A Stage in Search of A Tradition - The Dynamics of Form and Content in Post-Maoist Theatre: Xiaomei Chen

A Stage in Search of a Tradition: The Dynamics of Form and Content in Post-Maoist
Theatre
Author(s): Xiaomei Chen
Source: Asian Theatre Journal, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Autumn, 2001), pp. 200-221
Published by: University of Hawai'i Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1124152
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A Stage in Search of a Tradition:

The Dynamics of Form and Content
in Post-Maoist Theatre
Xiaomei Chen
This essay examines several modern Chinese spoken dramas known for theirformalistic features in early post-Mao theatre. It discusses the dynamics of form and content,
Eastern and Western dramatic traditions and styles, and political culture and theatre
performance in contemporary China.
Xiaomei Chen is associate professor of Chinese and comparative literature at The

Ohio State University. Her book Occidentalism was published by Oxford University
Press in 1995. Her second book, Acting the Right Part: Political Theatre and Pop-
ular Drama in Contemporary China is forthcoming from University of Hawai'i
Press.
Since its inception, it has not been possible to consider huaju

(modern spoken drama) apart from the May Fourth movementl and
its anti-imperialist and antitraditionalist agenda. During the entire history of huaju, however, this anti-imperialist thrust has in many instances
led to a paradox in which huaju's antitraditional aspect undermines its

anti-imperialist dimension. The best example of such a self-contradiction can be found in the well-known episode of Hu Shi's publication
of his Zhongshen Daishi (The Main Event of One's Life) in 1919, the
first huaju piece in imitation of Ibsen's A Doll House. Hu sought to
introduce Western dramatic form as an alternative to xiqu (Peking/
Beijing opera), the traditional theatre, viewed then as "a dehumanized
literature" both in form and thematic concerns. Hu favored a Western
form of huaju to express the thematic concerns of May Fourth inte

lectuals, whose antitraditional position found its best target in the ol
Asian TheatreJournal, vol. 18, no. 2 (Fall 2001). ? 2001 by University of Hawai'i Press. All rights reserved.
DYNAMICS OF POST-MAOIST THEATRE
201
form, xiqu. Such a history seems to have repeated itself in ear

Mao China (from 1976 to present), when Chinese playwright
to Western dramatic forms, such as epic theatre and absurdist
to revive a stagnant theatre dominated by the Maoist doct

socialist-realism and its overt emphasis on "healthy" or "ideo
correct" thematic concerns.
To explore the dynamics of form and content, East and Wes

Chinese and non-Chinese traditions, this essay focuses on a group
plays critically known in early post-Maoist Chinese theatre for th
formalistic features. Critics claimed that these plays won approva
mostly for these innovative features. In many instances, however,
so-called aesthetic aspects cannot survive or become culturally me
ingful without being at the same time personal and political. This
not to say that aesthetic or highly literary and dramatic forms are
appreciated on the Chinese stage or that in early post-Maoist Chin
they are always deemed secondary to political and thematic concer
Rather, it means that in many instances the so-called aesthetic cons
erations in contemporary Chinese drama can only take hold w
incorporated with political considerations, which, in a totalitarian s
ety, are also profoundly and inevitably personal. As inseparable par
of the historical and political contexts, dramatic styles and techniq
were never treated merely as formalistic categories. They were emb
ded in context and predetermined by content. They reflected
dramatists' visions of the world, their positions vis-a-vis the charac
they depicted and the audience they attempted to attract, the sta
ideology they appropriated or manipulated in presenting their id
and the collective consciousness and unconsciousness that had give
rise to a theatrical space as a relatively coherent imagined communi
These features are viewed here as meeting grounds for such dialect
as that of form and content and such dichotomies as private and p
lic, traditional and modern, East and West. In the course of discuss
these dichotomies, I will also explore another dimension of the phr
"personal is political" by examining gender politics in contempora
Chinese theatre, where the issue of the representation of women ch
acters on stage further complicates the relationships between the
dichotomies.
Hu Shi's The Main Event of One's Life took over from the Wes
not only the spoken form but also illusionist theatre, otherwise kno
as proscenium theatre. As the Greek word "proskenion" indicates (p
before; skene: tent), proscenium theatre is oriented toward the inv
ble wall (the fourth wall) between the audience and the stage, whi
helps create an illusion of a representational stage. What is enacted
beyond the wall is supposed to represent real life and real even
Chen
202
whose verisimilitude is supposed to be so convincing as to be unquestioned by audiences, according to Richard Southern,2 even though
most realistic theatre turned out to be a compromise illusionist theatre. This illusionist theatre, which reached its apex in Western nineteenth-century realistic and naturalist theatre as represented by Ibsen,
Chekhov, and Strindberg, became the predominant dramatic form in
modern China and was promoted in the PRC as the form most closely
conforming to the Maoist theory of literature and art as representations of social reality.
The sitanni tixi (Stanislavsky system), based on a theory of acting
developed and practiced by Konstantin Stanislavsky, further helped to

establish illusionist theatre on the Chinese stage. Stanislavsky's emphasis on a completely realistic performance, achieved through voice and
body training, recreation of the situation in terms of the actors' own
impressions and memories, and total immersion in the situations and
identification with the characters of the plays, was freely adopted and
turned into Chinese theatrical practice to represent socialist China. As
pointed out by Liu Housheng, one of the most respected drama theoreticians and critics of his time, during the seventeen years between
1949 and 1966 in the PRC, some 99 percent of dramatic productions
exhibited the marked influence of the Stanislavsky system. Only 1 per-
cent consisted of Brechtian theatre, reflected by a total of three productions: Bamian Hongqi Yingfeng Piao (Eight Red Flags Fluttering
Against the Wind; 1957), Dadan Mama He Tade Haizimen (Mother Courage; 1959), andJiliu Yongiin (Braving the Torrent; 1963).
Modernist theatre is a newcomer to the PRC stage. As a result,
a play whose structure depended on a modernist experiment would
become popular because of its daring characteristics. Chinese dramatists' and critics' support for modernist theatre reflected, more than
anything else, their wish to figure in the arena of world theatre.

