Download The intercultural appropriation between Chinese Opera - UvA-DARE

ID number: 10406808 1 Name: Weiyang Zhu
Address: Boris Pasternakstraat 509, 1102TE, Amsterdam
First supervisor: Dr. Peter Eversmann
Second supervisor: Prof. Jim Davis
University van Amsterdam，The University of Warwick
Date of submission: 19th December 2013
The
intercultural
appropriation
Chinese Opera and Shakespeare’s plays
between
ID number: 10406808 2 Table of contents
Abstract ......................................................................................................................... 4
1. Introduction .............................................................................................................. 6
1.1 Interculturalism in theatrical practice ................................................................. 9
1.1.1 Definitions of interculturalism and intercultural performance .................... 9
1.1.2 Theatre as a vehicle of cultural exchange .................................................. 15
1.2 Intercultural adaptations in different contexts ................................................. 20
1.2.1 Shakespeare’s plays in a Chinese context .................................................. 20
1.2.2 Chinese opera in UK theatre ...................................................................... 32
2. Case studies: mutual appropriation in intercultural adaptations ..................... 37
2.1 The Kingdom of Desire: a Chinese Macbeth ....................................................... 37
2.1.1 Traditional theatre in contemporary Taiwan society ................................. 39
2.1.2 The background and motivation of the director ......................................... 46
2.1.3 The ‘mise en scène’ in Chinese Shakespeare ............................................. 49
2.2 Royal Shakespeare Company: The Orphan of Zhao ......................................... 58
2.2.1 Historical review of The Orphan of Zhao in Western society ................... 58
2.2.2 The background and motivation of the director ......................................... 62
ID number: 10406808 3 2.2.3 The appropriations of stories and aesthetic elements ................................ 66
3. A re-think of intercultural performance in a different context ......................... 73
3.1 The problem of intercultural performance ....................................................... 74
3.1.1 Distortion ................................................................................................... 74
3.1.2 Blind spots ................................................................................................. 89
3.2 The different purposes of appropriation ........................................................... 95
3.2.1 Utilizing the “Western world”: a contribution to the Chinese operatic
revolution ............................................................................................................ 96
3.2.2 Romanticized “Chinese Culture”: a European reading of Chinese opera 102
3.3 Productive reception of foreign theatre traditions ......................................... 105
3.3.1 The reception of The Kingdom of Desire ................................................. 106
3.3.2 The reception of The Orphan of Zhao ..................................................... 114
4. Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 120
4.1 Intercultural adaption: inequality, dislocation and misunderstanding ........ 120
4.2 A calling for adaptation as equitable process .................................................. 126
Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 128
References in English ............................................................................................... 128
Reference in Chinese................................................................................................ 132
Websites .................................................................................................................... 133
ID number: 10406808 4 Abstract
This thesis focuses on the topics of interculturalism and mutual adaptations
between two different societies in the global age. The author reviews the history of
intercultural performance both in Western and Eastern countries, raising several
critiques: although the intercultural performance has become canonized in the West
and the East, intercultural adaptations are still dominated by Euro-centric logic.
Non-European theatrical forms, languages, and cultures, are still regarded as an
esoteric indulgence.
To exemplify the inequality and discrimination which has emerged in current
intercultural performance, the author specifically chooses two productions - the
Taiwan Legend Theatre Company’s The Kingdom of Desire and the Royal
Shakespeare Company’s The Orphan of Zhao - as case studies. By analyzing the
plots and aesthetic elements the directors appropriated, as well as the blind spots and
distortions of other cultures in the plays, the author finds that even though these two
plays share the same name of intercultural performance, they contribute to their own
cultures in two binary approaches. The Chinese Shakespeare offered Chinese
practitioners and audiences an escape from the standard theatrical fare of
contemporary China, whereas the RSC production only aimed to tell UK audiences a
Chinese story. These two attitudes towards foreign cultures mirror the different
motivations of theatre-makers in UK and in China. Also, the reception of these two
plays by academics and general audiences was quite divided. It is interesting that the
UK audiences were more focused on ethnic issues: the protests at the casting of
ID number: 10406808 5 non-Asian actors in The Orphan of Zhao demonstrate the inequalities in UK theatre.
Overall, the author is proposing to use Fischer-Lichte’s conception of
“interweaving” to challenge the current intercultural theories and practices. The
Politics of Interweaving Performance Cultures1 explores global developments in the
performing arts that cannot adequately be explained and understood using
Euro-centric logics or post-colonial theories. Each cultural production should
“interweave” its own culture into others. Thus, It is hoped that intercultural
appropriation could be developed in a more equal way.
1 Erika Fischer-­‐Lichte, Politics of Interweaving Performance Cultures Beyond Postcolonialism, London, Routledge, 2011 Print. ID number: 10406808 6 1. Introduction
In 1983, the idea of a Peking opera adaptation of Macbeth was hatched by a group
of young actors in Taipei who were discussing the decline of Peking opera in
contemporary China. Thirty years later, a production called Chinese Hamlet was
staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Both know as intercultural adaptations,
these “global Shakespeares” bridged two seemingly quite contradictory theatre
traditions. These intriguing cases constitute only the tip of an iceberg of larger
questions and pervasive cultural practices that have yet to be admitted to the scholarly
discourse on Shakespeare and Chinese modernity. Standing behind these practices is
a long history of constantly reconfigured relationships that have connected and
disconnected Shakespeare and China.
Over the last thirty years many theatre groups have emerged which speak for
dominated and generally marginalized peoples, and the proliferation of these groups
demands new definitions of theatre and the recognition of new non-traditional
audiences. As Susan Bennett has said
We might start with the fascination of the West in this century with theatre
from alien cultures. Both Brecht and Artaud looked to the East for models with
which to challenge the hegemony of Western theatrical practice, and the use of
ritual in non-Western theatre has had an enormous impact on Western
experimental theatre practice. Such ritualistic performances developed outside
the boundaries of Western culture nevertheless present an evident attraction for
ID number: 10406808 7 theatre audiences of that culture.2
Meanwhile, the growth and development of major Asian economies lead to a
transformation of their geopolitical roles and an assertion of dominance in the cultural
arenas too3. This development, not sudden, but in the making for the last couple of
decades, is particularly borne out in the surge of creativity in Asian theatre, especially
in its experiments with that most iconic world author, William Shakespeare. This
Asian resurgence is underlined by the interest of the West not just in negotiating trade
with the growing economies, but also in engaging with their literary and cultural
output. The recognition, circulation, and approbation of Asian versions of
Shakespeare in the last few decades marks a shift in intellectual property relations. A
side benefit of globalization has been the expansion of the areas of reckoning: “other
Shakespeare” can now cohabit the same urban playing space. How they engage with
Western and Shakespearean theatre on more equitable and interrogative terms than
before, and how they produce innovative work, forging new meanings and arresting
the imagination beyond the ‘local’, is hereby changing the balance of power between
the East and West.
Over all, the restaging or rewriting of foreign theatres into the gestural, symbolic,
stylized, or ritualized worlds of local languages reflects the interface in aesthetic,
theatrical, cultural, and political terms. In this sense, these intercultural performances
2 Susan Bennett, Theatre audiences, a theory of production and reception, London: Routledge, 1990. Print. p101. 3 Replaying Shakespeare in Asia, edited by Poonam Trivedi, Minami Ryuta, New York: Routledge, 2010. Print. p211. ID number: 10406808 8 contribute to the understanding of how widely differing cultures negotiate such
encounters and of the implications of this worldwide re-playing for a reassessment of
Shakespeare’s theatre.
Although the intercultural performance has become canonized in the academy,
and the need to examine staged versions alongside the printed text is widely accepted,
intercultural adaptations, that is, performance in non-European theatre forms,
languages, and cultures, is still seen as an esoteric indulgence. The academy has not
fully extended its critical gaze to include the ‘others’, and in Asia, or China, thus,
from a Non-western perspective, “Shakespeare adaptation research still remains an
area of darkness”4.
Asian theatres have begun to be intensively investigated by theatre departments.
Performance critics have tried to open up the debate and have developed taxonomies
and models (like Marvin Carlson’s sevenfold classification of cultural influence or
Patrice Pavis’s hour-glass model on intercultural interaction) to negotiate this impasse
in the understanding of the intercultural performance. But discussion of intercultural
Shakespeare remains caught in a cleft stick of authenticity versus difference, of the
universal versus the hybrid, and of the global versus the local, resulting in an
unresolved tension between these polarities.
However, there are many more questions in terms of intercultural performance to
be rethought in a global context: is classical Chinese theatre really so distant from
that of West? Are the differences that distinguish us really as significant as they seem?
4 Replaying Shakespeare in Asia, edited by Poonam Trivedi, Minami Ryuta, New York: Routledge, 2010. Print. p4. ID number: 10406808 9 To answer these abstract questions, therefore, a brief mapping and rethinking of
intercultural theories in theatrical practice is necessary.
1.1 Interculturalism in theatrical practice
Interculturalism is one of the most hotly debated international trends in the late
twentieth century. In recent years, theatre companies of widely differing cultures
have shared an increasing trend of transplanting elements of foreign theatre traditions
into their own productions. However, like Peter Brook’s famous and controversial
intercultural performance The Mahabharata being criticized for simply appropriating
Eastern elements, the notion of intercultural performance is uncertain and always
provokes controversies.
1.1.1 Definitions of interculturalism and intercultural performance
European perspectives on interculturalism and intercultural performance date
from the 1980s and 1990s. Interculturalism derived from the widespread recognition
in the late twentieth century that significance must always consider the cultural
context. Concerning intercultural performance, Marvin Carlson refers to
…the 1990 international conference ‘Cultural Studies Now and in the
Future’ held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In both the
theory and practice of theatre, this rising new interest was manifested in a
ID number: 10406808 10 wide variety of ways. Performance studies and cultural studies united to
stimulate interest in performance work outside the Euro-centric tradition.5
The discourse of interculturalism in the UK and Europe is becoming even more
convergent. From the late 1990s, European interculturalism centered on encouraging
dialogue between different cultural groups to reduce prejudice. This was largely
understood in the context of defined minority groups entering into contact with
homogenous majority or national groups. Today, the European Commission still
largely understands interculturalism to be about dialogue between different cultural
groups proposing that this type of dialogue will enable European citizens to acquire
“the knowledge and aptitudes to enable them to deal with a more open and more
complex environment”6.
The idea of interculturalism and intercultural performance amplified the horizon
of theatre and performance studies and offered new possibilities for traditional
theatres. In this sense I am proposing to use the conception of “intercultural
performance” in my case studies because it states that a number of aesthetically
relevant theatres in Europe and Asia “deliberately adopt theatrical elements from
foreign cultures”, creating thus an “intercultural performance”7.
However, I am not proposing to use interculturalism as a theoretical reference in
my case studies. That is because the definition of “interculturalism” still remains
5 Marvin Carlson, Intercultural theory, postcolonial theory, and semiotics: The road not (yet) taken, Semiotica. Volume 2008, Issue 168, Pages 129–142 6 Marvin Carlson, Intercultural theory, postcolonial theory, and semiotics: The road not (yet) taken, Semiotica. Volume 2008, Issue 168, Pages 129–142 7 Rustom Bharucha, Theatre and the world, Performance and the Politics of Culture, London: Routledge, 1993. Print.p2 ID number: 10406808 problematic.
11 The meaning of intercultural performance is shifting as well. There
has been a steady development of thinking and rethinking around this issue over
many years. Theatre practitioners and scholars such as Rustom Bharucha, Patrice
Pavis and Schechner demonstrates evolving and changing perspectives.
Originally, interculturalism referred to support for cross-cultural dialogue and
challenging self-segregating tendencies within different cultures8. It is important to
properly distinguish interculturalism from the other models of management of
ethno-cultural
diversity,
such
as
multiculturalism
and
internationalism
9
.
Interculturalism involves moving beyond mere passive acceptance of a multicultural
fact of multiple cultures effectively existing in a society and instead promotes
dialogue and interaction between cultures. Thus, it has arisen in response to criticisms
of existing policies of multiculturalism, such as criticisms that such policies have
failed to create inclusion of different cultures within society, but instead have divided
society by legitimizing segregated separate communities that have isolated
themselves and accentuated their specificity.
On the other hand, more recently Erika Fischer-Lichte offered a provocative
argument for rethinking the scholarly assessment of how diverse performative
cultures interact, how they are interwoven, and how they are dependent upon each
other. While the term 'intercultural theatre' as a concept points back to
post-colonialism and its contradictions, The Politics of Interweaving Performance
8 Patrice Pavis, Theatre at the crossroads of culture, translated by Loren Kruger, London: Routledge, 1992. Print. p148. 9 Rustom Bharucha, Theatre and the world, Performance and the Politics of Culture, London: Routledge, 1993. Print. P50. ID number: 10406808 12 Cultures explores global developments in the performing arts that cannot adequately
be explained and understood using postcolonial theory10.
Fischer-Lichte challenged the dichotomy 'the West and the rest' - where Western
cultures are 'universal' and non-Western cultures are 'particular' - as well as ideas of
national culture and cultural ownership. Accordingly, intercultural performance has
become one of the most controversial topics in performance and theatre studies.
Philosopher Martha Nussbaum in her work Cultivating Humanity (2000), describes
interculturalism as involving “the recognition of common human needs across
cultures and of dissonance and critical dialogue within cultures”11 and argues that
interculturalists reject the claim of identity politics that only members of a particular
group have the ability to understand the perspective of that group. Also, the
cross-influence between various ethnic groups in multicultural societies have been the
source of performances utilizing several languages and performing for a bi- or
multicultural public. This sort of exchange is only possible when the political system
in place recognizes, if only on paper, the existence of cultural or national
communities and encourages their cooperation, without hiding behind the shibboleth
of national identity.
Peter Brook's The Mahabharata can be the best case to exemplify the problematic
intercultural performances of the late 1980s. It provoked considerable controversy
and was denounced as "only orientalism", "cultural piracy", or "worse, cultural
10 Erika Fischer-­‐Lichte, Politics of Interweaving Performance Cultures Beyond Postcolonialism, London, Routledge, 2011 Print.p23. 11 Martha Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. United States: Harvard University , 2000 Print.p12. ID number: 10406808 13 rape."12 There has been a virtual deadlock of opposing claims about Brook's The
Mahabharata and about the subsequent film adaptations of the production which
were released in 1989. What appears to be important in these intercultural
productions is the ability to reveal the dust of history in other cultures. This practice
is quite close to translation, which provides a version of the source text in the
language of the new reader, who then has a choice between a translation-adaptation
that, in order to avoid slavishly copying the text to be translated, transposes the text
into its new cultural context, and a more literal translation that, at the risk of a feeling
of strangeness and idiomatic shortcomings, preserves something of the rhetoric and
world view of the source language.
