What's New-And Renewed-Onstage in China

The MIT Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to TDR (1988-).

http://www.jstor.org

What's New-And Renewed-Onstage in China Author(s): Claire Conceison Source: TDR (1988-), Vol. 47, No. 1 (Spring, 2003), pp. 74-80Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1147030Accessed: 20-03-2015 07:08 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of contentin a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

This content downloaded from 175.111.89.8 on Fri, 20 Mar 2015 07:08:38 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mitpress

http://www.jstor.org/stable/1147030

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Critical Acts

The theatre season in Beijing and Shanghai, an over-the-top takeoff on heavy metal "cock-rock" bands in New York, a San Francisco performance artist, and a new theatre company in New York's Lower East Side: the new critical acts sec- tion is up and running.

TDR's inaugural sampling spans not only geography but a diverse range of genre from duration art to spoken drama to collaborative theatre to glam-rock. The issues raised are equally diverse: When Satanicide's feminist groupies run their hands up Aleister's thighs, is it an ironic gesture or a fantasy fulfilled? What happens when you aestheticize a tragedy, and, how does 9/I I read onstage? How will economic and social reforms in China change its theatre? Does drag subvert the cultural expectations for a Chicano performance artist?

What's new? What are we missing? What are you experiencing? We're asking you to write for TDR about what's exciting, provocative, and challenging in your neighborhood, your city, your country, your culture. Or in places you're visiting. TDR's Critical Acts is a new feature that will be as fine as you make it. We're wait- ing to hear from you.

What's New-and Renewed- Onstage in China

Claire Conceison

In the Chinese theatre hubs of Shanghai and Beijing, spring is typically the most active period for spoken drama, but in 2002, a full slate of exciting productions continued into June and July, usually months with scarce theatre activity. In Beijing, this was due to the inaugural season of the National Theatre Company of China (NTCC)-the merger of the Central Experimental Theatre and China Youth Art Theatre that was implemented in the fall of 200I-as well as the revival of several local classics at the Beijing People's Art Theatre (BPAT) to celebrate its o5th anniversary.

The most notable of the BPAT restagings were Jin Yun's 1986 National Play Award winner Gou'er ye niepan (Uncle Doggie's Nirvana), directed by Lin Zhao- hua, and director Ren Ming's version of Australian David Williamson's 1977 drama The Club, which had premiered several months earlier. Retitled The Soccer Club (Zuqiujiilebu) in Chinese, its revival coincided with China's first-ever appearance in the World Cup soccer tournament, which was the constant topic of conversation and media attention during my stay. On the political front, 2002 marked the 6oth anniversary of Mao Zedong's "Talks at Yan'an" (at the 1942 Forum on Literature and Arts), to which China's state cultural policy owes its greatest debt.

The Drama Review 47, 1 (T177), Spring 2003. Copyright ? 2003 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

74



critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts 75

In the midst of the ongoing and somewhat radical changes in cultural struc- tures-both at the institutional and audience levels-it was uncanny to hear the Yan'an tenets of socialist realism and the artist's obligation to serve the Chinese Communist Party reinforced. But in light of this political reminder, the choices for both BPAT's and NTCC's summer seasons were understandably conservative. In addition to The Club, BPAT also revived last summer's hits Diyici de qinmijiechu (The First Intimate Encounter, originally a popular Taiwanese internet novel) and

Wuchang Nudiao (an experimental take on characters from several Lu Xun short stories), directed by Ren Ming and Wang Yansong respectively. BPAT also re- staged its popular classics Tianxia diyi lou (World's Best Restaurant), Cai Wenji, Lao She's Chaguan (Teahouse), and Cao Yu's Leiyu (Thunderstorm).