Responding to the much politicized literary and artistic scene of pre-
vious decades, dramatists and critics assumed that world theatre was
superior to their own theatre in terms of its aesthetic and formalist fea-
tures. This hankering for artistic values was made even stronger by
many appalling experiences in socialist China. Thirty years of isolation
had caused the Chinese to fall drastically behind the rest of the world,
and they feared they might never catch up. It thus became incumbent
on Chinese dramatists to produce modernist plays for approving audiences in order to achieve entry into the world community. The initial
experiments with Western modernist theatre-which foreshadowed
experimental movements in other genres such as fiction and filmprovide the student of drama with much of interest, underscoring the
necessity of encouraging studies in contemporary Chinese drama.
203
They demonstrate both the potential for and limitations of cr

tural transformation: to please and entertain a mostly Chinese
oriented audience, the early Chinese experimental theatr
restricted by the very political and cultural conditions that ha

pelled dramatists to introduce Western movements into Chin
first place.
So-called absurdist plays such as Chezhan (Bus Stop; 1983) and

WM (1985), for example, despite their seeming borrowing of absurdist
theatre elements from the West, in essence constituted political and
ideological reactions to the traumatic years of the Cultural Revolution.
In contrasting the waiting for a bus that never comes in Bus Stop with
the plot of Beckett's Waitingfor Godot, Geremie Barme was right on the
mark:
They are left waiting, certainly, but they have an aspired direction;
their dilemma is far from being either existential or absurd. It is rather
one of strategy and means-when and how they should move on.
There is never any real doubt that they can and must go towards the
city. Gao [Xingjian's] work does not aim at forcing the audience to
confront the half-realized fears and anxieties of the human mind.
Rather his positivistic view of contemporary Chinese society has a

definite moral undertone: unite and work together, but be careful
not to neglect the importance and value of the individual. [Barme
1983, 373-77] 3
In a similar fashion, Wuwai You Reliu (Hot Currents Outside th

House; 1980), the much-acclaimed "first absurdist play" in contemp
rary China, shared very few characteristics with its Western counte
parts (Tian 1988, 30). Set in early post-Maoist China, when idealisti
Maoist values were being challenged by materialist pursuits, the pl
relates the machinations of an orphaned brother and sister who try
avoid sharing their rooms with their brother during his awaited vis
from afar. Since their parents' death, this brother has been taking ca
of them, using all the money he saved working as a farmer far fro
home. While plotting how to keep him out of their warm rooms, th
siblings are constantly visited by their brother's spirit, which recoun
his struggles to build a village in the harsh wilderness near the Sovi
border. The play concludes with the news on the radio that the
brother was found frozen to death after having spent the night tryi
to protect a bag of wheat seeds for his village. Ashamed of the
selfishness, the brother and sister begin to realize what they have lo
and start searching for their brother-who, they believe, is everywhere,
even there in the audience, where they have just heard him calling
them. The moral tone of the play clearly marks it as belonging to t
Chen
204
Maoist realist tradition, and its commemoration of the brave life of an

educated youth in the countryside affirms the Maoist ideals of the Cultural Revolution. In fact, nowhere in the play can one detect any of the
essential characteristics of absurdist theatre: the metaphysical anguish

at the absurdity of the human condition, the rage against the futility
of civilization, the depiction of senseless human activities in which
nothing really happens or matters.
Nevertheless, Chinese critics hailed the play as modernistic. It
merely differed from the Western version of absurdism, they said,
which was typified by cynicism and "a sense of despair in passive waiting." The first Chinese attempt at absurdist theatre, by contrast, was
content with applying absurdist theatre's formalistic features, with
which it conveyed a "positive" sense of "fear in expectation" (Tian

1988, 6). This interpretation typified the dynamic relationship between
form and content, as seen by critics and dramatists, for whom the aesthetic and formalistic features of Chinese theatre, first of all, had to be
clothed in a "politically correct" ideology. Although eager to see Western techniques employed in dramatic productions, Chinese dramatists
and critics felt obligated to construct a Western other as a "passive,"
pessimistic entity in order to make room for the construction of the
"active," optimistic Chinese self. Perhaps this development derived
partially from the urging by Chinese artists that Western forms be
adapted to Chinese content. Or perhaps Chinese artists hoped to use
this approach to get around the censorship system in early post-Maoist
China: in a discourse on literature and art informed by political considerations, one had to beat the devil at his own game. Talking about
theatre in ideological terms disarmed protests against formalistic and
artistic experiments that might in the future drag a play into a political debate.
In its formalistic features, Hot Currents reminds one not so much

of the modernist theatre as of Thornton Wilder's Our Town. It evokes
the sense of timelessness Wilder establishes, which in Hot Currents is

attained by the older brother moving freely in time and space between
past and present, life and death, and different geographical locales.
Eschewing the Aristotelian concept of drama, with its requirement of
a definite beginning and end, both Our Town and Hot Currents opt for
a sense of the totality of time-the beginning of the country (in Our
Town) and the start of the family (in Hot Currents), as well as an affirmation of collective and cultural values and the nostalgic longing for
an idealized past. Both plays belong to a nonillusionist theatrical tradition that delivers a view, not just a representation, of life.
But while Wilder personally was inspired by the nonillusionist
tradition of operatic Chinese theatre, as critics from both the East and
205
West have claimed, contemporary Chinese dramatists such

Minglun, in attempting to reform the Chinese theatrical tra
were inspired by what they understood as the absurdist tradit
surprised Chinese dramatic circles in 1986 with his daring
mental play Pan Jinlian, which he described as "absurd theatr
chuanju style (huangdan chuanju)."4 Its "absurdity," Wei M
insisted, resided only in its "absurdist form," used by the playwr

the purpose of inviting characters from different countries and v
historical periods to comment on the tragic story of Pan Jinl

of the most notorious female characters in Chinese literature
1986, 78). Wei Minglun's ultimate goal suited the themes at h
the realist tradition-for example, the liberation of women f
burden of the cultural past by "exploring the close relati
between human beings and society and between historical dis

and contemporary reality." By his own admission, he was quit
that his concept of "absurdity" might have nothing to do wi
defined by his Western counterparts, who nevertheless had n
sive right to "inventing the word 'absurd"' (Wei 1986, 79). One
argue that an understanding of the word used in theatrical ab
makes it imperative that the play show the absurdity of human
ence. Wei, however, bypassed this issue by asserting his Chines
defining terms from the West.
As one Chinese dramatist analyzed it, PanJinlian is a play

one woman in conflict with five men: (1) Zhang Dahu, the ri
who forces her into an arranged marriage after she refuses to
his concubine; (2) Wu Dalang, the poor, short, ugly man P

marry; (3) Ximen Qing, the dashing, vicious playboy who has
ing affair with Pan and enters into a plot with her to kill her hu
(4) Wu Song, the he-man tiger-killer who responds to Pan's fla
killing her to avenge the murder of his brother, Wu Dalang;

Shi Nai'an, the author of The Water Margin, whose patriarchal
cian position is exposed and challenged by various fictional a
torical characters from several canonical works, both from the East
and the West (Fang 1988, 151-152). Unlike the traditional tales Shuihu
Zhuan (The Water Margin; fourteenth century) and Jinpingmei