Indeed, when Western theatre companies attempt to assimilate, or present
performance of an alien culture, in other words, to give them Western cultural
signifiers, they inevitably create a different product. This might provide a more
recognizable type of theatre for the Western audience, but it will accrue meanings
which would be unavailable and incomprehensible to the audience of the originating
culture. And vice versa, the same problem also existed in Eastern theatres, for
instance, when Shakespeare’s plays move through Chinese cultures, they reveal
unexamined assumptions about human nature and tell surprising stories about
globalization. This may be illustrated with a famous problem from Hamlet’s
inquisitive mind: “To be or not to be, that is the question.” The versatile verb “to be”
is as ambiguous in English as it is in many other languages. Thus translating this
12 Patrice Pavis, Theatre at the crossroads of culture, translated by Loren Kruger, London: Routledge, 1992. Print.p12-­‐13. ID number: 10406808 14 speech into Chinese will require substantial rewriting, because Chinese does not have
the verb “to be” without semantic contexts. Working with Chinese, a language more
complex than English from a sociolinguistic point of view, a translator would have to
wrestle with more than twenty first- and second-person pronouns to maintain the
ambiguity. Actually, translation from one culture to another raises many theoretical
and practical issues, which require careful and patient analysis, especially given the
"vertiginous nature of any attempt to theorize translation" 13 . One relatively
straightforward issue is the potential loss of much that is considered to be essential to
the form and substance of the original.
This suggests that directors need to be wary of criticism which insists on a single
version of an epic or which reactively denounces as "orientalist" any perceived
infidelity to the original. Indeed, “nativist demands of cultural "fidelity" have a great
potential of becoming prohibitive deterrents against cultural translation altogether”14.
Therefore, intercultural performance is only ever effective when it is accepted as
inter-corporeal work, in which an actor confronts his or her technique and
professional identity with those of the other. Here is the paradox and strength of such
inter-corporeal and intercultural theatre: just as Pavis says, “the greater its concern
with the exchange of corporeal techniques, the more political and historical it
becomes”15.
Considering the changing meaning of “intercultural performance”, the aim of this
13 Edited by Erika Fischer-­‐Lichte, Josephine Riley and Michael Gissenwehrer, The dramatic touch of difference: Theatre, Own and Foreign, Tubingen: Narr. 1990 Print. p12. 14 Schechner Richard, Essay on Performance Theory, New York: Drama Book Specialists. Print. p325. 15 Edited by Patrice Pavis, The Intercultural Performance Reader, London: Routledge, 1996. Print. p14 ID number: 10406808 15 study, therefore, is neither to prescribe a Chinese story for non-Western theatre
practices, nor simply to provide new strategies for interpreting Eastern theatrical
productions. It is a testimony to the contemporary emancipation of the
non-conventional theatre. Further, it is hoped that this study serves to reveal the
diversity of dramatic art and theatre practice in contemporary cultures.
Theatre studies, which concern themselves primarily and occasionally only with
mainstream drama and its printed representatives, describe theatre in the most limited
sense. My case studies, therefore, are guided by the principle that underlies processes
of interweaving performance. By using international case studies I hope to explore
the politics of international adaptations, looking at new paternalistic forms of
exchange and the new inequalities emerging from it.
1.1.2 Theatre as a vehicle of cultural exchange
As mentioned previously, interculturalism should be distinguished from
multiculturalism or internationalism, and the intercultural performance should avoid
simply copying the text to be translated, transposing the text into new cultural context.
Such debate on interculturalism has generated a wealth of academic commentary in
terms of cultural inequalities and discrimination.
However, disregarding the difficulties in translation and interpretation, it cannot
be denied that the interest in intercultural theatre is precisely its otherness, its seeming
inability to be understood by conventional receptive processes. Just as Roland
Barthes wrote: “I am fascinated by the Bunraku, the otherness of peoples interests me
ID number: 10406808 16 and only because these puppets come from elsewhere.”16
In The Mahabharata Brook takes into account all the potential artistic modeling
of Indian civilization and integrates them into a vision of rural India at once eternal
and contemporary. Although it is not India, it has all the flavor of India. In this case,
India is suggested by the beaten earth, the sea-green water, the fires lit to attract the
protection of gods; it is both the real earth of the Indian subcontinent and the
symbolic terrain of humanity as a whole. Brook looks for a balance between
rootedness and a universalizing imagination. India is the source and setting of the
story. How is it to be represented? How deeply is it to be evoked? Brook's answer
was to selectively "suggest" the Indian context, and not to represent it. As Bennett
says,
Discovering the secret of some fascinating exotic dance does not mean that
one can easily import it: one would have grasped at most an inspiration, a
utopia or more exactly a series of methodological principles subject to
reconstruction in the context of our culture.17
In this regard, the transmission from one culture to another and the transformation
from one theatre tradition to another requires a rallying of strategies which will
maximize the communicative effectiveness of the subsequent rendering, even at the
16 Susan Bennett, Theatre audiences, a theory of production and reception, London: Routledge, 1990. Print.p171. 17 Susan Bennett, Theatre audiences, a theory of production and reception, London: Routledge, 1990. Print.p16 ID number: 10406808 17 expense of some of the features of the “original” culture. In terms of the
reconstitution of foreign theatre, Fischer-Lichte mentioned that “in order to describe
the course of cultural transfer from the fragment of the source culture, the playwright
or director must try to reconstitute the entities and the operations within which the
cultural object is identified and elaborated, arising in the source culture and
transmitted to the audience”18.
Culture transfer is quite an abstract process; however, culture can be grasped and
described only in the form of a semiotic system. Without this, “the directors will pick
up only superficial and isolated traits, which would not have the complexity of a
cultural system and would not deserve the name of culture”19. In this sense, I am
proposing to appropriate the term “mise en scène” to visualize how directors transmit
the target culture into their own products. It is not like a repetition of foreign theatre
but more like a selective appropriation.
Aside from the selective process of intercultural translation or adaptation, the
term ‘appropriation’ sufficiently indicates that the adapters take possession of the
source culture according to their own motivations, which may run the risk of
ethnocentrism, specifically Euro-centrism. Actually, “Euro-centrism is not so much a
rejection of eastern form as a myopic view of other forms and especially conceptual
tools different from those in Europe, an inability to conceptualize cultural modeling,
western and eastern, theoretically and globally”20. Until the conceptual tools that
18 Edited by Erika Fischer-­‐Lichte Josephine Riley Michael Gissenwehrer, The dramatic touch of difference: Theatre, Own and Foreign, Tubingen: Narr. 1990 Print. p12. 19 Edited by Erika Fischer-­‐Lichte Josephine Riley Michael Gissenwehrer, The dramatic touch of difference: Theatre, Own and Foreign, Tubingen: Narr. 1990 Print. p12. 20 Edited by Patrice Pavis, The Intercultural Performance Reader, London: Routledge, 1996. Print.p15. ID number: 10406808 18 would do justice to the western and eastern context become available, intercultural
communication needs adapters, what Patrice describes as “conducting elements’ that
facilitate the passage from one world to the other.”21 These adapters allow for the
reconstruction of a series of methodological principles on the basis of the source
culture and for their adaptation to the target culture.
Moreover, the adapter can be the linguistic translator of the text as well as the
director, designer, actor, or all those who have a mediating function, adapting,
transforming, modifying, borrowing, appropriating source text and culture for a target
culture and audience22. All these artists necessarily adapt the source culture to the
target culture, mediate or act as a bridge between two poles. This process of
adaptation is all the more important as it often takes place subconsciously. Therefore,
the appropriation of the story by a multiplicity of groups meant a multiplicity of
versions through which the social aspirations and ideological concerns of each group
were articulated. The story in these versions included significant variations which
changed the conceptualization of character, event and meaning.
During the cultural exchange process there were seen to be “new paternalistic
forms of exchange and the new inequalities emerging from it”. ,
23
As mentioned
previously, European theatre circles actually have rejected Asian cultures; however,
for them Western cultures are “universal” and non-Western cultures are “particular”.
The notion “the West and the rest” somehow reflects the inequalities. It would be
21 Edited by Patrice Pavis, The Intercultural Performance Reader, London: Routledge, 1996. Print.p14 Patrice Pavis, Theatre at the crossroads of culture, translated by Loren Kruger, London: Routledge, 1992. Print. p141. 23 Erika Fischer-­‐Lichte, Politics of Interweaving Performance Cultures Beyond Postcolonialism, London, Routledge, 2011 Print.p23. 22 ID number: 10406808 19 disingenuous to deny that instances of cultural imperialism do not exist. Therefore, I
should emphasize that I have not attempted to provide a comprehensive history of
western perspectives on the Chinese operas or Chinese adaptations of western plays. I
do not believe that there is an overriding view of the intercultural performance that
can be summarily categorized the current intercultural practices. Through the lens of
global Shakespeare, I offer a view of how the Chinese theatre has been interpreted
(and misinterpreted), used (and misused), mythologized (and demystified) in the
West, and how Shakespeare has contributed to Chinese theatre in contemporary
China.
I say so because in China’s case, the Shakespeare adaptation is not only linked to
Western culture, but also reflects the development and changes of Chinese opera in
contemporary China. The increased accessibility and use of intercultural theatre in
China have occasionally resulted in a subtle exploitation of its traditions and
conventions. At one level, Chinese playwrights’ pursuit of ‘otherness’ can be seen as
part of their almost pathological need to escape the structures of ‘Logical Europe’.
Despite this violent rejection of their own culture, they cannot claim that Western
playwrights’ turn to the East was entirely altruistic or based on an understanding of
its innate principles.
Thus the question arises as to whether these uniquely remarkable equivalents
have emerged independently (possibly owing to the rapid communication flow of
mass media, or international theatre festivals), whether the productive relationship,
outlined above, of the theatre of one culture with elements of foreign theatre
ID number: 10406808 20 traditions fulfills specific functions which can barely be meaningfully compared to
one another, or whether similar methods of approach to a production indicate a basic
underlying unity, which would make the comparison of this phenomenon both
fruitful and meaningful.
Underlying my study are three related lines of inquiry united by what might be
called intercultural performance and cultural exchange—that is, analyses that focus
on shifting localities that cluster around the artists, their works, and their audience.
The case studies examine the interplay between the locality where authenticity and
intentionality is derived and the locality where differences emerge, as evidenced by
the works of intellectuals and theatre artists. Given the complexity of these cultural
adaptions, it is important not to lose sight of the temporally and geographically
expansive patterns of cross-cultural engagement. Therefore, the opening chapter, on
the “given” and “taken” in international adaptations, pursues the critical concept of
localization and critiques the fidelity-derived discourse about cultural ownership.
How were Chinese and Shakespeare used as a kind of staged utopia of modernity?
1.2 Intercultural adaptations in different contexts
1.2.1 Shakespeare’s plays in a Chinese context
Many people have seen one or more Asian performances, but few are aware that
for almost two centuries, Chinese writers, filmmakers, and theatre directors have also
engaged Shakespeare in their works in a wide range of contexts. The ideas of
Shakespeare and China have been put to work in unexpected places. Every year,
ID number: 10406808 21 hundreds of works emerge in Mandarin and a wide range of Chinese dialects,
performing styles, and genres, including fiction, theatre, cinema, and popular culture.
These intriguing cases constitute only the tip of an iceberg of larger questions and
pervasive cultural practice that have yet to be admitted to the scholarly discourse on
Shakespeare and Chinese modernity. Standing behind these practices is a long history
of constantly reconfigured relationships that have connected and disconnected
Shakespeare and China. The currency of Shakespeare in the modern world is partly
determined by political and historical forces that are often located outside the plays
but that have been claimed to be located within or derived directly from the text itself.
Special to Chinese Shakespeare and unexpected for English-language readers are
not only the edgy or dissident voices but also Chinese artists and audiences’ unique
use of cultural authorities and insistence on “authentic” Shakespeare in various forms.
To say so is not to suggest that the Anglo-centric view of Shakespeare ought to be
replaced by a Sino-centric one, as in some nationalist imaginary or de rigueur
celebration of ethnic authenticity. Much of this work will undermine the fantasies of
cultural exclusivity of both “Shakespeare” and “China”, attending to the fact that
even though every reading is a rewriting, more rewritings of a canonical text do not
always translate into more radical rethinking of normative assumptions. It is with this
conviction that I examine the transnational imaginary of China in Shakespearean
performance and Shakespeare’s place in Chinese cultural history from the first
Opium War in 1839 to our times.
A long view of history will reveal the multidirectional processes that contribute to
ID number: 10406808 22 the mutually constructive grammar of the global and the local. Over a century of
cross-fertilization has firmly rooted Shakespeare in Chinese cultural production and
Chinese performance idioms in twentieth-century Shakespeare traditions. The
transmission of renaissance culture in China began with the arrival of the first Jesuit
missionaries in 1582, followed by the Dominicans and Franciscans in the 1630s.
Illustrated British travel narratives record British emissaries’ experiences of attending
theatrical productions in Tianjin and Beijing during the reign of the Qianlong
Emperor (1736-1795), including the mission of Lord George Macartney. Even though
there are records of continental Europeans attending theatrical and ritual
performances in the Chinese court, drama and literature was not a major concern for
them. This is the case for a number of reasons. The missions of Matteo Ricci
(1562-1610), Nicolas Trigault (1577-1628), and Niccolo Longobardo (1565-1655)
focused on understanding and converting religious differences into cross-cultural
connections. The missionaries and their Chinese collaborators such as Xu Guangqi
(1562-1633) were preoccupied with devotional writings, cartography, Renaissance
objects (prisms, clocks, and astronomical instruments), mathematics, the calendar
reform, and the failed project to introduce Aristotelian philosophy into the Chinese
education system. The focus on material culture and the prospect of trade persisted
into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. One diary entry briefly comments on
the similarity between an unnamed Chinese play and Shakespeare’s Richard III.
More references in Chinese plays to Shakespeare as the English national poet
emerged during the first Opium War (1839-1842), a transitional period greatly
ID number: 10406808 23 different from the earlier eras.
With the decline of the Qing dynasty in the nineteenth century, Chinese interests
in Western modes of thinking and political systems intensified. In the previous
centuries, the Chinese had conducted exchanges with European merchants and
missionaries almost solely in Chinese, with the exception of a few Chinese educated
for the priesthood. The burden of learning a foreign language rested on the Europeans.
But the dynamics changed in the mid-nineteenth century when the Western
hegemony took the form of military power. Literary production was marked by the
complicity and complexity of Chinese engagements with the imperial West in a time
of transition when intellectuals questioned both the traditional and modern formations
of Chinese culture. This was also a time when the West was both reviled and admired.
Early Chinese reactions to Shakespeare were informed by the double bind of the
recourse to the West - a mode of thinking that was at once obligatory and detested.
Both Shakespeare and China were “translated” - to use the word to mean
“transformed” or “metamorphosed”24, as Peter Quince does in A Midsummer Night’s
Dream - in the late nineteenth century according to powerful and at times mutually
exclusive ideologies. At this point in history, translation was freely practiced in China
with little cultural differentiation between an “original” and a rewrite. Within China
proper, intellectuals and reformers alternately saw the demands of cross-cultural
understanding and the reassessment of Chinese values as a blessing and a curse.
Along with John Milton and other “national” poets, Shakespeare’s name entered the
24 Replaying Shakespeare in Asia, edited by Poonam Trivedi, Minami Ryuta, New York: Routledge, 2010. Print. p34. ID number: 10406808 24 discourse of nationalism. Shakespeare was first mentioned in passing in 1839 in a
compendium of world cultures translated by Lin Zexu, a key figure in the first Opium
War. By the time Chinese translations became available and substantive critical
engagements with Shakespeare were initiated, there was already over half a century
of reception history in which Shakespeare was frequently evoked to support or
suppress specific agendas - in the writings of both missionaries and Chinese
reformers - all in the name of modernity and cultural renewal.
