiqu, those numbers were 1107 RMB, 84 RMB, and 500 RMB. Statistics show that 89.6 per cent of interviewees in China found ticket prices too high. Due to this fact, many people would not go to theatre (T. Tian 2012; F. Sun 2015). On the other hand, in order to ensure attendance, some tickets are given for free to certain collective groups, such as colleges or government organs. Those spectators go to the theatre, not out of passion for the play, but because of the free ticket (R. Li 2015, 118). Recently, in order to promote theatre and other cultural events among urban citizens, some local governments even strategically lowered ticket prices by issuing e-coupons.
- 19.
There are several English translations for this word, of which John Willett’s ‘alienation’ in Brecht on Theatre (1978) might be the most influential. Other translations include ‘distanciation,’ ‘distancing,’ and ‘defamiliarization.’ The problem with alienation, distanciation, or distancing is that these words merely focus on distancing the audience from the stage and overlook the issue of making things strange. Defamiliarization is the English equivalent to Russian Formalist Viktor Shklovsky’s ostranenie. In order not to confuse the two, Verfremdung is translated into estrangement, and Verfremdungseffekt into V-effect.
- 20.
According to distinct approaches, theatre practitioners provided varying alternative realities. Symbolists believed that naturalism, by focusing entirely on the physical environment and genetic inheritances, denied the human beings’ spirit. Thus, early naturalists such as Ibsen, August Strindberg, and Gerhart Hauptmann started to write Symbolist plays. They benefited from the development of technology, which shaped a different stage scene inspired and influenced by scenographers like Edward Gordon Craig and Adolphe Appia. Marxists accused naturalism of deterministically attributing all human conditions to the environment without engaging social relations configured by capitalist production. Against this position was Brecht’s Epic theatre, which prioritized an analysis of socio-political condition to humanity. Thus, in his theatre, naturalism’s demand of audiences’ emotional identification with characters was replaced by detachment, among many other tactics. Inspired by Freud’s discovery of the unconscious, Expressionists dismissed surface reality and staged psychological reality with the assistance of technological developments, particularly with lighting and film. Pirandellian metatheatre also questioned the creation of illusionistic reality by unmasking a naturalistic play’s production process and its underpinning mechanisms. Vsevolod Meyerhold highlighted theatricality concealed by naturalism, using stylized acting from pantomime, acrobatics, commedia dell’arte , and Eastern Asian performing traditions. In so doing, he distanced theatre from reality.
- 21.
Here one needs to define realism, for it has different understandings. In China many people tend to conflate realism and naturalism, unaware that realism has broad and narrow senses. In its narrow sense, realism refers to plays that often address social and political problems in a real-to-life style since the late nineteenth century, particularly those by Ibsen, Shaw, and the like. This mode is characteristic of many contemporary British and American plays. In its broad sense, Pavis argues that realism does not belong to any fixed performing style, because the term emphasizes ‘an image of the fabula and the stage through which the spectators can understand the social mechanisms of reality.’ Because reality changes, ways of representing it on stage also evolves. Theatre practitioners such as Brecht believe that anti-naturalistic theatre is more realistic than naturalistic theatre (Pavis 1998, 302–04). The so-called revolutionary realism in the Cultural Revolution misrepresented revolution and reality; hence scholars attack it as pseudo-realism.
- 22.
- 23.
This is even true of realistic theatre. As Sheila Stowell argues, realism ‘is applauded for the virtuosity of its artifice, for the very reason that it is not what it shows’ (Stowell 1992, 84).
- 24.
Spoken drama was introduced in China first and foremost as a tool for circulating socially engaged ideas. The most radical form was the interruption of performance with politically oriented speeches loosely connected to the plot. This was particularly evident in xinju, which was under the influence of Japanese shinpa that was originally invented for political agitation through combining theatre and speech (B. Tian 2016, 40). Radical intellectuals favoured spoken drama because it agitated people to change reality by combatting conservative forces in Chinese culture and foreign invaders.
- 25.
This to some extent damaged traditional repertoire, as many classical plays were completely lost during and after the censor. Together with the loss of plays was the extinction of many formal conventions bound to them (Fu 2002, 51–52).
- 26.
Huang’s article ‘A Supplement to Brecht’s “Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting”’ is a systematic study of xiqu with the frame of Brecht, in which he attempts to frame xiqu within Brecht’s system, without much self-reflection.
- 27.
The blind valorization of the Stanislavsky system led to his worshippers and practitioners’ intrusion into xiqu by treating that system as a universal law. This aroused resentment from xiqu scholars and practitioners such as Huang Zuolin, but it was politically risky to openly revolt; they thus chose Brecht, an opposite to the system, to undermine its superiority as a strategic revolt (Fu 2010, 88).