(Golden Lotus; sixteenth century), from which the plot line was initially drawn, the chuanju PanJinlian critically comments on these works'
misogyny by pitting its female protagonist against the fifth man.
Tolstoy's heroine Anna Karenina, for instance, appears onstage

to lament Pan Jinlian's suffocating marriage at the point when Pan is
frustrated by her husband's lack of courage in defending himself.5
Anna Karenina also intervenes at a crucial point to advise Pan to commit suicide, as she herself did, instead of murdering her husband (Wei
206
Chen
1988, 62-63). Lii Shasha, a character from the contemporary novel

Huayuanjie wuhao (No. 5 Garden Street), becomes involved in a dis-
cussion with Pan Jinlian and Anna Karenina about the social contract
whereby unhappy marriages are perpetuated both in Russia and

China, both in traditional and in modern societies. Unlike Pan, who
lives in a traditional society and has no options in regard to her mar

riage, Lii Shasha feels fortunate to be living in contemporary Chin
where she can get a divorce from her insane husband.
Other historical figures are summoned onstage to discover a
solution for Pan's dilemma: Wu Zetian, the Tang-dynasty empress wh
reigned from 690 to 705, is outraged by the unjust, patriarchal societ
in which emperors enjoy "three thousand concubines" while produc
ing a legal discourse that makes it possible to treat Wu Song as a her
for killing Pan Jinlian. Wu Zetian orders Tang Cheng, "a traditiona
official of the seventh rank (qipin zhimaguan)," to help clear Pan. Th
most incorruptible official in Chinese history, known for saving inn
merable wrongly accused people from unjust punishment and death
Tang Cheng is nevertheless unable to find any article in the thousand
year-old Chinese laws that can gain Pan a pardon for the sinful act o
having revealed her love to her brother-in-law (Wei 1988, 46). This
episode, widely considered to contain some of the most thought-pro
voking moments in the work, points up "the inevitable fate of wome
in a feudal society," immutable even with the courageous interventio
of "the most honest and upright official history could ever contribut
(Hu, 1988, 134). The opera thus finds fault with the entire patriarch
system-a system that, while admitting its own corruption (by creatin
the myth of this particular official), still does not desist from discrimi-
nating against women.

This meditation on the condition of women in China's past is
juxtaposed against women's present prospects in the course of th

piece through the comments of a contemporary female judge.
Although Pan today could have divested herself of an unhappy mar
riage, she points out, this does not guarantee that such a woman wou
find happiness, since statistics show that 30 percent of marriages i
contemporary China are still arranged (Wei 1988, 58). The mer
appearance of a female judge, which might at first be taken as a sign

of triumphant feminism, is in fact small comfort: as the judge warn
no real solutions have emerged to solidify women's rights in post-Ma
ist society. Other fictional characters such as Jia Baoyu, the quinte
sential lover from Hong Loumeng (Dream of the Red Chamber), als
drop by to speak on Pan Jinlian's behalf. Had Pan been a part of hi
fictional world, Jia Baoyu believes, her beauty would have been praise
-as well as the valor she displayed in struggling to secure her ow

happiness (Wei 1988, 17).
207
This international seminar on the fate of Pan Jinlian wa

miered by the chuanju troupe of Zigong City on October 8, 19
enthusiastically received by audiences in Chengdu, Beijing, Sh
and Hong Kong. College students without any prior expo
chuanju tradition were said to have been "electrified" by its s

message, and it inspired numerous productions in other genr
as modern spoken drama and local operas popular in Shanxi p
and Shanghai.6 At one point, in fact, fifty theatres in twenty cit
performing the work. Numerous articles about it appeared in

than a hundred newspapers and journals, ten of which dedica
cial columns to continuous discussion of the play's contr
reception.
Some people adamantly opposed the staging of this drama.

They were disturbed by its "unhealthy" theme and, pointing to a
divorce rate in China nearing that of Western countries, feared it might
encourage extramarital affairs. One critic cited his personal experience in a Chinese prison, where he learned that six or seven out of
every ten female criminals were adulterous murderers-and 90 percent of them came from the countryside. A play justifying adultery, he
claimed, could only make the situation worse. He noted, furthermore,

that PanJinlian reflected the vulgar, shallow mentality of city dwellers
keen on following the fashion in divorce trends without taking the

trouble to explore the "objective social reality" and "historical circumstances" that had brought about the tragic events (Zhang Yihe 1986,
162-63). Despite this critic's claims, he reflected not so much his concern for the women in rural China as his moral stance toward divorce
among city dwellers, since city people still make up most of the theatre's audiences in contemporary China. Moreover, the debate as to
whether the work led to more divorces seemed to be an issue only
among a handful of theatregoers and critics, so it could not be said to

affect women's rights in the countryside. More to the point, the voic
of the subalterns was being appropriated to air the interests of the
intellectuals and rural Chinese women were being exploited to

advance the ideological and political agendas of the urban elite.
What, on the other hand, caused the audience to welcome Pan
Jinlian with open arms? Why, one critic asked, would audiences previ
ously uninterested in chuanju all of sudden become mesmerized by
Pan Jinlian (Liu 1986, 86)? One answer emerged: the success of Pa
Jinlian indicated a way out of the current crisis in drama. Instead o
casting contemporary stories in traditional theatrical forms such as
chuanju, one could appeal to contemporary audiences by rewritin
stories from the traditional repertoires (Liu 1986, 86). What had cap
tured the attention of contemporary audiences in this case was the
author's daring reversal of the verdicts in criminal cases of literary his-
Chen
208
tory, which traditionally had been characterized by patriarchal bias

against women. This view was vigorously advanced by Hu Bangwei, a
scholar of premodern fiction, who argued that although The Water
Margin was the first significant work of fiction recounting the struggles
of peasant heroes against the corrupt imperial court, its negative

depiction of women typified the misogynistic views found in the entire
traditional Chinese literary canon. In rewriting the literary history of

China from a feminist point of view, Hu asserted that the majority of
literary works since the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) were least successful in one respect: the representation of women. Even the literary and
dramatic works of the Tang (618-907), Song (960-1279), and Yuan