The earliest-documented Chinese Shakespeare, Killing the Elder Brother and
Snatching the Sister-in-Law, was based on Hamlet and performed in chuanju
(Sichuan opera) style. Other artists followed suit. The Custom Renewal Society
staged A Pound of Flesh in the Qinqian opera style in 1925 in Shaanxi Province in
northern China. In terms of performance style, Shakespeare has figured prominently
in the shaping of modern and contemporary Chines theatre, where the genres of xiqu
and huaju (post-1907 Western-influenced spoken drama theatre, including obsolete
subgenres) coexist. Competing narratives about Shakespeare and China in xiqu and
huaju theatre reflect a series of crises of representational practice that are complicated
by ethics, aesthetics, politics, and the contingencies of live theatre. Shakespeare has
given occasion for innovations in both these performance genres, as well as other
forms of representation.
While the initial spread of Shakespeare’s reputation was connected to the Chinese
elite who studied or traveled in Japan, Europe, or the United States, and to the
presence of Anglo- European cultures in most coastal cities of the Chinese mainland,
ID number: 10406808 25 two cities stood out. Nineteenth-century Hong Kong saw more regular Shakespearean
performances in English, while Shanghai remained the hub of much of the early
Chinese-language publications and performance activities that initiated subsequent
debates about old and new forms of drama.
After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, Shakespeare and
Chinese writers alike were reinterpreted through the Soviet-Marxist critical lens.
Marxist-Maoism dictated the construction of a Chinese self-image, which was
accompanied by alternating periods of active cultural activities, setbacks, and
revitalization. The Soviet influence throughout China’s social infrastructure and
Stanislavskian realism contributed to the politics of Soviet-Chinese Shakespeare in
the first three decades after the founding of the People’s Republic. Even though no
foreign dramas and very few Chinese dramas were performed during the Cultural
Revolution (1966-1976), Shakespeare and other authors were read privately in labour
camps. The private life of once public plays politicizes and aestheticizes personal
experiences. After the Cultural Revolution, Shakespeare again returned to the core of
actor-training institutions as part of a boom in huaju and xiqu performances of
Western dramas.
The situations in the other parts of the Chinese-speaking world were and still are
different from those in Mainland China. As an island off the south-east coast of
mainland China, Taiwan has had complex relationships with the dominant fatherland
across the Strait and with Japan to the north. While not directly responsible for the
scarcity of Western dramas from the early to the mid-twentieth century, the island’s
ID number: 10406808 26 intense focus on the essential aspects of Japan and China prevented the growth of
translated dramas from European languages. In the first half of the twentieth century,
tours of Japan’s all-female Takarazuka performances to Taiwan occasionally
included Shakespeare. The earliest-documented Chinese-language performance of
Shakespeare in Taiwan was Clouds of Doubt (Yi Yun), staged by the Experimental
Theatre of Taipei (Shiyan Xiao Juchang) in 1949 and based on Othello. A few other
performances followed, but until martial law was lifted in 1987, Taiwan’s theatre
remained shaped by political censorship in significant ways, first by the Japanese
colonial cultural policy and then by the anti-Communist cultural policy of the KMT
regime25.
The presence of Shakespeare at theatre festivals in Taiwan in the 1980s and 1990s
took a different form from Mainland China’s post-revolutionary Shakespeare boom,
which was initiated by state-endorsed and government-sponsored Shakespeare
festivals in 1986 and 1994. The month-long “Shakespeare in Taipei” festival (May
2003), for instance, focused more on providing a platform for artistically innovative
and commercially viable experimental works. As a multilingual society (including
speakers of Mandarin, Taiwanese, Hakka, and aboriginal languages), Taiwan has
produced a significant number of mainstream performances either entirely in a dialect
or with a mixture of Mandarin and a local dialect or English. Some of these works
reflect Taiwan’s multiply determined history, while others question that history and
the much-contested “Chineseness” of the island’s identity. These tendencies provide
25 The Kuomintang, officially the Kuomintang of China, or sometimes romanized as Guomindang by its Pinyin transliteration, is a ruling political party in the Republic of China. The name literally means the Chinese National People's Party, but is more often translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party. ID number: 10406808 27 interesting contrasts to the ways in which Mainland Chinese artists imagine China.
By the same token, while Mainland China is certainly multilingual, it is Taiwan and
Hong Kong that have established strong traditions of Shakespeare performance in one
or more dialects. The few Mainland Chinese performances of Shakespeare in local
dialects were commissioned and sponsored by the government for festivals or
produced by ethnic minority students in actor-training programs. The linguistic
diversity of Taiwan and Hong Kong theatre fosters distinctive views of “Shakespeare”
and what counts as “Chinese.”
Despite the association of Shakespeare and Englishness, Shakespeare was not
resisted as an image of colonization. Political changes have hardly affected him.
Some contemporary Chinese scholars are surprised to find that “local
experimentations with Shakespeare in post-modernist and Chinese styles have
continued to flourish.” 26 This continued prominence, they argue, shows that
“Shakespeare has transcended his British heritage and become part of the Chinese
tradition”27. While partly true, this view blurs the historical conditions surrounding
early performances. One crucial reason why Shakespeare seems to transcend his
British heritage is that Britain never colonized Hong Kong the way it did in India.
This special historical condition - an indirect colonial structure that Mao Zedong later
called semi-colonialism - informed Hong Kong’s performance culture in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. If the practitioners of the new theatre were
26 Ruru Li. The Soul of Beijing Opera: Theatrical Creativity and Continuity in a Changing World. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010 Print. p235. 27 Ruru Li. The Soul of Beijing Opera: Theatrical Creativity and Continuity in a Changing World. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010 Print.p235. ID number: 10406808 28 resisting anything, it was the Chinese past. The same is true of other treaty ports, such
as Shanghai, that were home to a host of European concessions but had no
overarching colonial institution.
Although stylized performances of Shakespeare in different genres of Chinese
opera have existed since the early twentieth century, the 1980s were a turning point,
when Shakespeare became more regularly performed in different forms of stylization
in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and elsewhere, and entered the collective cultural
memory of Chinese opera performers and audiences. The revived interest in Chinese
opera Shakespeare was encouraged by increased exchanges among performers based
in Mainland China and in the Chinese diaspora. These exchanges were fueled by
Deng Xiaoping’s Open Door Policy (announced in 1978) and by the increasing
economic ties between China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the rest of the world. After a
few successful international tours in the 1980s of productions such as Huang Zuolin’s
Story of Bloody Hands (Xieshouji, Shanghai Kun Opera Company) and Wu
Hsingkuo’s Kingdom of Desire (Yuwang Chengguo, Taiwan’s Contemporary Legend
Theatre), both inspired by Macbeth, the complexity of Chinese-opera styles was
increasingly regarded by the performers and their sponsors not as an obstacle but as
an asset in creating an international demand for visual creativity.
The first decade of the new millennium was for Asian cinematic Shakespeare
what the 1990s had been for Anglophone Shakespeare on film. Shakespeare has been
a part of the Chinese-speaking popular culture since the late twentieth century, with
Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet at the center of cinematic imaginations. The
ID number: 10406808 29 complexities of the cultural institution of Chinese opera and artists’ and critics’
philosophical investments in the visual sign in stylized performances warrant separate
investigation. While there are stage productions that focus, however creatively and
distantly, on Shakespeare and are done in the way Western audiences tend to think of
a stage play, there are also performances in traditional Chinese theatre that borrow a
bit of Shakespeare to reinvent and expand the Chinese performance idiom. Chinese
opera performances of Shakespeare have provided “other” sights for both Chinese
and non-Chinese audiences. The varied styles found under this umbrella term are
further reconfigured by the “pre-modern”, physicalized, non-illusionist, and
actor-centered languages of the Chinese operatic stage. The Solo Experimental
Chinese Opera Festival in Hong Kong (2002) and its sequel in Taipei (2003), where a
number of influential solo performances were staged, offer an example of this
relational approach to theatre. As such, Chinese-opera Shakespeare performances
often initiate heated debates over Shakespeare and Chinese theatre.
Chinese opera performers were not the only ones experimenting with Shakespeare
and expanding the repertoire of Chinese theatre. Both at home and abroad, directors
and performers of huaju and other theatrical genres have deployed Chinese opera
elements in their works, although they tend to privilege jingju (Peking Opera) among the many Chinese-opera forms - as the representative genre. For instance, Ong
Keng Sheng’s Lear appropriated traditional Chinese and Japanese theatre. While
English-language Chinese opera as a hybrid form is not new, these productions
introduced an alien theatre form to American audiences through both a local language
ID number: 10406808 30 and a “local” playwright. The additional purchase gained through the rhetorically
created unfamiliarity of Chinese opera helped to offset the potentially disorienting
experience. Chinese opera has also been used in other types of productions.
Overall, there are three coexisting modes to engage ideas of China and
Shakespeare. Firstly, a trend to universalize rather than localize Shakespeare has
produced plays performed “straight”, with visual and textual citations of what was
perceived to be authoritative classical performances. Early performances in Shanghai
tended to follow this pattern. If the play seems foreign according to advocates of this
approach, that only guarantees that its aesthetics have been preserved in a way that
benefits the audience.
A second trend, to localize the plot, setting, and meanings of a play, assimilates
Shakespeare into the fabric of local worldviews and representational practices. An
example is Bu Wancang’s A Spray of Plum Blossom. At the heart of this approach is
a moral evaluation of the utility of the ideas contained in literature and arts, local or
foreign. In nineteenth-century China, the motives for using Shakespeare’s name to
construct the Chinese dream of modernity were detached from Shakespeare’s text and
attached to the perceived ethical insights of the modern represented by Shakespeare.
Sufficiently familiar and valuable to local communities, Shakespeare’s texts have
been sited in varied ways by politicians and other cultural celebrities in mainland
China and Taiwan, where there is no English heritage. Some Shakespeare allusions
emphasized the moral lessons allegedly contained in the plays; others invoked a sense
of cultural belonging and a shared recognition of values that were in an unspecified
ID number: 10406808 31 sense “universal” in the public life.
The third tendency has prompted artists to truncate and rewrite Shakespeare’s
plays so as to relate them to images of China. An example is Lao She’s New Hamlet.
Such a recreation is deconstructive in the sense that it focuses on multiply determined
localities in a polycentric world. Similar works from other parts of Asia have been
hailed as “welcome developments” and as a liberating “free” form (pastiche or
multilingual theatre). In the Chinese context, although such rewriting may be a means
to counter stereotypical construction of local and foreign cultures, they do not always
translate into effective resistance of the authority of Shakespeare and Chinese cultural
forms.
As retro as “straight” performances may seem, they do not always succumb to the
perceived textual authorities as the artists embracing the third approach tend to argue.
Although English-speaking audiences recognize the otherness or alternativeness of
Chinese Shakespearean performances, many of these performances are far from
alternative. They are commercially successful and regarded as mainstream
productions in their local communities. Fredric Jameson’s critique of the monopoly
of late capitalism leads some scholars to hold a more pessimistic view of the
interpretive capacity of commercially successful intercultural performances because,
as he argues, these works often institutionalize cultural differences28. However, it
may not always be the case. Each of the three approaches has produced
interpretations that effectively complicate the conventions of authenticity and
28 Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, New York: Duke University Press. 1991 Print. p121. ID number: 10406808 32 authority claims.
1.2.2 Chinese opera in UK theatre
Meanwhile, the exchange goes both ways. Asian theatrical idioms such as Peking
opera are becoming more common in English-and European-language Shakespeare
productions. On the one hand, international productions have appeared in the
Chinese-speaking world with increasing frequency, as well as in Europe and England.
On the other hand, as more and more Chinese productions tour in Great Britain, the
United States, and Europe, Shakespeare has evolved from Britain’s export
commodity to an import industry in Anglo-European culture, giving birth to
Asian-inflected performances outside Asia.
Moreover, a new generation of British-born Asian playwrights is producing
work that is unashamedly provocative, honest, and challenging. British Asian theatre
has rapidly achieved much recognition in the arts industry. The niche for theatre that
combines British and Asian cultural influences is slowly being recognized. For
instance, Jatinder Verma set up Tara in 1975, Sudha Bhuchar started Tamasha in
1989, and Kali and Moti Roti followed in 1990. Recent years have seen a rise of
Asian influence in mainstream theatre companies: the RSC’s Midnight’s Children,
Hobson’s Choice at the Young Vic, Lloyd Webber’s Bombay Dreams. Far from
alienating White British audiences, British Asian theatre tackles what remains urgent
and topical. They explore and interrogate issues that dominate the political sphere,
ID number: 10406808 33 and affect contemporary society as a whole, such as multiculturalism and identity,
religion and culture, stereotypes and racism.
Britain’s rich tradition of theatre and playwriting has always been producing
influential plays, but for the first time, there is a distinctly Asian influence. These
playwrights are only in their late teens or early twenties. Many of them are women.
Many of them are from low socio-economic backgrounds. Theatre in Britain is
becoming much more diverse and far-reaching. However, are British Asians
themselves interested? Or are these controversial plays harmful and unwelcome in
British society? Is it true to say that the currency of Asian theatre in UK is mostly
determined by political and historical forces that are often located outside the plays,
yet the Chinese theatre in Western countries have been claimed to be located within
or derived directly from the aesthetic itself?
Apart from the current rise of British Asian theatre, China has fascinated the
imagination of the West for centuries. By the eighteenth century in Europe and
England all things Chinese had assumed incredible proportions. Fashionable society
sought to transmit their ideas about the magical land of Cathay through a multiplicity
of imagery. As a sea-faring, trade-loving nation, Britain has had a long history of
assimilating foreign design into its own aesthetic. Thus the story of chinoiserie in
Britain is a dazzling example of contact between two very different cultures. From
the seventeenth century a distinct Oriental influence was clearly evident throughout
the Aesthetic Movement in museums and other artistic areas. Yet the current fixation
with chinoiserie points to more than an interest in fashion. The admiration of all
ID number: 10406808 34 things Chinese also led to the ultimate crossover of cultural influences.
Traditional Chinese opera is what first comes to mind, for many people in the
UK, on hearing the words ‘Chinese theatre’. Most imagine that Chinese theatre is
Peking Opera, the style of traditional theatre popularized by films like Farewell my
Concubine. Actually, there was a wealth of theatre in China with a close affinity to,
and parallels with, the work staged by British theatres, such as kunqu (Kun Opera)
and chuangju (Chuan Opera). There have been a few
Chinese plays adapted and
produced in the UK in the past fifteen years. But like most Chinese classics they are
now almost unknown to UK audiences - Chinese plays have been all but absent from
British theatres since the fading of the fashion for chinoiserie in the nineteenth
century. Some have only been produced in Chinese (with subtitles) as part of
international festivals, for instance, Zhang Yuan and Wang Xiaobo’s East Palace,
West Palace, which was performed as part of the Edinburgh International Festival in
1997, or the selection of work by directors from China in the London International
Festival of Theatre also in 1997. There have also been some readings of
contemporary plays in translation, again usually as part of festivals, such as Gao
Xingjian’s The Bus Stop which was read at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre for
the Spring Festival celebrations in 2001, and a second play by Gao Xingjian,
Fugitives, read as part of Yellow Earth’s Typhoon III festival in 2004.
However, as mentioned in the former chapter, the situation has changed during
the process of globalization. In 2012, The Orphan of Zhao became the first Chinese
play ever produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company. And the RSC's new artistic
ID number: 10406808 35 director thinks theatre-goers are likely to see more drama from China on stage in
Britain. James Fenton has come up with a new version of a story that originated in
China in the fourth century BC. It was later turned into a famous revenge tragedy and
gradually percolated the west.