As for the new National Theatre, after almost a year of planning, its inaugural productions opened while I was in China. The first, Zheli de liming qing (The Dawns Are Quiet Here), directed by Zha Mingzhe, was adapted from a Soviet

play about the sacrifices of women soldiers during the second world war and featured Beijing's most popular and talented actresses in the leading roles, along with

Zhang Fengyi in the role of the army officer whom they all serve. It was Zhang's first-ever professional stage appearance (he has starred in films such as Farewell My Concubine and The Assassin)-and his appearance was highly anticipated and crit- ically well-received. Unfortunately, I was in Shanghai when Dawns opened and arrived in Beijing just after the last performance. But I did make it to the capital in time to see Wang Xiaoying's production of Arthur Miller's The Crucible (retitled Salemu de nuwu [Witches of Salem]), and I was invited to attend the in-house discussion symposium held after it closed.

The symposium was a four-hour meeting during which top theatre practitioners, critics, administrators, and educators came together to offer their reflections regarding the quality of the production and its sociopolitical context in contemporary China. The cast and crew also attended, and Zhang Qiuge, the well- known film and television star who played John Proctor, spoke on their behalf. The most interesting part of the discussion was the repeated reference to "5- -6" (16 May is the official date of the start of the Cultural Revolution in 1966). The National Theatre's chief administrator acknowledged the risk taken in staging such a thinly veiled allegory of the Cultural Revolution when a performance would actually fall on 16 May, and admitted that the theatre company had asked the press not to print any overt references to the coincidence.

It was refreshing to hear a group of experienced and respected theatre practitioners in Beijing speak openly about the Cultural Revolution and its impact (or lack thereof) on China's newest theatre audience members, who were not even born at the time of Mao's death. These 20-something educated urban profession- als, along with university students, are the citizens purchasing most of the theatre tickets in China since spoken drama's "comeback" in the late I99os-and it is this audience that NTCC is most concerned about attracting and nurturing.

The production itself was an odd mixture of socialist realism in acting and "expressionism" in set design. The set spilled off of the proscenium into the sides of the house and to the ceiling above the audience, where a huge mask similar to Edvard Munch's The Scream was suspended and from which IS nooses were re- leased above the heads of the spectators at a dramatic point in the play. This blend of realism and expressionism is a trademark of Wang Xiaoying's directing style and is very popular with audiences. The Crucible was enthusiastically received, but the powerful emotion of the dialogue Miller wrote was somewhat overwhelmed by the actors' histrionic displays. At the symposium, veteran female director Chen Rong commented that although the new theatre company might draw criticism from some because its first three productions were all foreign adaptations (the third was Friedrich Diirrenmatt's The Visit, directed by Wu Xiaojiang), the thea-



76 critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical

1. The program coverfor the

May 2002 opening of Gou- mei Sylvia (Glamour-dog Sylvia), the Shangai Dra- matic Arts Centre production of A.R. Gurney's Sylvia, directed by Hu Xuehua (Sherwood Hu). (Courtesy of Wujia and the Shangai Dramatic Arts Centre)

tre should be applauded for choosing plays that did not

sing the praises of the government, but rather con- nected to issues of humanity and society, staging a "di- --'-

l :"fi_ alogue with the people." The fourth production of the

= l.. H BIm ! National Theatre-and its first production of a Chi-

:? r;i nese play-was playwright/director Meng Jinghui's W 'g i | | Guanyu aiqing guisu de zuixin guannian (Head Without

Tail) in July, marking Meng's much-anticipated return @ , .- ~ to the stage after spending the past year making his first

i ' film. Also in Beijing was Taiwanese director Stan Lai (Lai

--"-- :'--l-. - Shengchuan) who recently took over the small theatre

Kill * l a ^ ~ space near the Central Academy of Drama that was for-

^ l merly leased by the China Youth Art Theatre. So far, ^il.i ; ~ iLai's only original production has been Qianxiye, women

r-::! 'i _ shuo xiangsheng (Millennium Teahouse), a transplant of , S.- -.1:! one of Lai's previous Taiwan productions with a mixed

local and Taiwanese cast. His Performance Workshop productions include further Taiwan transplants and some

111?i _fill loriginal Beijing-based work by local playwrights. Lai's efforts on the mainland could herald interesting cross- strait collaborations if handled properly. The staging of

||:._._ t~ his latest creation, Rumeng zhimeng (A Dream Like a

-0 0_^ J f Dream), in Hong Kong suggests possibilities for Chi- nese transnational theatre on an unprecedented scale. Lai is not the first to facilitate theatrical contact and collaboration between mainland and Taiwan and Hong Kong, but he stands uniquely poised to deepen such ar- tistic bonds due to his own experiences, including his doctoral work at Berkeley, which adds an American di- mension to the mix and further enhances the intercul- tural potential.