(1279-1368) dynasties, while replete with spectacularly attractive and
brilliant women characters, could not be said to have equipped them
with personalities and emotions of any noteworthy depth. In most
cases, the truly interesting female characters were the stereotypical
prostitutes with golden hearts (Hu 1988, 127). Especially faulted were
the fictional works of the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911)

dynasties: in Sanguo Yanyi (Three Kingdoms), for example, not one
female character displayed strength or any other admirable quality
that the male characters displayed in abundance. Thus The Water Margin, which inherited this misogynistic tradition, could have Wu Song
making his heroic but illogical choice of joining the rebels against the
imperial court to expiate his "crime" of murdering PanJinlian, when
the latter was a victim of the very feudal system he was supposed to
combat (Hu 1988, 128-130).
The bias against women in traditional fiction seems to have
been allowed to exist side by side with the class-based bias in communist historiography against the imperial elite, which was said to have
exploited and oppressed the peasant class. But a participant in the
peasant uprising was just as prepared as his oppressor to maintain the
inferior status of the second sex. Wu Song and others like him might
attack the corrupt imperial regime, but they would never question the
patriarchal system that guaranteed their male privileges. The literary
history of China did its part to support the system by creating mythical
and national heroes who thrived at the expense of female members of

the society. In his critique of the misogynist discourse in traditional
fiction, Hu provided clues for the rewriting and reappraisal of the history of drama, a marginalized genre in Chinese literary studies. Yuandynasty drama, in his view, was one of the few traditional genres to cre-
ate exceptional, "bright-colored and distinctive female characters
made of flesh and bone" (Hu 1988, 128). Hu's archaeological endeavors (in Foucault's sense), directed at recovering the history of drama,
were joyfully shared by Wei Minglun, who wrote an essay stating his
209
authorial intention of challenging the patriarchal aspects of Th

Margin in the chuanju PanJinlian.
To achieve his purpose, Wei conducted a dialogue with O
Yuqian, who had written a huaju version of Pan Jinlian
Ouyang had been criticized for presenting a heroic Pan becau

playwright had been influenced by the "sex-driven Freudian th
product of the "petty bourgeoisie" (Wei 1986, 72-74). Wei lau
May Fourth spirit that Ouyang exhibited in creating an "ant
heroine who, ironically, remained controversial sixty years af
initial appearance. Ouyang's daring in reversing the verdict t
traditionally been meted out to the condemned female charact
trasted sharply with her treatment in The Water Margin, which a
to Confucian doctrine, some idea of which may be obtained by
its sayings: "The only difficult ones to raise are women and b
(Wei 1986, 71). Of the one hundred and eight "heroic rebels"
Water Margin, only three are women. Almost all the other women
acters in The Water Margins are portrayed as "evil"-immoral
women murdered by their men, who then escape to the Lian
tains where they evidently metamorphose into a group of "g
brave men" (haohan) committed to undermining the status
other words, these men could not have become heroes without the
provocation of female villains. (See, for example, Shi Xiu who murders Pan Qiaoyun, Su Jiang who murders Yan Xijiao, Lu Junyi who
murders Jiashi, Shi Jin who murders Li Ruilan, and Lei Heng who
beats Bai Xiuying to death.) Only one good woman can be found in
this work-and she, significantly named Zhenniang (Chaste Woman),
is there only to be lauded for her devotion and obedience to her husband Lin Chong, a "Liang Mountain" hero. Her virtue is used to further set off the numerous "vicious" women such as Pan Jinlian, who
violate the Confucian ethical codes of sangang (the three cardinal

orders whereby a ruler guides his subject, a father his son, and a husband his wife) and wuchang (the five constant virtues of benevolence,
righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and fidelity) (Wei 1986, 71).
One cannot accept the excuse of later critics who point to the
fiction writer's "historical limitations" to condone these misogynist
attitudes, Wei insists, since dramatists such as Guan Hanqing, Wang
Shifu, and Tang Xianzu-known for creating vivid, courageous female
characters-would have depicted Pan Jinlian very differently (Wei

1986, 72). Redeeming certain dramatic works as feminist-conscious
texts, however, does not undo the misogynist influence of traditional
theatre, which filled its repertoire with plays adapted from traditional
fiction such as The Water Margin. Most middle-aged audiences had

therefore been exposed to this bias since childhood. A recent informal
Chen
210
survey found that many hardly reacted at all (they felt "numbed," they
said) to a television drama entitled Wu Song, which rehearsed the familiar tale of "Wu Song heroically killing his evil sister-in-law to avenge his
brother." Consequently, many spectators were shocked by Wei Minglun's unconventional chuanju (Liu 1986a, 90). But this response only
demonstrates how much work was needed to combat the feudal ideol-
ogy still rampant in socialist China and to reclaim the theatrical sp

that still supported the male-dominated ideology.
Thus we see that the furious debate arising from the staging
the chuanju PanJinlian revolved around its theme and "social functio
not its vaunted formalist innovations. Even the few formalist debates
that did take place were disguised in ideological discourse. One cri
pointed out, for instance, that Pan Jinlian had dismantled the tr
tional theatrical form that usually separated honglian (the red-face cha
acter of loyalty) from heilian (the black-face character of treacher

For the first time in Chinese theatrical history, Pan Jinlian deco
structed this one-dimensional structure by introducing a charact
with a complex personality that could no longer be classified as eit
positive or negative (Zhang Yunchu 1986, 103). This formalist inn
vation could not have been achieved had the author not boldly rela
the opera to the contemporary issues of women's suppression and l
eration. The well-known literary critic Liu Bingyan was undoubte
commenting on this phenomenon in his observation on contem
rary critics. While many of them, he felt, were trapped in their lo

pursuit of "a pure literature and art" that ignored social reality, C
nese audiences, spectators, and readers "made their own choice." T
is, they embraced the neglected theatrical form with its scandalo
twist on a traditional tale, obviously preferring it over more popu
genres and media such as television, film, fiction, and other tren
modernist plays, all of which displayed little concern with social a
ideological issues (Liu 1986a, 93). These different perceptions of th
function of art explain the diametrically opposite formalistic view
this chuanju as either a monumental work-which revived thea

when it was at a desperate point of crisis-or a disaster that violat
the long tradition of the chuanju by artificially blending elements
the foreign and the Chinese, the modern and the ancient (Hua
1986, 97). In a contemporary China that regards gender politics as p
marily "gender trouble" (if it pays any attention to it at all), modernis
attempts in literature and art to grapple with the relevant issues a
generally taken to be of secondary importance. Such bold for
remain possible only in the imagination of "elitist" artists whose f

malistic concerns may sometimes be appreciated by the mass audie
but are unlikely to be seen by them as having much to do with th
own concerns.
211
The same argument applies to epic theatre, another trad

in search of a stage in contemporary China. Some Chinese dra
were fascinated by Brecht's advocacy of a socially engaged theat
according to Roland Barthes's analysis, emphasizes sociology, i
ogy, semiology, and morality (Barthes 1972, 413-414). They d
ered that Brecht's belief in the possibility of effecting social
through epic theatre matched almost perfectly the way, in the
realist tradition, that audiences were encouraged to ponder the
ical process objectively through dramatic representations of the
cal" and the "progressive." This explains the successful 1979 C
production of Brecht'sJianlilue Zhuan (Life of Galileo), which, a
pointed out elsewhere, invited the audience to relate Galileo's m
tunes to their own experiences during the Cultural Revolution
1995, 61-67). Such an approach not only runs counter to B
"alienation effect," designed to distance the audience from the