Comparing the history of intercultural performance in two different contexts, the
international adaptation or appropriation in UK and in China are two unequal
processes. Apart from the rise of Asian playwrights and theatrical productions, as the
Kali Theatre artistic director Janet Steel has said, “Yet doors remain closed to Asian
writers.”29 Larger companies and venues are producing plays by and with Asian
artists, but too many of them are what Janet Stell called "tourists". There is merit in
this sort of theatre – it serves up Asian culture in the shiniest, most entertaining way
possible. Similarly, the new head of the RSC, Greg Doran made a research trip to
Beijing when he was preparing the new production. It made him conscious of a basic
cultural imbalance: “the Chinese are far more likely to have heard of Hamlet than
British people in the west are to know The Orphan of Zhao," he says. "How many
theatre-literate people here could name a single classic Chinese drama? Very few."30
Doran says that just as the West needs to learn more about China, he is sure
China needs neither to prescribe a role for non-Western theatre practices, nor simply
to provide new strategies for interpreting the Eastern theatrical productions.
Therefore, it is hoped that this study serves to foreground the diversity of dramatic art
29 Janet Steel, There's more to South Asian theatre than Bollywood drama, The Guardian, Friday 7 December 2012 30 Vincent Dowd, The Orphan of Zhao comes to RSC, BBC news, permanent link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-­‐arts-­‐20242623 ID number: 10406808 36 and theatre practice in contemporary cultures and appeal to a more equal way for
cultural understanding and exchange.
ID number: 10406808 37 2. Case studies: mutual appropriation in intercultural adaptations
As mentioned previously, intercultural adaptions in Chinese and UK theatre have
several faces. The background and experience of directors, the aesthetic elements
they appropriated, as well as their motivations can be very different. Thus, I am
proposing to use two productions, the Chinese production The Kingdom of Desire,
and the UK production, The Orphan of Zhao to exemplify the differences, both on
and off the stage.
2.1 The Kingdom of Desire: a Chinese Macbeth
The Kingdom of Desire is Taiwan Legend Theatre Company’s most prestigious
experimental production. The analysis here examines how the practitioners of the
Kingdom of Desire went about seeking the meaning of Macbeth, what they were
hoping to convey through it, and how they finally presented it on the Chinese stage.
In other words, practitioners needed to find a bridge that linked themselves to the
playwrights.
Peter Brook once reminded us,
When I hear a director speaking glibly of serving the author, of letting a play
speak for itself, my suspicions are aroused, because this is the hardest job of
all. If you just let a play speak, it may not make a sound. If what you want is
for the play to be heard, then you must conjure its sound from it. This
demands many deliberate actions and the result may have great simplicity.
ID number: 10406808 38 However, setting out to be simple can be quite negative, an easy evasion of
the exacting steps to the simple answer.31
Accordingly, I believe that the playwright has the right to speak and it is great and
necessary to let Chinese audiences hear what Shakespeare says in his plays. Yet, as
the Chinese translations of Shakespeare demonstrate, translators, adapters, directors,
and even actors and the stage team have to ‘conjure the sound’32 out of the text, and
the conjuring process is how the English culture enters the target culture and how
Chinese practitioners relocate an alien work onto the Chinese soil. Therefore, as Li
Ruru has said, “the conjuring is not magical but painstaking”33, because after all, it is
the Chinese theatre (either the modern spoken drama or the traditional sung theatre)
that is putting on Shakespeare’s play. Practitioners are running between the original
English script and the internal logic of the theatrical form into which it is being
performed or adapted, involving all kinds of political/economic/cultural interference,
as well as practitioners’ personal preferences and social history. Thus, the run
between is an energetic movement of constant conflicting, struggling, and negotiating
between the source and target cultures, as well as between components that comprise
the indigenous theatre.
In addition, the ultimate purpose of Chinese theatre-makers is to make a written
31 Replaying Shakespeare in Asia, edited by Poonam Trivedi and Minami Ryuta, New York: 2010, Routledge, Print.2010.p21 32 Ruru Li. The Soul of Beijing Opera: Theatrical Creativity and Continuity in a Changing World. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010 Print. p112. 33 Ruru Li. The Soul of Beijing Opera: Theatrical Creativity and Continuity in a Changing World. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010 Print.p112. ID number: 10406808 39 text live for a contemporary Chinese audience. Hence, the exploration of how the
production deals with the Shakespearean text offers us a critical perspective to view
the dynamics of Chinese theatre cross/interculturally and intraculturally. Intercultural,
because a Western canonical text encounters the strong Chinese theatrical tradition
while Chinese presentation imposes a new interpretation to a canonical work;
intercultural, because with the Chinese theatrical genre itself, all the well-established
components that constitute the genre start reacting and transforming because of the
influence of the external intruder.
2.1.1 Traditional theatre in contemporary Taiwan society
From the historical review of Shakespeare in China we can know that Chinese
Shakespeares are inevitably associated with Chinese history, cultures and politics,
both in Mainland China and other part of Chinese speaking world. In Taiwan, the
attitudes towards Peking Opera are complicated by the intricacies of Taiwanese
politics, and even the word used to name this theatrical genre is a politically sensitive
matter: while jingju (Peking Opera) had been performed on the island before 1949,
the retreat of the Nationalist government to Taiwan brought a large number of jingju
enthusiasts across the Strait from the mainland and reinforced the genre’s popularity.
Under the Nationalists, jingju was normally referred to as guoju, meaning national
drama, or sometimes as pingju, derived from beiping (the former name of Peking,
ID number: 10406808 40 before 1949). When I visited the National Taiwan College of Performing Arts I was
surprised to see the Department of Jingju using the term jingju instead of guoju. I
raised this point with Zhong Chuanxing, a professor in the department. She explained
that under the new government led by the Democratic Progressive Party, jingju was
not to be called national drama any more. I realized this was logical: there was a
growing mood in Taiwan to assert a separate identity and formally declare
independence from mainland since the DPP did not identify Taiwan with China, thus
Peking opera could not be regarded as national drama.
In 1986, seven years after Kuo Hsiao-chuang 34 and her elegant voice first
assailed Peking opera circles, Wu Xingguo and his newly established Contemporary
Legend Theatre (CLT) gave Taiwanese audiences another shock. The Kingdom of
Desire, an adaptation of Macbeth that was to meet with international acclaim for
decades, began the CLT’s maiden voyage into contemporary experimental theatre on
the island. It was the first time that Shakespeare, the representative of the Western
canon, and the “national drama” symbol of the Chinese traditional culture, had met
on Taiwan’s stage35.
The idea of a Peking opera adaptation of Macbeth was hatched in 1983 by a
group of young actors in Taipei who were discussing the decline of Peking opera. As
artists, they wanted to keep their form alive and stimulating and were not content to
perform museum pieces or serve as mere preservers or repositories of a bygone
34 Hsiao-­‐chuang Kuo is an actress, known for Jing tian dong di(1972), Da dao(1973) and Shuang long chu hai(1973). 35 The first experiment combining Peking opera and a Western work was the adaptation of Eugene lonesco’s The Chairs in 1981. ID number: 10406808 41 culture. They were concerned because Peking opera was not only losing its present
audience of elderly knowledgeable supporters but also failing to attract new
replacements; without an audience appreciative of the subtleties of the form, it would
gradually disappear. This younger generation of Peking opera performers had to find
a source of renewal that not only gave them artistic inspiration but also validated their
activity in the eyes of the young intellectuals they wanted to attract.
Noting both the diminishing audience and the decreasing enrollment in the Peking
opera training schools, scholars and performers have begun to analyze the troubling
situation and consider solutions. Peking opera today confronts several problems. For
example, the archaic language has created a dependency on subtitles projected on
screens to help both Taiwanese-born and mainland-born spectators alike, a stopgap
solution that inhibits proper development of the form. Another problem is the music
now that many audience members are more familiar with Western music; they find
the sounds of the Peking orchestra too raucous and unappealing and the arias,
emphasized at the expense of dramatic content, no longer sustain the audience's
interest, Most seriously, Peking opera appears irrelevant to the modern world,
embodying as it does an older morality and worldview36.
Dramatist Ma Sen corroborates these criticisms, saying they pertain in particular
to the younger generation, which, in addition, is impatient with the slow delivery. The
more naive spectators who used to watch theatre to enjoy the combat and acrobatic
36 Catherine Diamond, The Masking and Unmasking of the YuTheatre Ensemble. Asian Theatre Journal, Vol. 10, No. 1, Spring, 1993 ID number: 10406808 42 scenes can now get far more graphic thrills from other media37. Instead of the popular
form it once was, this traditional theatre has become an elitist art - a situation
exacerbated in Taiwan by the vestigial elitist attitudes of the mainlanders toward local
art forms on the island, as well as the problem of a dual-language society.
Originally supported to maintain close links with mainland culture, Peking opera
in Taiwan has been financed by branches of the military and has been used to appeal
to the nostalgic impulses of the conscripts and exiles while offering little to the native
populace. But these young performers, including Peking opera star Wu Xingguo and
his wife, modern dancer Lin Xiuwei, felt that the form had dignity and viability in the
modern world and could provide a solid cultural foundation for an increasingly
materialistic society38. They decided to take steps similar to Martha Graham's efforts
with Greek tragedy and what Japanese Kabuki companies had accomplished with
their adaptations of Western classical drama and formed the CLT. By using a foreign
play the company would have a somewhat neutral text on which it could write its
own prescription for the future. The novelty would draw the attention of the press,
moreover, and perhaps allow both actors and audience to perceive the art from a
different perspective. They then set up a methodology for creating new texts that
might be more attractive to younger audiences: "adapting Western dramas and
digesting the form, content, and theory of Western theatre; using material from
mythology; and searching for creative inspiration in the everyday lives of modern
37 Ma Sen, Contemporary Theatre. Taipei: China Times Publishing. 1991 Print. p121. Both Wu Xingguo and Lin Xiuwei were members of the Cloud Gate Dance Company founded by Lin Huaimin in the late 1970s. The company was the first in Taiwan to combine Western modern dance technique-­‐in this case, that of Martha Graham-­‐with traditional Chinese narratives. 38 ID number: 10406808 43 people in modern surroundings"39.
However, as Ma Sen also points out, adapting a play by Shakespeare solves none
of these problems since his plays are not only old but written in a language both
difficult and foreign40. Perhaps anticipating the doubts of scholars that Macbeth could
not be transformed into Peking opera and still retain the qualities that make Macbeth
great, Wu Xingguo stated that his purpose was not to perform Shakespeare but to
revive Peking opera using whatever could be adapted to expand the dimensions of the
art form41. Wu's claim that he was not performing Macbeth is slightly disingenuous,
however, because he is certainly exploiting the play's fame to spur the public's
interest in his project42.
Actually, this is not the first, nor the most radical attempt to revitalize Peking
opera in Taiwan. In 1981, drama historian and critic Meng Yao rewrote the Yuan
drama The Injustice to Dou E43 to meet the musical requirements of Peking opera.
By staging of the complete story, she allowed for more plot and character
development than previously had been possible in the single episode of former
Peking operas. Guo Xiaozhuang, who starred in the leading role as Dou E, has also
contributed to popularizing Peking opera in the productions of her own company,
Little Troupe of Elegant Voices (Yayin Xiaoji), primarily by incorporating high-tech
stage effects.
39 Lu Jianying, The Contemporary Legend of Wu Hsing-­‐kuo,Taipei: Tianxia Wenhua, 2006 Print.p23. Ma Sen, Contemporary Theatre. Taipei: China Times Publishing. 1991 Print. p31. 41 Lu Jianying, The Contemporary Legend of Wu Hsing-­‐kuo,Taipei, Tianxia Wenhua, 2006.p34. 42 Moreover, the program clearly states the title as "Kingdomof Desire-­‐ Chinese Macbeth." 43 Ou E yuan, commonly translated as The Injustice to Dou E, and also known as The Injustice Done to Tou Ngo and Snow in Midsummer, is a Chinese play written by Guan Hanqing during the Yuan Dynasty. The full Chinese title of the play is gan tian dong di Dou E yuan, which roughly translates to The Injustice to Dou E that Touched Heaven and Earth. It remains as one of Guan's most popular works.[1] The story was repeatedly used and modified by later dramatists. 40 ID number: 10406808 44 Perhaps the most unusual experiment to date was the 1981 performance of
Eugene Ionesco's The Chairs (Xi) adapted to the Peking opera form. An editor of the
United Daily News, Ya Xian, thought the production proved that Peking opera was
flexible enough to adapt all kinds of foreign material44. All that was needed was
sufficient imagination in the application; the formal aspects required no tampering or
adjustment 45. However, Peng Jingxi was less satisfied with what the adaptation
omitted or ignored:
Staged with Ionesco’s blessing and personal supervision, the
audience's reactions were mixed—as might be expected. On the one hand,
there is something in the symbolic nature of the original that lends itself to
a Chinese adaptation. On the other, the existential over tone that Ionesco's
theatre of the absurd tries to impart was perhaps lost on the Chinese
audience members, the majority of whom more likely than not emerged
from the theatrical experience unsure of what exactly the playwright had
intended to say46.
Apart from the experimental exploration of Peking opera, on the other hand, with
the recent relaxing of relations between Mainland China and Taiwan, more and more
mainland Peking opera troupes and individual artists have come to perform in Taiwan.
44 Ya Xian, The United Daily News, Vol 2. Jan, 1981. Ma Sen, Contemporary Theatre. Taipei: China Times Publishing. 1991 Print. p280. 46 Shakespeare in Asia, Contemporary Performance, edited by Dennis Kennedy and Yong Li Lan, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010 Print. p270. 45 ID number: 10406808 45 Moreover, the troupes in Taiwan have been commissioning new plays from mainland
playwrights so that now the audience will go to see a new play as much as a
well-known performer. The spoken theatre (huaju) in Taiwan, however, has
depended heavily on Western texts and theatre techniques since the beginning of the
Little Theatre Movement in 1980. These plays are rarely performed in their original
context as foreign plays but are adapted and reconstituted into a Taiwanese context.
Thus the precedent that the Contemporary Legend Theatre builds upon is more
directly related to contemporary developments in the spoken theatre rather than the
directions other Peking opera troupes have taken.
Thus, the difficulties of traditional opera have led to a bold revolution in Taiwan
theatrical society. In 1984, Li Jianwuo wrote Wang Deming, a spoken drama text that
was modeled after a historical figure in the Five Dynasties period (907-960) and
combines characteristics of both Macbeth and the Yuan drama, The Orphan of Zhao
(Zhao shi guer) in its portrayals of traitorous and loyal vassals. In 1986, the Shanghai
Kunqu Theatre Company premiered its adaptation of Macbeth in Beijing, then took it
to several countries, and finally performed it at the Edinburgh International Theatre
Festival in 1987. This production, which gave Lady Macbeth a sister and a parrot to
confide in, interpreted Macbeth as an unequivocal villain from beginning to end47.
And among these intercultural productions, the director Wu Xingguo’s The Kingdom
of Desire earns the highest prestige, both in Taiwan and Western societies.