.::: :-h i: i' Before leaving Beijing, I led a roundtable discussion

with leading Chinese theatre artists on the topic of "Trends in American Theatre and Images across Cul-

tures" sponsored by the American Embassy. This was the first time many of the

important theatre practitioners with whom I have held private conversations over the past decade were gathered in one room to discuss theatre in a Sino-American

comparative framework. Some of the more practical models I introduced to them were community-based theatre and "24-hour theatre" festivals, which seemed

particularly appealing and locally feasible. While in Shanghai, I was invited by the U.S. Consul to speak on a similar topic

at Shanghai Normal University. My lecture was followed by a lively discussion re-

garding theatre audiences in China: what brings them to the theatre, what keeps them away, and what future productions should offer them. Earlier that morning, I had met with the Dean of the Xie Jin Theatre Training Institute at East China Normal University and exchanged ideas about actor training and nurturing audiences in contemporary China, as well as potential models to improve Sino- American theatre exchanges. Lunch between these two events was held with a

group of young local reporters, who were the only Chinese I have met who con- firmed the existence of "performance art" (biaoyan yishu), telling me about an "underground" group of students from Fudan University who occasionally stage Happening-type events at various locations (most recently, the ruins of a demol- ished building). I have yet to see anything I would classify as "performance art" in the Western sense in Shanghai or Beijing, so this information was of great interest to me, but I was not able to witness any such performances during my stay.



acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts 77

precede d for2. Jin Xing as Sylvia and Lu Liang as Greg in A.R. Gurney's Sylvia (2oo2).

(Courtesy of of Zu Zhon- gren and the Shangai Dra- matic Arts Centre)

The Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre continues to feature the popular plays of Yu Rongjun and will produce four of his new works in its 2003 season. It is unprecedented for one theatre in China to produce so many plays by one living playwright, but Yu is certainly proving that his success in recent years is no fluke. His plays seem to appeal to audiences of diverse ages and backgrounds because he makes elderly men and middle-aged women his protagonists as often as young ur- banites. The play that was in rehearsal while I was in Shanghai was Feichang zeren

(A Very Serious Matter). About an otherwise good woman who is imprisoned for her culpability in an accidental explosion at her business, it marks Yu's first at-

tempt at a dingxiangxi or "local play" (a play about actual local issues and events). Along with several other Yu originals, SDAC also featured foreign adaptations this

year, including Harold Pinter's Betrayal and Yazmin Reza's Art, both directed by Gu Yi'an.

Most of the recent theatrical energy in Shanghai, however, has been focused on a new kind of play, called "white collar theatre" (bailing xju), referring to both the

subject matter of the plays and their producers, participants, and audiences. (Sig- nificantly, there exists no "blue collar" term or genre.) Characters in plays such as Guo Chenzi's Aiqing shoushen (D-I-Y [Do-It-Yourself] Women), Xue Lei's Shoushen gorigyu (Singles Apartment), and Zhou Ke's Bailing xinshi (White Collar

Stories) feature young independent executives of consulting firms and Internet

companies, and often have themes of alienation, longing, and unsuccessful mar-

riages. They are primarily written, directed, and independently produced by women and feature strong female characters. By Beijing's standards, some of these

projects appear amateurish and unprofessional because young people with little or no previous stage experience become actors via their financial and/or social con- nections to other participants, and often the results of such collaborations in production resemble low-budget television soap operas. However, the emergence of this type of theatre as a colloquial "genre" reflects a phase in the ongoing negoti- ation of factors such as popular culture, low and high art, economic reform, social

progress, roles of gender and class, and shifting political influences that character- izes contemporary theatre in China. These themes surface more recognizably in

Shanghai than in Beijing.