events, but departs from the original intention of the produce
planned to experiment with a "faithful" Brechtian production
blending of Brechtian theatre with socialist-realist theatre can
seen, to great advantage, in Liu Shugang's play Yige Sizhe Dui Sh
de Fangwen (The Dead Visits the Living; 1985).8 Based on the l
the national heroes An Ke and Cao Zhengxian, the play recount
happens when Ye Xiaoxiao is stabbed to death by two thieves o
as the other passengers look on passively. Throughout the rest
play, the dead Xiaoxiao comes back to visit the living, to confr
indifferent passengers, and to reconnect with his two best chi
friends: Tang Tiantian, the woman he loved, and Liu Feng, his
val in work and love.
The play relies on the Maoist tradition of presenting realistic

slices of life and highlighting social problems via the actions of the
uninvolved passengers. Their preoccupation with daily routines

inhibits them from coming to the aid of Xiaoxiao: a father is impatient
to get to the hospital to see his wife and their new baby; two newlyweds
are absorbed in a quarrel over gifts for their relatives; a party official is
trying to think of ways to earn a promotion to provide for his blind

daughter, the very person Xiaoxiao was trying to help when he was
attacked. As a visitor come back from the dead, Xiaoxiao understands
these people and forgives them their preoccupation with their own
family members. His acceptance of those indirectly responsible for hi
death lends Xiaoxiao the aura of an ideal socialist hero, one who gives
without expecting anything in return.
Despite critics' claims that this play aptly combined socialistrealist, Western absurdist, and symbolist techniques, what really make
it an interesting piece of experimental theatre is the alienation effect
along with the echoes of Greek tragedy achieved through the use of
Chen
212
masks and a chorus. Drawing on Brecht's concept of an episodic plot

with epic overtones that can address social concerns, The Dead consistently alienates its audience from immediate events by connecting the
past with the present, the dead with the living, and the actors with the
audience, who, as observers, are supposed to be coming up with ratio-
nal alternatives to the dramatic action. Most of these dramatic effects
are achieved through the ingenious use of the chorus, whose membe
greet the audience at the beginning of the play to remind them tha
they are all watching the play together. Besides commenting on th
action-and, with their symbolic costumes and props, becoming par
of the setting-the chorus members also, with the help of masks, st
in and out of other dramatic roles: the passengers and the criminals
the bus, the detective, the corrupt party official, Xiaoxiao's employe
the doorman at the funeral home. These dramatic techniques ar
meant to prompt audiences to reflect on the dramatic action at th

same time that Xiaoxiao reflects on his journey through life.
Tiantian, for example, in her belated effort to demonstrate he
love for Xiaoxiao-who, according to her, never "tasted a woman
before his death-kisses and embraces the ghost of Xiaoxiao in fron
of a bewildered and jealous Liu Feng. The sight tortures Liu Fen
because he is unable to ascertain whether or not Tiantian and Xiaoxiao
had become intimate before his death, as Tiantian now claims, despit
the adamant denial of Xiaoxiao's ghost. In the middle of this deliber
ate confusion of sense, vision, and experience, audiences continue to
mull over the question Tiantian has posed for Liu Feng: "As the living
can't you tolerate my feelings for, and intimate acts with, the dead
Xiaoxiao?" (Liu Shugang 1985, 307). This, moreover, prompts the

audience to consider the lingering, profound influence in socialis
China of the Confucian moral code of "chastity or virginity" (zhengjie),

which demands that, whatever the circumstances, women remain faith
ful to their husbands or betrothed. At the end of the play, when Xiao
xiao is about to be cremated, Liu Feng surprises everyone by confess-
ing that he is the person Xiaoxiao has been seeking-the passenge
with enough of a sense of justice to insist that the bus be immediatel

driven to the police station, so the criminals might be apprehended
but too fearful of reprisals to come forward to incriminate them. Liu
additional admission that he wrote the piece to allay the heavy burden
of guilt he bears leads the audience to reflect on the meaning of the
atre and this drama.
By presenting himself as one of the indifferent onlookers to

blame for Xiaoxiao's death, Liu Feng actually situates himself above
this undifferentiated crowd. His dramatic skills allow him to show off
his knowledge and power and, in a way denied to the others, argue his
213
own case in a privileged theatrical space. In this sense, the pla
metacommentary on the problematic relationship between
and life, between Chinese intellectuals and the subaltern othe

claim to represent, and between what one aspires to be and w
is capable of being. This surprising ending challenges the idea
image of the dramatist as embodied in the stage character of Li
a successful director who, in his own words, sought to comm
the inner beauty of one's heart in his play (Liu Shugang 1985
But his alter ego, Xiaoxiao, laments his failure as an actor early
career and, later, his struggle to succeed as a costume designer
he was entirely devoted to creating "the outward appearan
human beings (Liu Shugang 1985, 277). Members of the audien

impelled to ask: Who is the truthful man? The one who claim
"spiritual" and whom society views as successful, but who was too
idated by the criminals to act? Or the one who admits to failin

attempts to be "spiritual," but who was sufficiently committed
principle of justice to act when it really counted?
The formalistic features of The Dead bear the imprint o
other theatrical traditions in search of the Chinese stage: the sugg
theatre (reflected in the bare stage and a certain fluidity of ti

space) and the Greek theatre (as reflected in the use of the chor
masks). As I have pointed out elsewhere (Chen 1995, 130-13
idea of the suggestive theatre was promoted by the Chinese d

Huang Zuolin, who envisioned the ideal Chinese theatre of the
as a combination of three divergent views on theatre, those of Stan
sky, Brecht, and Mei Lanfang, the quintessential xiqu actor. For
the three approaches differed in an essential way: Stanislavsky
in the "fourth wall," Brecht wanted to abolish it, while for Mei La
the wall had never existed, since Chinese theatre had always b
highly conventionalized that it had never set out to create an illusi
real life. Huang Zuolin concluded that "realism is the keynote for W
ern art" and "suggestiveness" the keynote for Chinese art.