47 Renton, Alex. "Macbeth Melodrama." Independent (Edinburgh), August 28, 1987. ID number: 10406808 46 2.1.2 The background and motivation of the director
The prerequisite for The Kingdom of Desire’s new hybrid style was the
extraordinary scope of Wu Xingguo’s training. Among actors on both sides of the
Strait, Wu is the only one who has been professionally engaged in multiple
performing arts activities. He received eight years of strict tuition in the jingju male
warrior role at the Fuxing Drama School and five years of personal guidance from
Zhou Zhengrong, a singing Sheng role specialist. Sheng, a generic term for the male
role, is placed first among the four basic roles in jingju — according to Chinese
etymology (?), the literal meaning of the word Sheng is“grow”, which indicates the
importance of this role type. Besides jingju acting, Wu was also a contemporary
dancer from 1974 to 1980. As one of the principals in Lin Huaimin’s Cloud Gate
Dance Theatre, he toured Europe for three months, visiting many art galleries and
museums and meeting Western artists. Wu regarded these three months, together with
the four months he later spent in New York sponsored by the Fulbright programme,
as a vital learning experience in Western visual arts and contemporary culture.48
His unique acting experience lent Wu a fresh perspective on jingju, different from
that of any of the earlier reformers. Unlike the optimistic Kuo Hsiao Chuang, who
believed that, through her experiments, she would produce an ideal jingju belonging
to both tradition and modernity, Wu felt strongly that “jingju has died; it’s been
deeply buried under too many conventions and rules. I’m a jingju actor; how can I let
48 Lu Jianying, The Contemporary Legend of Wu Hsing-­‐kuo, Taipei: Tianxia Wenhua, 2006 Print .p23. ID number: 10406808 47 it go like this?”49 Desperately seeking help, Wu turned to Western canonical works.
Wang Anqi commented that he “was not hunting for cheap novelty”, but hoped to
utilize foreignness to “discard the heavy burden of tradition” and to explore new
themes demanding new means of expression with a different stage vocabulary.50
By tackling alien masterpieces, Wu and his colleagues strive towards the creation
of a new theatrical form. To him, this is not betrayal, because he has regarded jingju
as port of his physical being since his rigorous training in the discipline started at the
age of twelve:” it is deeply rooted in my bones”51. He believes that, in his bold
experiments, he is seeking the continuation of the tradition and jingju’s rebirth from
death. The name Wu chose for his theatre - “contemporary” and “legend” exemplifies his style of juxtaposition that inspires all his productions. Wu’s emphasis
in his works is no longer on “fusing” or “absorbing” but on “collage”, a concept he
borrowed from avant-garde visual arts. He often brings in alien materials and
deliberately places them in jingju in a conspicuous place, using the strangeness to
violate the familiar stylized conventions and archetypal themes. Little by little, Wu
has built up the Contemporary Legend’s style of eclecticism.
Wu’s unusual training background gave him the confidence to take this difficult
path. However, why was he interested in it and how did he attempt to use collage to
bring out a new theatrical form? To explore these questions, three of the CLT’s
adaptations of Western masterpieces will be examined, which best exemplify Wu’s
49 Lu Jianying, The Contemporary Legend of Wu Hsing-­‐kuo, Taipei: Tianxia Wenhua, 2006 Print.p16. 50 51 Lu Jianying, The Contemporary Legend of Wu Hsing-­‐kuo, Taipei: Tianxia Wenhua, 2006 Print.p69. Interview with Wu and Lin Hsiu-­‐wei on their work and the adaptation of Lear. ID number: 10406808 48 pursuit of his ideal of a new theatre. The troupe chose Macbeth as its first offering
because of the story's similarity to the rivalries of feudal lords during periods of chaos
in Chinese history. Wu Xingguo and the editor/adaptor, Li Huimin, set their drama
during the Warring States period (third century BC) in the state of Qi, "when political
intrigue and usurpation by murder were the norm, often with a woman as the
behind-the-scenes instigator”.52Their play The Kingdom of Desire centres on the
vicious and ambitious couple Aoshu Zheng and his wife. Moreover, since Peking
operas are generally categorized as either civil or martial, Macbeth fit rather neatly
into the martial tradition, which is Wu Xingguo's forte as well. The group felt that of
Shakespeare's tragedies, Macbeth was best suited to Chinese expression and could be
transferred to a Chinese context with the least amount of distortion done to the
original plot.
As mentioned previously, Wu was not the first to have notice Macbeth’s
appropriateness in a Chinese historical context. Their adaptation was not, however,
unaffected by previous renditions. Although company director Lin Xiuwei said they
had studied five or six versions of Macbeth before creating their own, virtually all of
their deviations from Shakespeare's plot—both in regard to textual revision and
symbolic innovations—were borrowed from Akira Kurosawa's 1957 film Throne of
Blood, literally "Cobweb Castle". In fact, The Kingdom of Desire is not only a Peking
opera of Macbeth, but also an adaptation of Throne of Blood. Thus the text had
already been filtered through an Asian perspective before being altered once again.
52 Lu Jianying, The Contemporary Legend of Wu Hsing-­‐kuo, Taipei, Tianxia Wenhua, 2006 Print.p23. ID number: 10406808 49 The chief challenge that Wu undertook, then, was not in textual interpretation but in
formal presentation: his task was to adapt the text to Peking opera performance
technique, and to use mise en scène in his experimental productions.
Overall, Wu and the CLT display a resolute optimism that the “dead jingju” can
give birth to a new theatrical form. Believing that twenty-first century culture is a
matter of individual choice, they are not afraid of appropriating or mixing different
elements from the East and West, and producing a particular brand of eclecticism.
Their work is not typical of jingju on the island because they have been trying to
“Metamorphose Jingju into another theatre”53. Yet their determination, courage and
devotion are typical of jingju circles in today’s Taiwan.
2.1.3 The ‘mise en scène’ in Chinese Shakespeare
Mise en scène is an expression used to describe the design aspects of a theatre or
film production, which essentially means ‘visual theme’ or ‘telling a story’ – both in
visually artful ways through storyboarding, cinematography and stage design, and in
poetically artful ways through direction.54 The term is sometimes used to represent a
style of conveying the information of a scene primarily through a single shot. As
Susan Bennet says, mise en scène as a structural system exists only when received
and reconstructed by a spectator attending the production. To decipher the mise en
scène is to receive and interpret the system created by an artistic team. The aim is not
one of reconstructing the intentions of the director, but of understanding, as a
53 Wang Anqi 2002,112 Brian Henderson, "The Long Take," in Movies and Methods: An Anthology, ed. Bill Nichols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976, 315. 54 ID number: 10406808 50 spectator, the system elaborated by those responsible for the production55.
The mise en scène in Chinese adaptations of Shakespeare and the meaning and
information they convey is quite different from the original plays. Instead of holding
forth endlessly on deep-seated intentions and on ‘incompatible’ cultural perspectives,
the sphere of intercultural reflection here will be limited to the exchange of reciprocal
influence of theatrical practices (acting, mise en scène, stage adaptations of ‘foreign’
material). In fact, one should avoid turning intercultural theatre into a vague terrain
for comparing themes or cultural identities. As Richard Schechner has said:
…not at the imitative level – I was never interested in making actors wear Asian
masks, or in getting them to move like Kathakali dancers – but at what I would call
the ‘deep structural level’. How audiences relate, how long performances last,
whether people should partake of food at the same time as they partake of the
performance. Whether the identity of the performer is out in front and displayed as
well as the identity of the character, and how they play back and forth with each
other56.
All mise en scène elements are deeply affected by the director’s intercultural
experience. Thus, the analysis of mise en scène examines how the practitioners of
The Kingdom of Desire set about seeking the meaning of Macbeth, what they were
hoping to convey through it, and how they finally presented it on the theatrical stage.
55 Susan Bennett, Theatre audiences, a theory of production and reception, London: Routledge, 1990. Print.p25 56 Edited by Patrice Pavis, The Intercultural Performance Reader, London: Routledge, 1996. Print.p24 ID number: 10406808 51 Firstly, The Kingdom of Desire presented mise en scène very different from a
normal jingju performance. In other words, The Kingdom of Desire departed from the
traditional mise en scène in almost every respect. Gone were the garishly
multi-coloured costumes and elaborate make-up Aoshu’s army was in brown and
grey. Catherine Diamond commented that the lighting of the work was the “most
significant innovation”57. Replacing the customary bright flat lighting intended to
show off beautifully embroidered costumes and actors’ gestures and movements, Wu
employed mood-enhancing lighting designed to create a gloomy ambience in each
scene (See picture1). The stage was unusually dark, often with only pools of light
around the principal characters against a background of haunted forests. The light
turned red at the climax of some scenes to express the word “blood” in Shakespeare’s
text.
57 Catherine Diamond, The Masking and Unmasking of the YuTheatre Ensemble. Asian Theatre Journal, Vol. 10, No. 1, Spring, 1993 ID number: 10406808 52 picture1: Aoshu’s army was in brown and grey58.
The music also demonstrated a hybrid of differing styles. The main melodies of
Peking Opera were originally of the xipi and erhuang styles, in a musical system
known as pihuang. Xipi are
relatively vivacious, bright and powerful arias,
intensive in rhythm, which express pleasant, firm or resentful moods. And the basic
modes for xipi include yuanban (original mode), manban (largo), kuaisanyan
(allegro), sanban (lyrical and loose mode), yaoban (swing mode), erliu (two and six),
liushui (flowing water), kuaiban (allegro), huilong and so on. Another major musical
style in Peking Opera is erhuang which is used to express a lyric mood, and is mild,
placid and gentle. Erhuang is smooth in rhythm, flowing in melody, and able to
58 Lu Jianying, The Contemporary Legend of Wu Hsing-­‐kuo,Taipei: Tianxia Wenhua, 2006 Print. ID number: 10406808 53 express pain, grief and pensive emotion. Therefore, it is widely used in tragedies. The
modes for erhuang include yuanban (original mode), manban (largo), kuaisanyan
(allegro), sanban (lyrical and loose mode), yaoban (swing mode), and suona (Chinese
oboe) and so on. In The Kingdom of Desire, both the xipi and erhuang modes were
interrupted by newly composed discordant pieces that expressed the chaos presented
on the stage. In addition, stormy sound effects were added to the orchestral
accompaniment.
The brocade costumes, both bright and subtle, bore little resemblance to the
embroidered designs or colour symbolism in the Peking opera dress and instead
appeared to be stylized derivations of Warring States garments. They also showed a
strong influence from Japanese stage costume, which is not surprising since the
designer had studied at Tokyo University. The guards and servants wore realistically
drab garments although, traditionally, even low-status characters would have worn
colorful costumes. In one case, however, the lack of traditional costume inhibited the
acting of Wei Haimin. In her hand-washing scene, she felt hampered by not having
the famous "water sleeves," the long white sleeves that actors use in infinite ways to
express emotion. With the sleeves, she would have been better able to manifest the
inner state of Lady Aoshu that the gaps in the text allowed for.
Also, the make-up was far more naturalistic, and none of the characters had the
usual mask-like painted faces (see picture 2). Although Aoshu Zheng had a stylized
design on his forehead, it was not a traditional pattern (see picture 3).
ID number: 10406808 54 Picture2: compared with the traditional style, the make-up was far more naturalistic,
and none of the characters had the usual mask-like painted faces.59
59 Lu Jianying, The Contemporary Legend of Wu Hsing-­‐kuo,Taipei: Tianxia Wenhua, 2006 Print. ID number: 10406808 55 Picture 3: Traditional Peking Opera make-up60
The traditional sparseness of the set was maintained, but in a new key, and
evoked the spare interiors in Throne of Blood. Gone was the enormous carpet on
which all stage action formerly took place. Green gauze in the first scene created a
murky jungle for the Mountain Spirit, a setting owing more to Throne of Blood's
Cobweb Forest than to Shakespeare's Scottish heath. Replacing the traditional red
boxy tables and chairs was especially designed furniture suggestive of both ancient
China and Japan. Lady Aoshu's wash basin and its graceful wooden stand, which
stood alone on stage to create an elegant atmosphere for the hand-washing scene, was
not unlike the single kimono stand in Throne of Blood. The backdrops were huge
banners decorated in subtle earth colors that suggested grandeur without being
ostentatious. The entire mise en scène was carefully stylized to evoke the historic past
while appealing to contemporary aesthetic tastes.
The movement and acrobatic scenes - the highlight in martial plays - were both
imaginatively choreographed and superbly executed. The messengers, guards, and
grooms all tumbled in formation, and Aoshu Zheng and Meng Ting's horse-riding
scenes were performed with precision and aplomb. At Washizu's banquet, an elderly
retainer performs a dance reciting a story about a vain, ambitious ruler. Upset by this
Hamlet-like recital intended to “catch the conscience of the king”, Washizu tells the
60 Website: http://www.google.nl/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=AcVOUdsYBmCT7
M&tbnid=fh9J3SnYsyesPM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwenwen.soso.com%2Fz%2Fq261193
644.htm&ei=tPauUprUJ8qo0wWAx4H4Bw&psig=AFQjCNEsX9PCUwuM6VFotSbPGLt-­‐No-­‐zaA&ust=138728
4520661838 ID number: 10406808 56 man to sit down. A female dancer, Lin Xiuwei, performing a masked dance, replaced
this character. As she twirled around, she held up two alternating masks. Only at the
end did she reveal that, behind the first two masks, a third mask still concealed her
face. It was an appropriate metaphor for the play's underlying theme: “There's no art
to find the mind's construction in the face"61; none of these movements on stage were
in Peking opera style and they functioned more like a dance interlude in a Western
opera.
From the discussion above, we can see that the scale of the experiments tried out
in Desire goes far beyond what traditional opera performance had attempted. Kuo’s
works were based on Chinese mythology or classics, so the fusion of jingju and other
cultural elements in the interpretation and the mise en scène of his productions,
though bold and innovative, remained on the loop of the traditional Chinese cultural
assimilation. Thus, Wu’s approach to the fusion was different: instead of harmony, he
deliberately sought incongruity. For example, in Desire, the design of movements and
martial arts broke the balance and harmonious relations of the body or group
formation that a traditional presentation would have maintained. Wu conspicuously
juxtaposed contemporary dance movements or subtle gestures from daily life with
jingju conventional sets. More importantly, in the rehearsals he applied Martha
Graham’s concepts learned through his contemporary dance training. He required that
everyone, including walk-on parts, should work out the energy through their own
body and mind, preferring relatively free movements generated by the performers’
61 Paola Iovene, Chinese Operas on Stage and Screen: A Short Introduction, Oxford Journal, Humanities, Opera Quarterly, Volume 26, Issue 2-­‐3,p. 181-­‐199. ID number: 10406808 57 own life-force to the formalized jingju stage conventions. Obviously, the movements
in martial scenes of the play were still precise and accurate because these qualities
were necessary for safety on the stage, yet the meaning underneath had changed.