3. The program coverfor Wang Xiaoying's production of Arthur Miller's The

Cruciblefor the National Theatre Company of China in Beijing, May 2002.

(Photo by Cao Zhigang)

:: .- ~::. The regional difference can also be illustrated in

s: I -, .; .- Shanghai's most recent choice of foreign adaptations. : _ji . ~ 11 While Beijing staged local and foreign classics, SDAC

. ..... ^ ; produced A.R. Gurney's Sylvia (retitled Goumei Sylvia [Glamour-dog Sylvia]), a hilariously theatricalized ex-

l --- Xposition of a marriage jeopardized by the husband's

v l .^. , j'adoption of a stray dog. Hu Xuehua (Sherwood Hu), / ^l

:: who had concentrated on filmmaking since receiving

L.'? K'ii. * i -l his PhD at the University of Hawai'i in I993, was in-

. S .': '

:i vited from Los Angeles to direct. He had not directed a Chinese play since codirecting [TDR contributing ed- itor] Sun Huizhu and Fei Chunfang's hit Zhongguo meng

B iE - w (China Dream) in I987, and many of his choices for '

8 I. ' Sylvia were reminiscent of that project years earlier.

-5_ ___. Hu's interpretation of Sylvia differed tremendously from productions I have seen in the U.S. He staged it in a large proscenium and adopted a more melodramatic

(and less comic) approach to accommodate the in- creased scale. He opted to make Sylvia's character more human than canine and to add nonverbal movement se-

quences before each act of the play to accent the emo- tional topography of the main characters. And he cast three separate actors in the gender-varied roles of Tom,

Phyllis, and Leslie, usually played by one performer. Along with these changes, Hu played with gender and

species mutation in ways Gurney's script never anticipated by castingJin Xing as

Sylvia. As the only publicly acknowledged transgendered individual in China,Jin is a national celebrity. A well-known and exceptionally talented modern dancer,

Jin emerged after her sex-change operations abroad to become director of Bei-

jing's premiere modern dance troupe and an award-winning choreographer. Jin was a wonderful choice for Sylvia, delighting the audience with her performance and enhancing their spectatorship because her recent gender transformation com-

plemented the play's central themes of animal vs. human and male vs. female.

Signs of things to come in Shanghai were reflected in SDAC executive director

Yang Shaolin's request for me to bring him a copy ofSuzan-Lori Parks's Topdog/ Underdog (which presents tremendous hurdles for the Chinese in terms of trans-

lation, casting, and transmission to local audiences) as well as inquiring whether I

would assist in the translation of Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues. Setting aside the difficulty of translating English vagina slang into Mandarin, there remains the

problem of how to get the script past the censors but Yang's suggestion ofcon-

textualizing the production as a public health education initiative assisted by the women's federation and local hospitals has potential. He was inspired by a March 2002 English-language production of the play at the Shanghai American Club or-

ganized by American expatriate lawyer Mattie Johnstone in collaboration with

Chinese associates (and with generous assistance from SDAC). It remains to be

seen if SDAC will indeed be able to follow the bold new path Yang proposes, but

they continually seek the most cutting-edge contemporary American scripts suit- able for Chinese artists and audiences, so your suggestions are welcome.

Although encouraged by evidence of the hopeful turn that Chinese spoken drama has taken in recent years, my heart was made heavy at times as I listened to the responses of theatre people in both cities to the question: "What was your re- action to September I ?" There was not a single friend who did not express deep disgust with the American government, president, and foreign policy, and some kind of sympathy for Osama bin Laden. The stark contrast of this line of thinking



acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts 79

with the rhetoric I had been surrounded by in the U.S. jarred me beyond my ex-

pectations. I didn't know how to react or engage in debate with these colleagues, because I wasn't confident that my information was any more sound than theirs.