Huang Zuolin himself produced a piece of suggestive the
Zhongguo Meng (China Dream), written by William Huizhu Su
Faye Chunfang Fei. It illustrates his notion that the ideal Chin
atre should be characterized by a combination of the "four inne
acteristics" (the "suggestiveness" of life, movement, langua
decor) with the "four outer characteristics" (fluidity, plasticity, a

tural quality, and conventionality).9 As befits a prime example o
gestive theatre," China Dream constantly shifts among diverse tem
and geographical spaces-between China and the United Stat
past and the present, the city and the countryside, the worlds of d
and reality. At the point when Mingming, a successful busines
Chen
214
living in America, has fallen in love with John Hodges, a Ph.D. in Chi-
nese philosophy, the scene instantly switches back to many years

before during the Cultural Revolution when she was working alongside her first love in the remote countryside of southern China. The
two young lovers in this scene play their parts on a bare stage consisting only of a drawn circle at the center. They communicate mostly
through dance, mime, and body contact and movement without
resorting to much conventional dialogue. In fact, the play is a showcase for acting techniques from the traditional theatre, from spoken
drama, and from the song-dance drama (gewuju). By using one actor
to play six different roles-American lover and Chinese lover, restau-
rant chef, waiter, journalist, Mingming's grandfather-the play
achieves an unusual degree of theatrical continuity that contributes to

the imaginative flow.
The critics applauded the play's theatrical achievements. But,

not surprisingly, they reproached the playwright for advocating a
superficial cross-cultural understanding between two entirely different
cultures and ideologies. Zhang Geng, for instance, a leading drama

critic, claimed that what was in some respects an enchanting story of
an American Ph.D. in Chinese philosophy falling in love with a Chinese
woman was actually a play devoid of lasting appeal, since the American's emotions are based on his shallow understanding of Chinese culture. Similarly, Mingming's love forJohn is based on the favorable but
cursory impression she has formed of American culture. Although the
story might interest an audience curious about cross-cultural experiences, it could hardly be said to explore in depth the dramatic characters and the cross-cultural theme (Yu 1987, 15). Gao Jian, another
major critic of Chinese drama, asserted that the play exhibited a kind
of radicalism. A confused Chinese woman regains her confidence and
self-esteem only through affirmation from an American lover; her self-
image seems to veer from one pole to the other-first, the rejection
of white men in general and then the affirmation of a white man in
particular. When confronted with the harsh reality of racial discrimination and financial difficulties, Gao says, she comes off no better than
a "spiritual beggar," for she does not strive to be self-reliant (Gao 1987).
Yet the charge that the play is essentially an expression of Orientalism (John's imaging of the feminine Oriental other) and Occidentalism (Mingming's construction of the idealistic Western other)
should be considered problematic in view of the political circumstances surrounding the play's production. As explained by Faye
Chunfang Fei, one of its coauthors, Huang Zuolin originally planned
to end the play at the point when a breach develops between the two
lovers, owing to John's rejection of Mingming's proposal that he give
215
up his legal practice in order to devote himself unreservedly

beloved research on Taoism (Fei 1991, 156). For political reaso
ending, which questions the sincerity ofJohn's Orientalism, h
changed later in favor of an ending that stresses harmony betw
two cultures. According to Fei, not long after the 1989 Tiana
demonstration, when the state apparatus was launching anothe
ical campaign of "antibourgeois liberation," a play that conclud
the promotion of "Chinese culture, especially by an American
a reasonable choice, and this strategy did work" (Fei 199
Bypassing censorship, the play went on to be produced and fa

received in Beijing and Shanghai.
The official line taken by GaoJian-that the play suffered
an Orientalist tendency (although he did not actually use the
"Orientalist") -reflected the official Occidentalism, which serv
state's purpose in suppressing its own people with its essenti
of the West as a negative other in support of a Chinese natio
Yet the play as a whole-after it had passed the censors and b
available for audiences to interpret freely-appeared to so
express a kind of anti-official Occidentalism that gave Chinese

and dramatists the opportunity to use the image of the Weste
as a powerful discourse for political liberation and self-defin
this light, Mingming's flashback to her experience during the
Revolution might be regarded as a pointed critique against the
tarian socialist system at its worst. Her embracing of a Weste
moreover, might be understood as a rejection of her contem
experience in socialist China. Both the Chinese woman and th
ern man's longing for the ancient beauty and harmony of tra
Chinese society-expressed in their love for Taoist philosophy
as Mingming's questioning of the modernization process in t
tryside back home-might be viewed as another imaging of th
(the ancient Chinese other in this case). It also contrasts sharp
modernization, globalization, and self-colonization, all of whi
Chinese government has been trying to ram down the people's
since the beginning of the "reform era."
The use of an ancient other to voice concern with present
also figures in SangshupingJishi (The Story of Sangshuping; 1
Chen Zidu, Yang Jian, and Zhu Xiaoping, a play known in

dramatic circles as a successful experimentation with Greek
Based on Zhu Xiaoping's series of novels about Sangshuping, a
isolated village in the northwestern part of China, it presents

rows, tragedies, and less dramatic events in the daily lives of
lagers. These people, the play shows, inhabit a place where, de
that has happened elsewhere in the world, ignorance, illiteracy
Chen
216
suppression, primitive ways, and a brutal patriarchal structure have

remained unchanged for thousands of years. The sense of futility in
attempting to bring about any change is communicated by the bare,
revolving stage, which alternately displays the different geographical
features characteristic of the "yellow earth plateau": uphill, downhill,
and the cave houses in between. This landscape full of deep valleys
and steep hills signifies a thousand-year-old soil erosion and the brutally harsh living conditions it has meant for local people.
As the drama critic Qu Liuyi remarked, the revolving stage, with
its many different aspects of landscape revealed from different angles,
does more than expand the usual theatrical space. It provides a continuously moving performance space upon which singing and dancing
chorus members portray villagers harvesting wheat or participating in
local rituals-such as begging the rain dragon to fall down on the

neighboring village, rather than their own, while they themselves hasten to harvest the wheat in time (Qu 1988, 5). The revolving stage thus
functions as a "genre painting" of local customs and daily life in the village. It also illustrates the insignificance of individuals caught in the
flow of time: no matter how meaningful their personal experiences
may appear, they are only passengers occupying a brief moment on an
empty stage, whose lives will most likely make no impression on the
course of history.
Time and space, the play implies, become meaningful only

insofar as one is willing to hold onto the memories of the historical
past with the aid of such human feelings as hope and anguish. The fol-
lowing scene is a case in point: A woman is stripped naked by her

insane husband in front of the villagers, who further insult her and
surround her as if they were watching a caged animal. As the teasing
crowd disperses, however, still mocking and laughing, one sees a piece
of marble representing the statue of a goddess standing in the

woman's place. The woman herself, meanwhile, disappears into the
singing chorus, who now meditate on the fate of an innocent girl who
has drowned in the flowing river of history but has left behind a frozen
image in an infertile land inhabited by impotent men.