Wu’s atypical approach to jingju thus caused problems when his CLT and the
National Jingju Theatre staged a co-production of Desire in Beijing in 2001. Apart
from Wu and Wei Haimin, who played the Aoshu couple, local actors performed all
the supporting roles and extras. The Beijing side found it extremely difficult to follow
Wu’s instructions in rehearsal because their inculcated jingju techniques were
smashed by Wu’s direction, and they complained about the “ugly” and “impulsive”
movements Wu created.62
Since the merits of the enterprise cannot be judged on the adaptation of the text
alone, it must be viewed in conjunction with the traditional performance techniques
of mime, stylized gestures, acrobatics, and song. European dramatists earlier in the
century were intrigued with the form's ability to convey subtle psychological states
through precisely stylized gestures. But recent audiences and critics, either schooled
in the West or simply accustomed to more mimetic types of theatre, no longer know
how to read these highly codified techniques and appreciate only the more
spectacular elements. Thus the modern Taiwanese audience now strongly resembles
its Western counterpart that has always enjoyed the lavish costumes and acrobatic
techniques. The Kingdom of Desire made full use of these aspects but put a strong
individual stamp on them: even though these qualities showed a relationship with the
62 Edited by Poonam Trivedi, Minami Ryuta, Replaying Shakespeare in Asia, New York: Routledge, 2010. Print. p113. ID number: 10406808 58 traditional theatre, they were taken in new directions.
2.2 Royal Shakespeare Company: The Orphan of Zhao
The Orphan of Zhao began a season of plays at the RSC billed as “the greatest
classics you’ve never seen”. It was also the first production by Gregory Doran since
he was appointed as the company’s new artistic director – and it embroiled him in his
first controversy. The play is one of the classics of Chinese theatre, with its origins
going back to the fourth century BC. Just as The Kingdom of Desire was described as
a ‘Chinese Macbeth’, there was a Shakespeare connection for this play in the RSC’s
A World Elsewhere season with the claim that it is the ‘Chinese Hamlet’.
2.2.1 Historical review of The Orphan of Zhao in Western society
As mentioned previously, from the seventeenth century Chinese cultures and
aesthetics have been so different from Western cultures that they have fascinated UK
theatre-makers and audiences. Accordingly, Peking opera has become more common
in UK theatre, especially in the last twenty years.
The play was written by Ji Junxiang in about 1300, and was based on real-life
events which occurred centuries earlier. It is the story of two warring clans: one clan
is wiped out by the other. The villain of the piece, Tu’an Gu, is a kind of
Sino-Claudius, who massacres the whole clan of the man who stands in his way. But
though this master of cruel malevolence thinks he has murdered his rival’s son, the
baby survives when a doctor sacrifices his own child instead. And the vile, childless
ID number: 10406808 59 Tu’an Gu actually adopts the boy as his son.
The play depicts the theme of familial revenge, which is placed in the context of
Confucian morality and hierarchical social structure. Although there might have been
an intended emphasis on social values and norms, the many violent scenes all the
more serve the purpose of theatrical entertainment, while also inciting the emotional
and moral feelings of the audience. The orphan's suffering and endurance, as he was
forced to live in his enemy's household, could be interpreted as an ironic reflection by
the author on the ethno-political circumstances of the Yuan era.
In 2012, The Orphan of Zhao became the first Chinese play ever produced by the
Royal Shakespeare Company. However, the RSC is not the first European theatre
company that has adapted this centuries-old Chinese play. Actually, The Orphan of
Zhao was the first Chinese play to be translated into any European language. The
Jesuit father Joseph Henri Marie de Prémare translated the play, which he titled
L'Orphelin de la Maison de Tchao, into French in 1731. In Premaré's work, the
dialogue was translated, but not the songs. Premaré sent the translation to France, so
it could be delivered to Étienne Fourmont, a member of the French Academy.
However, the play came instead into the possession of Jean Baptiste Du Halde, who
published it in his Description Géographique, Historique, Chronologique, Politique
et Physique de l'Empire de la Chine et de la Tartarie Chinois in 1735, although he
had no permission from Prémare or Fourmont to do so. Whatever the circumstances,
Du Halde published the first European translation of a genuine Chinese play.
Prémare's translation would soon be translated into English for two distinct English
ID number: 10406808 60 editions of Du Halde's book, which appeared in 1736 and 1741 respectively. The first
one was translated was by Richard Brookes in 1736, and the second one was
translated by Green and Guthrie in 1738–41. In 1762, a third English translation of
Prémare's work was done by Thomas Percy, which was a revision of Green and
Guthrie. However, many of Prémare's mistranslations remained, as did the omission
of the songs. In his book, Du Halde remarked: "There are Plays the Songs of which
are difficult to be understood, because they are full of Allusions to things unknown to
us, and Figures of Speech very difficult for us to observe."63 Nevertheless, The
Orphan of Zhao was well-received throughout Europe with the vogue of chinoiserie
at its height.
In 1741, William Hatchett wrote and published the earliest adaptation of the play,
which was in English; it was entitled The Chinese Orphan: An Historical Tragedy.
However, in essence, it was written as a political attack on Sir Robert Walpole, who
was likened to Tu'an Gu, renamed as Saiko in Hatchett's play. Thus, Hatchett's work
was never produced and in the words of John Genest, "totally unfit for
representation."64In his work, Hatchett made a dedication to the Duke of Argyle in
the context of the play, where the characters could be recognized as the people whom
he satirized.
In Vienna, the Italian playwright Pietro Metastasio had received a request from
Empress Maria Theresa to write a drama for a court performance. Thus, in 1752, he
63 W. L. Idema, The Orphan of Zhao: Self-­‐Sacrifice, Tragic Choice and Revenge and the Confucianization of Mongol Drama at the Ming Court, Cina.21, 1988: 159-­‐190. 64 W. L. Idema, "The Orphan of Zhao: Self-­‐Sacrifice, Tragic Choice and Revenge and the Confucianization of Mongol Drama at the Ming Court," Cina.21, 1988: 159-­‐190. ID number: 10406808 61 produced L'Eroe cinese. For the play, he had taken inspiration from The Orphan of
Zhao and specifically mentions the story in Du Halde's book. However, as Metastasio
was restricted by the number of actors (namely five) and duration, his play had a
rather simple plot.
In 1753, Voltaire wrote his L'Orphelin de la Chine. About his adapted play,
Voltaire's thesis was that of a story exemplifying morality, that is as he explained, the
argument that genius and reason has a natural superiority over blind force and
barbarism 65 . Voltaire praised the Confucian morality of The Orphan of Zhao,
remarking that it was a "valuable monument of antiquity, and gives us more insight
into the manners of China than all the histories which ever were, or ever will be
written of that vast empire"66. However, the play was still considered problematic by
him as it violated the conventions of the unities of time, action and place, likening it
to some of Shakespeare’s "monstrous farces" as "nothing but a heap of incredible
stories"67. Although the story of the orphan is retained in Voltaire's play, he is placed
in a setting of invading Tartars. The orphan, who was the royal heir, is entrusted to
the official Zamti by the Chinese monarch. Voltaire introduces the theme of love
(which is absent in the original play), where Genghis Khan has a secret passion for
Idamé, the wife of Zamti, but he is rejected by her as she stands firm to the lawful
conduct of her nation. Voltaire had altered the story to fit his idea of European
enlightenment and Chinese civilization, whereas the original play was contrasted as a
65 Tian, Min. The poetics of difference and displacement: Twentieth-­‐century Chinese-­‐Western intercultural theatre. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1998 Print. p235. 66 Tian, Min. The poetics of difference and displacement: Twentieth-­‐century Chinese-­‐Western intercultural theatre. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1998 Print. p235. 67 Tian, Min. The poetics of difference and displacement: Twentieth-­‐century Chinese-­‐Western intercultural theatre. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1998 Print. p20. ID number: 10406808 62 stark and relentless story of intrigue, murder, and revenge. On August 1755 at the
Comédie Français in Paris, L'Orphelin de la Chine was for the first time performed
on stage. The adaptation was well received amongst contemporaries.
In 1756, the Irish playwright Arthur Murphy wrote his Orphan of China. He
stated that he had been attracted by Premaré's play, but his play even more resembles
Voltaire's L'Orphelin de la Chine. Murphy's Orphan of China was first performed in
April 1759 and became highly successful in England. In his 1759 edition, Murphy
criticized Voltaire for adding a theme of love - which he thought was unsuitable in
this play - and for having a "scantiness of interesting business"68. He also reasserted
the story of revenge, which was omitted in Voltaire's play. In Murphy's adaptation,
the virtuous people killed the leader of the Tartars. Although different, his play
approached the original Chinese play closer than any other European adaption of the
time. The Orphan of China was well received in the literary circles of London.
In 1834, Stanislas Julien made the first complete translation of The Orphan of
Zhao, which was from the Chinese original into French, including both the dialogue
and the songs.
Compared with preceding adaptions, James Fenton came up with a new version
of a story that originated in China in the fourth century BC. It was later turned into a
famous revenge tragedy and gradually percolated the West.
2.2.2 The background and motivation of the director
Gregory Doran is artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC),
68 Liu, Wu-­‐Chi. The Original Orphan of China. Comparative Literature 5, 1953. ID number: 10406808 63 succeeding Michael Boyd in September 2012. His notable productions include a
production of Macbeth starring Antony Sher, which was filmed for Channel 4 in
2001, as well as Hamlet in 2008, starring David Tennant and Patrick Stewart.
Compared with Wu’s background, Doran is mainly known for his work in
Shakespeare. In an interview announcing his appointment, Doran said that whilst
Boyd had concentrated on the 'Company', he would be concentrating on the
'Shakespeare' in the Royal Shakespeare Company name. The Sunday Times called
him 'one of the great Shakespearians of his generation'69.
Doran was born in Huddersfield, but his family moved to Lancashire when he
was six months old. He was educated at Preston Catholic College. He studied English
and Drama at Bristol University, where he set up his own theatre company with
fellow student Chris Grady, presenting Shakespeare and related classics. He then
trained as an actor at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. He received an honorary
doctorate from Bristol University in July 2011 and an Honorary Degree from the
University of Warwick in July 2013. After the Bristol Old Vic School, Doran was
invited to direct A Midsummer Night's Dream at Jamestown Community College in
upstate New York. He then went to Nottingham Playhouse as an actor, before
becoming Assistant Director then Associate Director, directing his own productions
including Waiting for Godot, and Long Day's Journey into Night.
In this sense, Doran’s actor and director experience is quite similar to Wu
Xingguo’s. However, their practices on intercultural performance are quite different.
69 "The Shakespeare Almanac", Amazon author information (Times website inaccessible). Retrieved 2011-­‐02-­‐21. Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Doran ID number: 10406808 64 Unlike Wu’s exploration on Western and Eastern theatrical genres, Doran was more
focused on Western theatre before The Orphan of Zhao. After a very brief acting
career in TV, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1987 initially as an actor
(as Solanio in The Merchant of Venice and Octavius Caesar in Julius Caesar ) then
became Assistant Director in the following season. He directed his first RSC
production in 1992, commissioning Derek Walcott to write an adaptation of Homer’s
Odyssey, which was performed at The Other Place. In 1995 he directed his partner
Antony Sher as Titus Andronicus at the Market Theatre, Johannesburg, South Africa.
This controversial production, which toured to the National Theatre, is the subject of
their book, Woza Shakespeare! In 1996, he returned to the RSC, becoming an
Associate Director, and directing Jane Lapotaire, Ian Hogg and Paul Jesson in All is
True (or Henry VIII), his first Shakespeare for the company. Since then, Doran has
directed over half the canon of Shakespeare's plays for the RSC.
For The Orphan of Zhao, the RSC creative team had done some research: a week
in China for the director and designer, plus artistic advice and workshops on Chinese
stage conventions ‘back home’ led by Leeds University. They workshopped the first
part of the play at Ann Arbor in Michigan, and gave it a reading. Afterwards, the
playwright, James Fenton asked a sinologist in the audience whether the idiom
sounded reasonably Chinese. Although the cast of Orphan would also perform plays
by Pushkin and Brecht in repertory as part of a season, Doran publicly stated
beforehand that though “the RSC has led the way in non-culturally specific casting,”
there was “no way I was going to do this with an exclusively Chinese cast that would
ID number: 10406808 65 then go through to those other plays.” He has publicly justified this by saying that
Orphan isn’t a “specific Chinese play,” its characters are not “race-specific,” nor does
it have a “Chinese context.”70. Also, Doran hired Dr Li Ruru, a Chinese expert on
Shakespeare, to teach Chinese concepts and movement to the cast, and poet and
journalist James Fenton studied Chinese poetry and theatrical traditions when
adapting the original piece. Fenton adapted the play from traditional Chinese sources
and tells the complex story with clarity and eloquence.
Doran’s fieldwork showed his strong interests in “local context”. Playwright
David Henry Hwang says, “By producing The Orphan of Zhao, the RSC seeks to
exploit the public's growing interest in China"71. Doran seeks to claim multi-racial
casting as shorthand for universality without realizing that for decades, casts
consisting of one race – white Caucasian – have been regarded as universal simply
because it reflects the majority. And he hopes an apology will excuse actions that
both exploit China’s cultural legacy and yet deny the heirs to that legacy the
opportunity to represent their culture onstage. In the words of Dr Broderick Chow, a
performer and Lecturer in Theatre Studies at London’s Brunel University, his “failure
to consider the visibility of Asian performers in this production is a failure to
understand the very nature of theatre, and the real effects beyond representation that
theatre’s choices in terms of what is seen and what can be seen can have.”72
70 James Fenton, The Orphan of Zhao – review, The Swan, Stratford-­‐upon-­‐Avon, The Guardian, Friday 9 November 2012. 71 Madam Miaow, RSC Orphan of Zhao: British East Asian Actors' statement, permanent linkhttp://madammiaow.blogspot.nl/2012_10_01_archive.html#sthash.2vc5cxSl.dpuf 72 Madam Miaow, RSC Orphan of Zhao: British East Asian Actors' statement, permanent link http://madammiaow.blogspot.nl/2012_10_01_archive.html#sthash.2vc5cxSl.dpuf ID number: 10406808 66 2.2.3 The appropriations of stories and aesthetic elements
In the RSC’s production, James Fenton’s adaptation succeeded in making a
potentially confusing tale of corruption at court, babies switched at birth, the
slaughter of infants, a mad woman locked away in a hidden palace, and divided filial
loyalties, flow with a simple clarity. There was not so much poetry in the translation,
but the playwright never lost track of the plot or themes, and the songs were simple
yet compelling. James Fenton recalled his journey in adapting the Chinese story:
The solution I adopted was to start writing straight away, even in advance
of a clear idea of how the plot would go. I wrote a song. Then I wrote
another song, and I thought: the first act could be like a suspension bridge
slung between these two songs. The third song followed soon after, and the
fourth came in a dream, out of which I woke and set it straight down
almost word for word as it remains in Paul Englishby's musical setting.73
Also, Fenton mentioned that he was largely inspired by Chinese poetic anthology
The Book of Songs (Shijing):
Chinese translations, particularly of poetry, are sometimes completely
baffling. Occasionally, our idea of classical Chinese idiom is really just an
73 James Fenton, The Orphan of Zhao at the RSC: a very modern massacre, The Guardian, Tuesday 30 October 2012 ID number: 10406808 67 idea of American modernism; all that tasteful free verse we read in English
translation comes from the age of imagism, of Pound and those who were
influenced by him. It's a kind of imaginary China. Chinese poetry itself
prefers to rhyme. But The Book of Songs is something we can all
appreciate; it gives us a world in which we can fill in the details for
ourselves, just as our own border ballads give us a violent, heroic, poetic
world. It's a world of armies on the move, of men pressed into the service
of warlords, of chariots on the road.74
One of the central conceits is that the family doctor switches his own baby son to
protect the prince. To prevent the Herod-like murder of all boy-children under the age
of two, he must reveal the whereabouts of this supposed orphan of Zhao. The doctor’s
baby then has his little neck broken on stage in front of his father by the murderous
Tu’an Gu, who believes it to be the orphan of Zhao. Tu’an Gu, as a reward for the
doctor’s “good” deed, decides to adopt his son, unaware that he is the orphan. This
ancient drama, the first Chinese play to be translated in the West, with Voltaire and
Goethe among those who came up with their own versions of the tale, also chimes
strongly with the horrors of their own times with its story of cruel dictators and the
killing of innocent children.