- 28.
At the premier, all audience members left the theatre before the ending, save Huang’s friend Ba Jin (1904–2005). Huang attributed his failure to an overemphasis of estrangement, for he followed Brecht’s director’s notes. By the second time he directed Galileo in 1979, he did not adopt overt estrangement devices, which turned out to be a huge success (Ji 1996, 109–10; 46).
- 29.
Huang began to study Brecht in 1936 when he saw Brecht’s article on Mei Lanfang, because the article, as he writes, ‘inspired [him] with great national pride’ (Z. Huang 1982, 96). His pride was not unfounded. In the early twentieth century China, there was an outcry against xiqu to be replaced by Western realistic theatre.
- 30.
In fact he is not completely so, for in his later writings, Brecht demonstrates many similarities with Stanislavsky. Mumford argues, ‘While his theatre is often presented as the antithesis of late nineteenth century naturalism and Stanislavsky’s psychological realism, it actually preserves what he regarded as its progressive features. These include its careful observation of the material world and its concern with the relation between character and social environment’ (Mumford 2009, 87). But Chinese scholars and artists’ simplified mentality set them against each other, which Huang Zuolin once warned against (Z. Huang 1990b, 175).
- 31.
John Fuegi has debunked the myth in Brecht and Company: Sex, Politics, and the Making of the Modern Drama. But one cannot deny Marxist philosophy’s influence on Brecht’s ideas.
- 32.
Zhang Li provides a comprehensive and well-researched introduction to Brecht’s relationship with Chinese culture with the case of Good Person (L. Zhang 2009).
- 33.
In Brecht’s later writings, Epic theatre is gradually replaced by dialectical theatre.
- 34.
For instance, in Lan Guanglin’s Wenbing Bigong (Usurp under the Pretext of Inquiring after the Emperor’s Health), when the usurper becomes the emperor, the prop man walks onstage to draw white paint around his nose in front of the audience. This white paint denotes a shift in his role type to chou, someone with negative qualities (Zhong 2002, 18).
- 35.
Paoge (robed brothers) were a type of gangsters (involved in robbery, theft, murder, kidnapping, gambling, human trafficking, and prostitution) in Sichuan during the late Qing dynasty and the Republic of China. Although non-existent when the play was staged in the 1980s, paoge was familiar to chuanju audiences for two reasons: (1) older audiences remembered and had personally experienced the history of paoge; (2) they are very common in chuanju’s repertoire, such as Bajiu Zhai (The Bajiu Stockade), and Wei Minglun’s Yi Danda (Yi the Courageous) (1980), both being contemporary classics.
- 36.
According to Lin Wen-ling, as a playwright Chi is singular, because
For lack of venues in which to stage their plays, Taiwanese artists interested in playwriting are usually forced to establish their own troupes and direct their own plays. Once the troupes are established, almost without exception, they produce only Western plays and new Taiwanese plays written by their own playwright-directors or through collaboration of the troupe members. Most of their scripts are never published. (W. Lin 2015, 162)
- 37.
Born in 1957, Wei is arguably the foremost jingju actress in contemporary Taiwan. Throughout her career, she has performed all kinds of women to make the most of her potential. Cleopatra extended Wei’s exploration, following her previous performance in Oulanduo (Orlando, 2009) with Robert Wilson and Meng Xiaodong (2009) with Wang An-ch’i. Therefore in this play Wei expanded her skills to perform the complicated Cleopatra by breaking many conventions. However, other male actors in this play remained strictly within jingju’s convention (S. Huang 2010).
- 38.
Plays with ceremonies are common, for instance, Wang Shifu’s (c. 1260–1336) Xixiang Ji (Romance of the West Chamber). In plays such as Guan Hanqing’s Jiu Fengchen (Saving the Prostitute) and Wei Minglun’s Yi the Courageous, role-playing is central to the plot.
- 39.
This is related to xiqu’s narrative and monological tendency, which have been discussed in Chap. 2.
- 40.
Fujing (clown) is a comic role type in Yuan zaju. Here fujing is using real-life reference.
- 41.
These are fictive characters in Shuihu Zhuan (The Water Margin) and Jin Ping Mei (The Plum in the Golden Vase). Ximen Qing is a wealthy and lustful merchant and Pan Jinlian is a beautiful young wife. They murdered Pan’s husband. In Chinese culture they are synonymous with adulterous people.
- 42.
The director of this play, Lee Hsiao-ping, is an experienced jingju director. But here, it seems he gave way to the playwright.
- 43.
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Feng, W. (2020). Reframing Audience Experiences: Brechtian Estrangement and Metatheatricality Displaced in Xiqu. In: Intercultural Aesthetics in Traditional Chinese Theatre. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40635-6_5
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