Drawing on the literary and dramatic trend known as "medita-
tion on historical and cultural past" (lishi wenhua fansi), the play,
according to its directors, presents a "living fossil" to symbolize the cultural and historical sentiments of the past five thousand years as a way
of calling for real change in contemporary China. The call for change
is conveyed by indicating the changeless nature of the village and all
that it contains. The character Li Jindou, a communist production
team leader, seems no different from the local despots depicted in
pre-1949 literature: at once a slave to his immediate superior and a
tyrant to the villagers he rules as patriarch of his clan, he persecutes
217
and imprisons Wang Zhike because he is an outsider with a d

surname. Nowhere in the play is there any hint of the famili
from classic socialist literature-the story of people who were l
poverty before 1949 waiting to be liberated by communist sav
play imparts the message that the "sea of bitterness and miser
poor people before liberation" is evident in the very landscape
temporary China and will only grow worse with the unfoldin
of the Cultural Revolution. It is a message corroborated by the
of the play around 1968 or 1969 and the demonstration of con
suffering during that period.
The play makes it plain that women's miseries did not abate
the advent of the Communist Party in 1949, despite what the

ical texts of the PRC literature would have us believe. Entirely
from the outside world, the villagers, as they have done for t
thousands of years, still arrange marriages for their children. A t

year-old girl is sold into marriage in exchange for a wife for her
brother, who subsequently abuses her and drives her to suici
eighteen-year-old widow throws herself into a well in protest aga

Jindou, her father-in-law, who forced her to marry his second
The setting used as a backdrop for the Cultural Revo
while continuing to underscore the unrelenting passage of tim

cates the importance of periodization in communist historiogra
one can openly insist that socialism after 1949 effected absolu
changes, even in this poor village. Nevertheless, it is legitimat
gest the unparalleled disasters and terrors of the Cultural Rev
from 1966 to 1976, the only period in post-liberation China th
thus be publicly criticized. Although the play could conseque
presented to the official censors as a celebration of a "second
tion" brought about by the current political regime, which a
out the promise of additional change in the future, it really le
ences with considerable scope for interpreting it any way the
Punctuating the play from beginning to end, the chorus's song, w
ambiguous blend of acclamation and questioning of China's fiv

sand-year history (including the PRC era), certainly leaves the
sion that China once more needs enlightenment and liberatio
What could the play have to say to women in the audien
might be aware of feminist issues? Toward the ironic end of
China Dream, Mingming turns the tables on the Western man,
him (and the audience) to "wipe out that condescending sm
complacency to see the rift in their own lives between dream

ity, between idealism and pragmatism."10 Women in The Story of
shuping, however, have a very different power relationship
Since LiJindou is the only patriarch-embodying all possible p
tribal chief, Confucian "emperor," and Maoist production team
Chen
218
-the women in Sangshuping never begin to imagine they could be liberated from the patriarchal tradition. Their indifference to time and
change is symptomatic of their willingness to be buried by history. By
committing suicide, they erase the memory of their own suffering from
the mind of the nation that helped their persecutors to thrive. Only
when the new nation feels the need to meditate on its heritage does it
notice what suffering its gender politics has caused women. The silent,
powerless women of this play thus paradoxically reveal more about
women's conditions in contemporary China than the plays about their
"liberated" sisters who walked out of their homes and villages only to
be suppressed anew by another patriarchal ideology.
My rumination on the various traditions in search of a Chinese
stage in early post-Mao China reminds me of Pirandello's play Six

Characters in Search of an Author (1921), in which a stage director is per-
suaded by six characters to turn their complicated life stories into a

play. On trying to carry out this plan, however, the stage director finds
himself at a loss as to how to conclude the play. His refusal to continue
writing the play in accordance with his characters' demands is reminiscent of the frustration that has led Chinese dramatists to alternately
accept and reject the various Western theatrical traditions-which, like

Pirandello's characters, often seem to insist on being copied exactly on
the Chinese stage. But when Chinese dramatists seek out an authoras one would seek God or a father figure in Western theatrical traditions-to validate their own formalist innovations, they often hesitate
at the last moment, compelled by their intense experiences to return
to their agenda of cultural rejuvenescence and political liberation.

Thus Chinese dramatists, selecting from among diverse formalistic traditions in the canons of the East and the West, have created a melting
pot of their own. With multiple formalistic options to explore, Chinese
theatre can now become more effective than ever as it inquires into
the death of a culture, the beginnings of modernity, the erosion of the
collective, and the power of the father. The need no longer exists to
search for the author. There are many authors, all of them right there
in the audience, waiting for their compelling experiences to be represented on the stage-which, fortunately, has already been enriched by
the several traditions I have been describing.
NOTES:
1. The May Fourth movement was an intellectual and literar

ment triggered by student demonstrations in Tiananmen Square
1919, to protest Chinese officials' signing of the Treaty of Versailles,
territorial rights to China's Shandong Province would have been

Japan.
219
2. In the history of Western dramatic theory, one of the first

ences to the fourth-wall principle of illusionist theatre can be traced
Diderot, who stated in 1758: "Whether you write or act, think no more o
audience than if it had never existed. Imagine a huge wall across the
the stage, separating you from the audience, and behave exactly as if
tain had never risen." See Denis Diderot, "On Dramatic Poetry," in
(1965, 237-251). For discussions on the proscenium or illusionist thea
Southern (1961) and Brockett (1968).
3. The original Chinese text of Bus Stop written by Gao Xingji

Liu Huiyuan was published in October 3 (1983): 119-38. An English t
lation of Bus Stop by Kimberly Besio can be found in Yan (1998, 3English translation of WM by Thomas Moran can be found in Yan,
60-122). For a critical study in English see William Tay, "Avant-gar
atre in Post-Mao China: The Bus-stop by Gao Xingjian," in Goldblat
111-118). See also Haiping Yan, "Theatre and Society: An Introdu
Contemporary Chinese Drama," in Yan (1998, ix-xlvi).
4. Chuanju can be translated as "Sichuan opera."
5. Originally published in 1986 in Xiju yu Dianying (Drama and
the revised and most recent version of Wei Minglun's Pan Jinlian w
lected in Wei (1988). An English translation of the play with an intro
can be found in Shiao-ling Yu (1993, 1-48). Another translation, by
Williams with the assistance of Xiaoxia Williams, can be found in Ya
123-188).
6. A huaju version entitled One Woman and Four Men (Yinii Sin
performed in Hong Kong in 1988 with actors and actresses from Hon
Guangzhou, Shanghai, Sichuan province, and the United States. An
dist Shanxi opera" (Qinqiang huangdanju) of PanJinlian was staged by the
Shanxi Opera Troupe of Xi'an City in July 1986 and by the Shanxi
Troupe of Wulumuqi City in Xinjiang Autonomous Region in the sam
A Shanghai opera (kunqu) version was adapted in 1987 in Shanghai b
Shanghai Opera Troupe.
7. An English translation by Catherine Swatek of Ouyang Yuqia

Jinlian can be found in Gunn (1983, 52-75).
8. Liu Shugang's The Dead Visits the Living was first premiered by
Central Experimental Theatre in June 16, 1985, with Tian Chengren