The play is often described as the Chinese Hamlet and, it is easy to see why with
ghosts, evil step-father and a conflicted young hero in the play. Fenton’s text, mostly
74 James Fenton, The Orphan of Zhao at the RSC: a very modern massacre, The Guardian, Tuesday 30 October 2012 ID number: 10406808 68 in prose but with haunting songs set to music by Paul Englishby, is both subtle and
supple. And Doran’s gripping, lucid production, with beautiful Chinese designs by
Niki Turner, finds all the play’s strengths as it shifts between atrocity, gallows
humour and heart-wrenching grief. However, The Orphan of Zhao is not actually
very like Shakespeare’s tragedy, other than its central protagonist needing to avenge
his father’s murder by an uncle-figure, it does bear some parallels with the
‘original’ Hamlet story from Saxo Grammaticus’ Deeds of the Danes, in which a very
young Viking prince, Amleth, must live in his fratricidal uncle’s household until he
reaches manhood. At this point, as a dutiful orphaned son, Amleth kills him.
Likewise, the Zhao Orphan, whose father is a court minister, and whose mother is the
Emperor’s daughter, must also grow up to enact his revenge when his father and his
clan are wiped out by a jealous rival minister, Tu’an Gu. In both the tale of Viking
Blood Revenge and the musical drama of Chinese filial piety, the call to vengeance is
never questioned. The tension lies in whether or not the boys will manage to survive
into adulthood to fulfil their duty. Coincidentally, the first extant version of Orphan,
by the Yuan dynasty’s Ji Junxiang, was written at about the same time as Deeds.
The Swan Theatre is so small that the action is close and clearly visible even to
the audience in the ‘cheap’ front-row second gallery seats. The Orphan of Zhao
worked well in that relatively intimate thrust-stage environment, as the actors happily
hammed up ‘speaking to the audience’ and ‘introducing their roles’, presumably in
reference to various Chinese opera traditions. Yet these were fine performances. This
was the only production in the World Elsewhere trilogy to cast two ethnic minority
ID number: 10406808 69 actors in protagonist roles - the hero and the villain - proving that a major British
classical theatre company risks no threat to their artistic reputation by foregrounding
talent from a broader spectrum than is the norm.
Joe Dixon was a roguish Tu’an Gu. As for Jake Fairbrother as the grown-up
orphan, Cheng Bo, because of his uncanny resemblance to a young Yul Brynner,
labelled as ‘ethnically ambiguous’, the director clearly felt that had a face that could
represent anywhere. Cheng Bo’s childlike energy and innocence was delightful and
all too fragile in the face of his task when, suddenly discovering his true identity as he
reached adulthood, he found himself bound to execute the man he had loved as a
father. This was one of the production’s strengths: it did not shy away from the
ambivalences of the plot. Nia Gwynne was simply heartbreaking as the doctor’s wife,
lamenting the sacrifice of her precious child because of some supposed ‘greater good’
before falling into despair and disappearing. This scene was made even more potent
because, as the fate of the two babies was debated by the doctor and his wife, the
baby dolls were ‘voiced’ by adult actors kneeling on either side of the stage. Chris
Lew Kum Hoi, who would later return as the ghost of the doctor’s son, his cooing
and gurgling in stark contrast to the adult body that would be denied him. The
implications of this scene were not fully realized, as instead of having produced the
sounds of an infant another actor voiced it.
Susan Momoko Hingley, an Anglo-Japanese actor, did a sprightly turn as the
soon-to-be decapitated maid, and Chris Lew Kum Hoi stunned us all as he returned as
the ghost of the doctor’s son in the final five minutes. In a pair of scenes that echoed
ID number: 10406808 70 each other, the Orphan and the ghost confronted the men they saw as their
fathers. Cheng Bo offered Tu’an Gu the same option of suicide as Tu’an Gu had
offered his real father. Unable to take his own life, Tu’an Gu begged his adopted son
to kill him if he had ever loved him. Thus this ‘patricide’ became, not simply a
moment of revenge, but also a brief moment of possible forgiveness.
In contrast, the old doctor, confronted by the son he had sacrificed in a graveyard,
found he must kill himself to appease the child he had abandoned. In this scene,
blood-red petals fell from the rafters. A latticed moon-gate and red silk lanterns
evoked Old China throughout: the Swan Theatre had transformed overnight from
pre-Revolutionary Russia to a pretty good impression of The Lao She’s Teahouse75 in
Beijing: full color spreads of Terracotta Warriors, Spirit Ways, Pagodas and Dragons
all make clear that we should not expect a hybrid or an anglicized production: this is
the RSC introducing the British public to Chinese Theatre.
As a reaction to the production, the Asian Performing Arts Forum opened a
roundtable discussion on interculturalism, universality and the right to representation
in the RSC’s The Orphan of Zhao. Dr Li Ruru is the author of Shashibiya: Staging
Shakespeare on the Chinese Stage and The Soul of Beijing Opera. She introduced the
programme as part of the evolution of The Orphan of Zhao’s stage history, both in
the East and in the West. Tian Yuan Tan also added credibility with his article on
dysfunctional dynasties. They compared the RSC production with the following
75 The Lao She Teahouse is a wooden stage providing an environment with antique flavor. It is also a nice place to taste the "Tea Culture" in China. At this teahouse, people can watch daily performances by celebrities from folk arts and drama while enjoying famous teas, palace snacks as well as traditional Beijing delicacies. ID number: 10406808 71 quotation from Rustom Bharucha:
Unavoidably, the production raises the question of ethics, not just the
ethics of representation, which concerns the decontextualisation of an epic
from its history and culture, but the ethics of interacting with people … in
the process of creating the work itself. … It is at the level of interactions
that the human dimensions of interculturalism are, at once, most potent
and problematic.”76
Interculturalism is a sticky issue, caught somewhere between liberal diversity
politics and post-colonial reclamation of identities and narratives, as seen in the
polarized responses to Brook’s and, more recently, Gregory Doran’s forays into
appropriating non-Western world literature for Western consumption. Minority
groups rightly feel aggrieved at under-representation or misrepresentation. The
companies accused of insensitivity in casting when they have produced a previously
unperformed ‘non-Western’ play on a mainstream Western stage may well feel that
they are unfairly singled out: identifying themselves as liberal and open to diversity,
they wonder how they have ended up labeled as the neo-imperialists?
When Western theatre companies attempt to assimilate, or even present, these
performances of an alien culture, in other words, to give them Western cultural
signifiers, they inevitably create a different product. This might provide a more
76 Rustom Bharucha, Theatre and the World: Performance and the Politics of Culture, London and New York: Routledge, 1993,Print. p84. ID number: 10406808 72 recognizable type of theatre for the Western audience, but it will accrue meanings
which would be unavailable and incomprehensible to the audience of the originating
culture. Thus, these questions partly reflect the current issues around cross-cultural
performance.
ID number: 10406808 73 3. A re-think of intercultural performance in a different context
In The Kingdom of Desire we can see the use of mise en scène and the hybrid style
in intercultural performance, however, in The Orphan of Zhao, the scenario is quite
different. The two productions shared the same name as “Chinese Shakespeare” yet
served different social, economic and political purposes. The reasons for the
differences can be complicated. It depends on the theatre practitioners, cultural
makers, as well as the audience from different cultural and academic backgrounds. It
somehow reflects the distortion of the original idea of intercultural performance. As
Rustom Bharucha has said on the purpose of intercultural adaptation:
At one level, playwright’s pursuit of ‘otherness’ can be seen as part of his
almost pathological need to escape the strictures of ‘Logical Europe’.
Despite this violent rejection of his own culture, one cannot claim that
western playwright’s turn to the East was entirely altruistic or based on an
understanding of its innate principles. It would be more accurate to say
that he created his own ‘East’, an imaginary Orient, from which he derived
sources of rejuvenation.77
Thus, the idea of intercultural adaptation or appropriation is based on mutual
understanding and the desire for “others”. Intercultural theatre is at its most
transportable and experimental when it focuses on the actor and performance, on
77 Bharucha, Rustom. Theatre and the world, Performance and the Politics of Culture, London: Routledge, 1993. Print. ID number: 10406808 74 training of whatever duration conducted on the ”other’s” home ground, or on an
experiment with new body techniques. However, the playwright and director
somehow appropriate the term of interculturalism to fulfill their own merits.
Therefore, the purpose and function of current intercultural performance should be
re-considered.
3.1 The problem of intercultural performance
Apart from the appropriation of the original production, it is inevitable that there
are distortions and blind spots existing in the foreign adaptions. This is because the
misunderstanding of the other’s culture, both from the directors’ and audiences’
perspectives. These distortions and blind spots can trigger the rethink of intercultural
performance.
3.1.1 Distortion
Although the Shakespeare connection for The Orphan of Zhao is the claim that it
is the ‘Chinese Hamlet’, anything ‘foreign’, must be transformed into something that
UK audiences are familiar with already, even though that comparison may distort it
completely.
Indeed, this is a paradox that Shakespeare plays with in Antony and
Cleopatra. When Antony returns to Rome from the ‘exotic’ East, his drinking
buddy and fellow triumvirate, Lepidus, asks him what a crocodile looks like. His
answer, although true, is useless as a meaningful description:
ID number: 10406808 75 It is shaped, sir, like itself; and it is as broad
as it hath breadth: it is just so high as it is
and moves with its own organs’ (Act 2, Scene 7)
James Fenton’s adaptation succeeded in making a potentially confusing tale of
corruption at court, babies switched at birth, the slaughter of infants, a mad woman
locked away in a hidden palace, and divided filial loyalties, flow with a simple
clarity. However, as David Henry Hwang has said,
Through its casting choices, the company reveals that its commitment to
Asia is self-serving, and only skin-deep. During the Miss Saigon casting
controversy in 1991, producer Cameron Mackintosh claimed that he had
conducted a 'world-wide talent search' to cast the role of the Eurasian
Engineer, before selecting Jonathan Pryce. Several years later, the
musical's director, Nick Hytner, revealed to me that there had never been
any such search at all, that Mackintosh's public assertion had been a
complete fabrication. In light of this history, when self-righteous theatres
defensively claim to have conducted thorough auditions before denying
acting opportunities to minority actors, I believe the burden of proof, at
the very least, falls on those producers.78
78 Madam Miaow, RSC Orphan of Zhao: British East Asian Actors' statement, permanent link http://madammiaow.blogspot.nl/2012_10_01_archive.html#sthash.2vc5cxSl.dpuf ID number: 10406808 76 Similarly, in the Kingdom of Desire, Wu passionately believed that the
incongruity of the collage would best explore the unusual theme that Macbeth
brought to the Jingju world. However, Diamond criticized the work for being less
ambivalent than the original, and therefore losing the depth of the Shakespearean
character 79 ; the veneer of guilt, ambition, fear and illusion that the adaptation
managed to maintain was a flagrant breach of the traditional Chinese morality and
world-view maintained by the traditional repertoire.
Although this transition is still substantial, Throne of Blood is noted for its
indebtedness to the formal aspects of no theatre and is highly stylized. As Kurosawa
has said, "I like the no drama. I like it because it is the real heart, the core of all
Japanese drama. Its degree of compression is extreme, and it is full of symbols"80.
The dissimilarity between Throne of Blood and The Kingdom of Desire is that
between the differing sensibilities of Japanese and Chinese cultures as reflected in
their traditional theatre. The original Elizabethan drama recedes into the background
as Asian dramatists build upon other Asian precedents. And since the Contemporary
Legend Theatre also wanted to use this opportunity to revise certain aspects in the
traditional presentation, not only are features from the Western-derived spoken
theatre incorporated but also Japanese design as well.
Macbeth is one of Shakespeare's shorter tragedies, but in order to allow sufficient
79 Catherine Diamond, The Masking and Unmasking of the YuTheatre Ensemble. Asian Theatre Journal, Vol. 10, No. 1, Spring, 1993 80 Richie, Donald. 1965. The Films of Akira Kurosawa Los Angeles: University of California Press, p115 ID number: 10406808 77 time for the arias, the display of choreographed movement, and the acrobatic scenes,
the Shakespearean text had to be cut substantially. This task was greatly abetted by
the Japanese text, which had already rendered the poetic text into exceedingly terse
prose. The new Peking opera plot focuses on Macbeth and his wife; the subplots
involving Malcolm and Macduff are eliminated and the three witches are reduced to
one Mountain Spirit. The scene with Ross and the Old Man and that with the Porter
are combined in one short scene with four guards. Soliloquies are either omitted or
edited and transformed into arias, and the prose diction is simplified. Although the
Japanese text retained the Malcolm character and had the guards appear more than
once, in outline it was virtually the same. The following examples demonstrate only a
few of the many ways in which the Japanese film and the Chinese play are related.
Both the play and the film begin with a Buddhist frame, which not only sets it
apart from the European sensibility but also marks the subtle shifts of emphasis
between the two Asian productions. In Throne of Blood, a male chorus chants to the
sound of flute and drums as the camera pans across a barren plain until it settles on a
graveyard:
Behold this place now desolate
Once stood a mighty fortress
Lived a proud warrior Murdered by ambition.
His spirit is walking still
Vain pride then as now
ID number: 10406808 78 Leads ambition to the kill81.
Instead of merely affirming the unavoidable revolutions of karma, which
guarantee the fall of the cruelly ambitious, Kingdom of Desire goes further and
emphasizes the futility of all human endeavor. An anonymous voice intones the
Buddhist view of the world as an illusion to the sound of bell and gong:
How regrettable that the people of this world
Cannot see through fame, fortune, and position;
In reality they are only like The reflection of the moon in water, an illusion;
When you reach the abyss
Plans and schemes only lead to downfall;
In the end, the waves still wash the sand;
All that remain are dry bones and empty sorrow82.
Despite their differences, both these prologues present the outcome of the
play-unlike Macbeth, whose opening scene offers nothing but equivocations: "Fair is
foul and foul is fair." David Desser contends that:
The narrative of Throne of Bloodies is similar to the 'narrative' of the “no”.
81 Replaying Shakespeare in Asia, edited by Poonam Trivedi, Minami Ryuta, New York: Routledge, 2010. Print. p15. 82 Li Huimin. 1987. "Yuwangchengguo"(Kingdom of desire). Zhongwawenxue (Chungwai Literary Monthly) 15 (11): 52-­‐75. ID number: 10406808 79 The “no” theatre presents the relation of events, not their reproduction. The
no theatre offers us a fait accompli in the sense that there is no mystery to
the unfolding of the plot. Throne of Blood similarly offers up a relation of a
tale not its unfolding"83.