At the same time, I sensed that their vision of America was as greatly skewed as

most Americans' vision of China. Because Sino-American relations and cultural contact is at the core of my re-

search, this discomfort was all the more disquieting. I could not work through this

confusion as I gazed into faces of old friends who not only knew me well, but

some of whom had recently lived in New York City funded by American government and private foundations. It was particularly difficult to hear one playwright announce, "There are four things the Chinese people are elated about: getting the

4. Wang Xiaoying's production of Arthur MIiller's The Crucible (May 2002). (Photo by Cao Zhi-

gang)




Olympics, getting into the WTO, getting into the World Cup, and 9/I I." Many friends related to me the atmosphere on the night of I I September (Shanghai and Beijing are I2 hours ahead of New York City). People called each other about the attacks as if giving good news. Even if their first thoughts upon hearing the news or seeing the coverage was for the human suffering of the victims, this was soon followed by thoughts of how America was finally getting what it deserved after interfering in the affairs of so many other countries for so long. The American retaliatory bombing of Afghanistan in particular heightened the feelings of hostil- ity towards the U.S., and from my vantage point in China, such animosity continues to rise rather than abate.

This report would not be complete without mention of Liu Si (4June, the day troops entered Tiananmen Square in 1989). This year 4 June marked a different kind of milestone, with China playing its first-ever match in the World Cup. Though China lost to Costa Rica 2-0 that day, the participation of the Chinese team gave Beijingers feelings of elation and pride. Throughout the city, citizens gathered around television sets to cheer for their team. As the day wore on and we watched host countries South Korea and Japan play their matches (with greater success than China), the weather grew very strange. I was with Chinese friends at an outdoor pub, and the same hot, strong, dusty wind from late the night before blew again. Seated with me the previous night in the foyer of the foreign students' dormitory at the Central Academy of Drama, Meng Jinghui had glanced at the clock when the unsettling weather began just after midnight and said, "Oh, June Fourth is already here..." At the pub during the soccer matches, the wind was ac- companied by dark clouds, thunder, lightning, and eventually rain. One of my friends raised his glass to toast those who died in 1989, saying to me, "The weather is always strange like this on June Fourth." Whether or not that is true, it was comforting to know that people remembered, even in the midst of the jubilation of the World Cup. I did hear earlier that week that there was some concern that if China won its match, people might flood Tiananmen Square (as they did when Beijing won the Olympic bid the previous summer) and that, the date being what it was, could mean trouble-but, as luck or misfortune would have it, the Chinese soccer team lost on 4 June, and people were unusually sad...

For Chinese theatre artists, the personal and public are unavoidably political in ways Americans can only begin to imagine. At the same time, China is going through a period of tremendous economic and social change that is similarly beyond our comprehension. These shifts undoubtedly bring unprecedented oppor- tunities for artists in terms of resources, approaches, and range of expression. Recent trends in Chinese theatre practice are evidence of the complex interplay of central, local, and private protocols and concerns, as well as the challenges faced by Chinese theatre companies as they compete with other forms of popular culture for the patronage of urban audiences. By mirroring their new "white collar" audience onstage, the next generation of theatre practitioners in China has seized upon a profitable approach-but one that is not without its own set of questions that will soon demand answers.

Claire Conceison is Assistant Professor in the Department of Dramatic Art at University of California, Santa Barbara. Her book Significant Other: Staging the American in China isforthcomingfrom University of Hawai 'i Press, and her scholarship on contemporary Chinese spoken drama includes articles in American Theatre (19:5), TheatreJour- nal (53:2), Theatre InSight (10:1), Asian Theatre Journal (15:1, 11:2) and TDR (39:3). She would like to thank Lloyd Neighbors and Liz Kaufmann of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, Salome Hernandez andJoe Wierichs of the U.S. Consulate in Shanghai, and Dean David Marshall of UCSBfor supporting this research.



Documents

What's New-And Renewed-Onstage in China