Xiaojiang as codirectors. English translations are mine.
9. China Dream was coauthored by William Huizhu Sun and
Chunfang Fei and codirected by Huang Zuolin, Chen Tijiang, and H

hua. It was premiered by the Shanghai People's Theatre in July 1987
by three performances in Beijing in September 1987 during the Chin
atre Festival. I am grateful to its two authors for providing me with the
of different versions and other information on its performance and
tion.
10. I am grateful to Faye Chunfang Fei, coauthor of the play, for c

ifying this point in a private communication.
Chen
220
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"A Touch of the Absurd." Renditions vol.:19 and 20.
Barthes, Roland. 1972.
"Les taches de la critique Brechtienne." In Critical Essays. Translated

by Richard Howard. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press.
Brockett, Oscar. 1968.
History of the Theatre. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Chen, Xiaomei. 1995.
Occidentalism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Chen Zidu, YangJian, and Zhu Xiaoping. 1988.
SangshupingJishi (The story of Sangshuping). Juben (Drama script)
4:4-28.
Clark, Barrett H. 1965.
European Theories of the Drama. Revised by Henry Popkin. New York:

Crown.
Fang Qun. 1988.

"Wuge nanren yigen shengzi" (Five men with one rope). In Wei, Pan
Jinlian, pp. 151-152.
Fei Faye Chunfang. 1991.
"Huang Zuolin: China's Man of the Theatre." Ph.D. dissertation, City
University of New York.
GaoJian. 1987.
"Zhongguo Meng-Qitede Meng" (China dream: A unique dream).
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Goldblatt, Howard, ed. 1990.
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Gunn, Edward M., ed. 1983.
Twentieth-Century Chinese Drama: An Anthology. Bloomington: Indiana
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Hu Bangwei. 1988.
"Duiyu Lishi he Xianshi de Shenchen Fansi" (Deep reflections on

historical past and contemporary reality). In Wei, Pan Jinlian, pp.
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Huang Shang. 1986.
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evening news),June 16. In Wei, PanJinlian, pp. 97-99.
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"Cixiang Fengjian Youling de Lijian" (A sharp sword against the ghost

of feudalism). Renmin Ribao (People's daily), July 14. In Wei, Pan inlian, pp. 89-93.
.1986b.
"Guanyu chuanju Pan Jinlian he ta Yinqi de Yidian Lianxiang

the Sichuan opera Pan Jinlian and afterthoughts inspired by i
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Liu Shugang. 1985.
Yige SizheDui Shengzhe deFangwen (The dead visits the living). In T
Duoshengbu deJuchang, pp. 249-329.

Qu Liuyi. 1988.
"Xibu Huangtu Gaoyuan de Huhuan" (The calling of the yellow
plateau). Xijubao pp. 3:4-5.
Southern, Richard. 1961.
The Seven Ages of the Theatre. New York: Hill & Wang.
Tian Xuxiu, ed. 1988.
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Wenyi Chubanshe.
Wei Minglun. 1986.
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Sichuan Opera." Asian TheatreJournal 10(1):1-48.
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A Stage in Search of A Tradition - The Dynamics of Form and Content in Post-Maoist Theatre: Xiaomei Chen

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A Stage in Search of a Tradition: The Dynamics of Form and Content in Post-Maoist

A Stage in Search of a Tradition:

Xiaomei Chen is associate professor of Chinese and comparative literature at The

ular Drama in Contemporary China is forthcoming from University of Hawai'i

Since its inception, it has not been possible to consider huaju

led to a paradox in which huaju's antitraditional aspect undermines its

literature" both in form and thematic concerns. Hu favored a Western

form of huaju to express the thematic concerns of May Fourth inte

DYNAMICS OF POST-MAOIST THEATRE

form, xiqu. Such a history seems to have repeated itself in ear

to revive a stagnant theatre dominated by the Maoist doct

correct" thematic concerns.

To explore the dynamics of form and content, East and Wes

developed and practiced by Konstantin Stanislavsky, further helped to

anything else, their wish to figure in the arena of world theatre.

DYNAMICS OF POST-MAOIST THEATRE

They demonstrate both the potential for and limitations of cr

oriented audience, the early Chinese experimental theatr

restricted by the very political and cultural conditions that ha

So-called absurdist plays such as Chezhan (Bus Stop; 1983) and

confront the half-realized fears and anxieties of the human mind.

Rather his positivistic view of contemporary Chinese society has a

In a similar fashion, Wuwai You Reliu (Hot Currents Outside th

to protect a bag of wheat seeds for his village. Ashamed of the

Maoist realist tradition, and its commemoration of the brave life of an

essential characteristics of absurdist theatre: the metaphysical anguish

which it conveyed a "positive" sense of "fear in expectation" (Tian

In its formalistic features, Hot Currents reminds one not so much

the sense of timelessness Wilder establishes, which in Hot Currents is

DYNAMICS OF POST-MAOIST THEATRE

West have claimed, contemporary Chinese dramatists such

were inspired by what they understood as the absurdist tradit

surprised Chinese dramatic circles in 1986 with his daring

mental play Pan Jinlian, which he described as "absurd theatr

chuanju style (huangdan chuanju)."4 Its "absurdity," Wei M

insisted, resided only in its "absurdist form," used by the playwr

historical periods to comment on the tragic story of Pan Jinl

burden of the cultural past by "exploring the close relati

between human beings and society and between historical dis

As one Chinese dramatist analyzed it, PanJinlian is a play

his concubine; (2) Wu Dalang, the poor, short, ugly man P

killing her to avenge the murder of his brother, Wu Dalang;

Zhuan (The Water Margin; fourteenth century) and Jinpingmei

Tolstoy's heroine Anna Karenina, for instance, appears onstage

1988, 62-63). Lii Shasha, a character from the contemporary novel

whereby unhappy marriages are perpetuated both in Russia and

lives in a traditional society and has no options in regard to her mar

nating against women.

juxtaposed against women's present prospects in the course of th

appearance of a female judge, which might at first be taken as a sign

-as well as the valor she displayed in struggling to secure her ow

DYNAMICS OF POST-MAOIST THEATRE

This international seminar on the fate of Pan Jinlian wa

and Hong Kong. College students without any prior expo

chuanju tradition were said to have been "electrified" by its s

and Shanghai.6 At one point, in fact, fifty theatres in twenty cit

performing the work. Numerous articles about it appeared in

cial columns to continuous discussion of the play's contr

Some people adamantly opposed the staging of this drama.

claimed, could only make the situation worse. He noted, furthermore,

keen on following the fashion in divorce trends without taking the

whether the work led to more divorces seemed to be an issue only

among a handful of theatregoers and critics, so it could not be said to