This lack of plot suspense is true of Peking opera as well; however, in the case of
the new plot being presented to the Taiwanese audience, in which some spectators
might not know Macbeth, suspense can still occur in the unraveling of how Aoshu
Zheng hurtles toward his doom. In Throne of Blood, the two victorious generals,
Washizu and Miki, come across the prophesying Forest Spirit (Mountain Spirit in
Kingdom of Desire) after the king has been apprised of their victory. The ghostly
spirit with long white hair suddenly appears in the dense Cobweb Forest. Sitting at a
spinning wheel among piles of human bones, she reveals their futures and disappears.
In the Chinese version, the white-haired Mountain Spirit enters the stage first; she
performs the customary introduction, telling the audience who she is and what she is
going to do to initiate the plot. She laughs - sounding a bit like a Halloween witch dances, and disappears. In both cases, the spirit is less of an equivocator than the
Shakespearean witches who make it clear to the audience that they are not imposing a
fate on Macbeth but, rather, giving him full rein to play out his own ambitions. Their
role is merely to delude him into thinking he can do so infallibly.
In Macbeth, Duncan, whom Macbeth murders, is the paragon of kings- gentle,
83 Desser, David. 1983. The Samurai Films of Akira Kurosawa. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press. ID number: 10406808 80 just, wise, gracious, loving - and also cousin to Macbeth. Thus Macbeth's murder is
not only regicide but a vile transgression against friendship and kinship as well.
Moreover, he tramples on the honored bonds between guest and host, for the king is
an invited guest in his castle. Macbeth's guilt and subsequent bloody acts are linked to
his recognizing the full scope of his deed both before and after doing it. In contrast, in
the Asian versions, the kings are not so exemplary. Both are cruel, suspicious tyrants.
The loyalty they command is a matter of duty to the position of king rather than
personally inspired fealty. In their first scene, both laugh at the news that the
traitorous enemy has been killed, rather than succumbing to a moment of thoughtful
sorrow about the friend who betrayed them, as Duncan does.
Neither of these two kings tells of their intention to visit their general's castle but
they suddenly appear there both unexpected and unwelcome. When Washizu/Aoshu
Zheng returns to tell his wife of the spirit's revelation, she immediately suspects that
the king, upon learning about the prophecy from the other general (Miki/Meng Ting),
will be obliged to kill Washizu/Aoshu Zheng because of its implied threat of
usurpation. No sooner does she utter this suspicion than a hostile enemy is reported
approaching the castle. The king arrives in battle gear, alarming the general that his
wife might be right. But the king informs Washizu/ Aoshu Zheng that he wants his
help in subduing another rebel. Hearing this, Washizu/Aoshu Zheng laughs at his
wife's fears, but she insists that the king is still plotting against him with the help of
the other general. She suspects a trap and, for this reason, urges him to kill the king,
not only to fulfill the prophecy but to protect himself against the conspiracy of others.
ID number: 10406808 81 Declaring that in this world one must strike first or be struck down, she plays as much
upon her husband's fear as upon his ambition.
Macbeth's soliloquies reveal his own fears and hopes, but since they have been
cut from the script, Asaji/Lady Aoshu co-opts them and adds her own, therefore
seeming the perpetrator of the crime even more than the cold-blooded Lady Macbeth.
Moreover, she needs fewer excuses since the king is such an unexceptional leader to
begin with, and one senses that his death is only a shift in an ongoing power struggle
rather than the destruction of virtue and the moral order.
One of the visual and symbolic elements added by Kurosawa and adapted by Wu
Xingguo appears in the killing of Miki/Meng Ting. Unlike Banquo's son Fleance,
both the Asian sons are informed of the spirit's prophecy that they are to inherit the
throne after Washizu/Aoshu Zheng. As Miki/Meng Ting and his son prepare to attend
the new king's celebration banquet, they notice that one of their horses is so uneasy
the grooms cannot control it. The son immediately suggests that it is a bad omen and
they should not go. In the film, the grooms are shown being held at bay by the wild
horse; in the stage version, Beijing opera acrobats tumble and leap as they try to
restrain the invisible horse. In addition to the orchestral accompaniment, taped
high-pitched neighing sounds clarify the action as they tug and push in various
movement formations.
In the film, Miki's assassination is not shown; only the horse's return to the stables
without its rider indicates his death. In Kingdom of Desire, the orphaned son sings a
long aria bemoaning the death of his father and outlining his plan for revenge, while
ID number: 10406808 82 the assassin and his father reenact the fight in mime behind a black scrim curtain. The
son unravels his long swatch of hair and swings it in circles across the stage to show
his grief and resolution.
The assassination of Banquo is Macbeth's plot alone; in fact, he keeps it from his
wife, saying, "Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck / Till thou applaud the
deed". But in the two Asian versions, he has his friend killed at his wife's instigation.
In the Shakespearean text, Lady Macbeth claims, "to have given suck," yet no
children are ever mentioned; in both Asian versions, the lady's sudden pregnancy
plays a key role. In Throne of Blood, Asaji first insists that Miki and his son be killed
in order to prevent the rest of the prophecy from coming true. Then to overcome her
husband's irresolution over killing his comrade-in-arms, she announces that she is
with child.
In the Peking opera performance, one does not find out that Lady Aoshu is with
child until the banquet scene, when Aoshu Zheng, in his fright at seeing the ghost of
the slain Meng Ting, hysterically cries out:
Don't . . . don't . . . blame me. It's not that I turned my back on our
friendship. I did originally plan on passing the throne to your son in a
hundred years. But what could I do? My wife . . . she is with child.
Don't . . . don't . . . come any closer or I'll . . . I'll . . . kill you!
As in the case with the unworthy king, the lady's pregnancy tends to rationalize
ID number: 10406808 83 Washizu/Aoshu Zheng's actions whereas in the original, Macbeth's character alone is
responsible for what he does without any external justification but the witches'
equivocal uttering. This makes Macbeth a more subtle and complex character because
he acts from distinctly personal motives. The Asian versions tend to portray him as
more representative of an upstart lord reacting to political and familial incentives.
Wei Haiminu as Lady Aoshu Zheng sings a long aria in her hand-washing scene,
expressing her fear and despair. Dressed in a white gown, she flits about the stage
bedeviled by the ghosts of those she and her husband have killed. Her mind wavers in
and out of sanity, but when her concerned husband comes to look in on her, they
share a moment of tenderness in grief:
LADY: (Sings.) Endlessly wiping away my eyes' overflow, I'm caught in
some monstrous illusion. Washing myself, my soul is blown about
ceaselessly, my bones pierced, my heart beaten.
AOSHU: My lady, my lady, how are you!
LADY: (She cries.) Aiya, husband, what a pity our child died in my
womb!
AOSHU: Ah! My lady, don't grieve. In the days to come, we will have
others.
LADY: I'm only afraid your spouse's remaining days are few.
AOSHU: Don't talk nonsense; you're just overwrought. (He takes her by
theHand and comforts her. Suddenly she pulls her hand away and stares at
ID number: 10406808 84 it.)
LADY: Ah! Blood, blood, blood. Maid, quickly, bring water.
(MAID looks at AOSHU, unsure of what to do and wipes away her own
tears. LADY rubs her dry hands.)
AOSHU: My lady, you! Why are you like this?
LADY: Blood . . .
AOSHU: My lady! My lady! (He calls to her loudly, taking her by the
Shoulders. She calms down.)
LADY: Ah, my lord. Look, the moon is hidden and the wind rises. Wait
until I have slipped the drug into the guards' drink, then tonight you have
important work to do.
AOSHU: My lady! Why do you keep talking such nonsense!
That she has not mentioned the death of the child until this point, suggests that it
is a significant factor in causing her loss of reason. She does not suffer from her
bloody deeds per se but from her punishment: the loss of her child.
In the final scene, after Washizu/Aoshu Zheng has again consulted with the spirit
and been assured that he will not be defeated by his enemies until the forest moves,
he returns to tell his men that they need not fear the enormous armies amassing
around the castle. To boost their morale, he relates his encounters with the spirit.
Later, seeing the woods around him rise up and move toward the castle, he finally
realizes how he has been deceived by the prophecy. In the film, the enemy soldiers
ID number: 10406808 85 are shown holding up branches to conceal themselves, but in the Peking opera there is
no attempt to depict the moving woods. So a spectator unfamiliar with either Macbeth
or Throne of Blood might be left somewhat bewildered about how the prophecy was
fulfilled.
With no Macduff to kill him, Washizu/Aoshu Zheng is instead shot down by his
own men. As a shower of arrows suddenly strikes him, he realizes that his men want
to behead him in order to sue for peace. Washizu staggers down from the ramparts,
his armor bristling with arrows, the fatal shaft sticking through his neck, until he
keels over face down on the ground. Wu Xingguo as Aoshu Zheng takes advantage of
this final moment to do a magnificent back somersault off the eight-foot-high rampart
and land in full view of the audience. He stumbles about and then falls backwards,
staring and pointing in the direction of the Mountain Spirit, as if accusing her to the
last of unprovoked malice. The final sounds are the spirit's laughter gradually giving
way to the transcendent music of Buddhist bell and gong, as the Japanese version
returns to the initial music of flute and drum.
Despite the intermediary text that provided the basis for the new dimensions in
the characters' relationships, Wu Xingguo says it was still difficult to make the
appropriate compromises between the demands of Peking opera and those of the
original text.84 He had trouble finding a character in the Chinese repertoire that
resembled Macbeth. Chinese history had placed men in similar positions, but the
Chinese stage had never created a character who, though evil, commanded one's
84 Wu Xingguo, "Cong chuantong dao dangdai" (Out of tradition into modernity). Kingdom of Desire Program notes ID number: 10406808 86 grudging admiration and even sympathy because he acknowledged the scope of his
crime and self-deception and was tormented by guilt. This lessening of the
psychological conflict in Aoshu Zheng comprises one of the main weaknesses
pointed out by critics of Kingdom of Desire. While accepting that compromises had
to be made in adapting this spoken drama in which language functions so
superlatively, they questioned why, in altering it for Beijing opera, such provocative
aspects had to be sacrificed. Wu Xingguo describes the parameters within which he
had to work and some of the unforeseen obstacles:
We wanted to preserve the accuracy and precision of Chinese opera
language but at the same time we wanted to improve on the opera
characterizations. The obstacle comes from the stagnant rhyming
techniques and limited poetic license of traditional opera. Classical diction
slows down the pace and is impotent in capturing any clash of
personalities. Ironically, it is sometimes more tortuous to adapt an existing
work than to create a new one from scratch.85
Since Peking opera actors are trained for specific role types, they are helpless to
resolve the situation when confronted with a character whose dimensions do not
coincide with the type. Wu says that although the long training process in one role
can create a very sophisticated style of acting, it also narrows the actor's creativity.
85 Wu Xingguo, "Cong chuantong dao dangdai" (Out of tradition into modernity). Kingdom of Desire Program notes ID number: 10406808 87 He found it difficult working with classically trained actors and helping them find
ways to express true emotion when all their instincts had been curbed to produce a
highly stylized representation.
Speaking of his own role as Aoshu Zheng, Wu Xingguo describes how he had to
combine three Peking opera role types to come up with the appropriate Macbeth-like
persona: old man (laosheng), warrior (wu sheng), and great painted-face character
(dahualian). Similarly, Wei Haimin had to create a new character from the various
role types with which she was familiar: chaste and shrew (poladan). These two
characters are the opposite of what Chinese audiences expect to find as their
traditional protagonists: the hero's loyalty should be unquestionable, even though he
may face conflicts of loyalty; the heroine, while she may show more strength of
character than the hero, should also display warmth and tenderness. This attempt to
create new dramatis personae from role types reveals the actors' difficulty—not only
did they have to imagine the two main characters in the first place and then find
appropriate ways of portraying them within the Peking opera tradition, but they had
to stretch those boundaries to include such unique individuals.
Still, The Kingdom of Desire more closely conforms to previous Peking opera
texts than with the idiosyncratic Macbeth not only because of its poetic justice but
also because of its emphasis on the power of fate and the fatalistic perspective of the
characters. With the simplification of Aoshu Zheng's personality and the diminished
interplay between guilt, ambition, fear, illusion, and truth, he becomes a plaything of
fate. He is less a noble man who succumbs to the temptations of ambition and power
ID number: 10406808 88 - victim to his illusions about his own infallibility - than a weak man ambivalent
about the value of the power he attains. Along with his crafty wife, he receives
appropriately harsh punishment at the hands of fate, rather than from distinct persons,
like Macduff, whom he has wronged.
Macbeth is compelling as a character because he accepts responsibility for the
outcome of his actions; fate in the guise of the Weird Sisters deceives him, but he
acknowledges his susceptibility to their deception and then recognizes his collision
with the destiny they map out. Aoshu Zheng is unregenerate, less self-aware, and
more fatalistic. His recognition of what he has done is expressed briefly:
Ah, to think that I, Aoshu Zheng, started out as a righteous and loyal general,
but am now guilty of regicide and turning my back on what I know is right.
Did heaven really plan this fate for me? Heaven . . Heaven . . . it looks as
though I have indeed fallen victim to your plot.86
What is missing here is the quality of equivocation that both the Porter's and the
Witches' speeches provide. All true oracles are cloaked in mystery; this is what
makes them so irresistible and so dangerous. By shifting the motivation for the action
onto the prophecy and away from Aoshu Zheng's internal psychology, the play
becomes more demonstration than revelation. One positive result of the text's editing,
however, was revealed in the pacing of the performance. A momentum was
86 Wu Xingguo, "Cong chuantong dao dangdai" (Out of tradition into modernity). Kingdom of Desire programme notes ID number: 10406808 89 established in the beginning scene and it never lagged. It pressed on with increasing
rhythmic and dramatic intensity toward Aoshu Zheng's demise without the traditional
narrative repetitions and recapitulations.
3.1.2 Blind spots
Overall, cultural differences cause the misunderstanding and distortion in
intercultural performances. However, apart from the distortions, why is it still
possible to perform Shakespeare as traditional Chinese theatre, or perform Chinese
opera in UK theatre? That is because people have already discovered parallels
between Shakespeare and Chinese opera, such as stories with a strong folk flavor,
soliloquies to the audience, and flexibility in the use of the stage87. These similarities
unquestionably help to overcome the historical, geographical, and psychological
differences and barriers between the two cultural systems of East and West.
However, as mentioned previously, both academics and general audiences have
had several different reactions to such intercultural adaptations. The fidelity of
intercultural interpretation or translation was doubted because of the cultural
differences between China and UK: Shakespeare's plays and traditional Chinese
theatre nevertheless represent two distinct cultures. Despite the similarities, there are
major differences. For instance, concerning the Kingdom of Desire, the director
described his creative process as one of violent and painful collision88. Whether
between Shakespeare and kunqu (Kun opera) or yueju (Yue opera) or huangmeixi
87 Ma Zhuorong. ‘Entering into and Openness’ (Jiadingxing he Kaifangxing). Shakespeare Research (Shashibiya Yanjiu) No.2. p232-­‐261. 88 Lu Jianying, The Contemporary Legend of Wu Hsing-­‐kuo, Taipei: Tianxia Wenhua, 2006 Print.p23. ID number: 10406808 90 (Huangmei opera89), there are clashes and conflicts, which inevitably have an impact
on operatic traditions, and consequently lead to change and innovation in traditional
Chinese theatre art. A contemporary of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, described him as
being "not of an age but for all time."
90
Indeed, almost everyone can interpret and
stage Shakespeare in his or her own fashion, but it is important to preserve
Shakespeare's spirit. The essential qualities of this spirit should not be changed, and
that is where Shakespeare and traditional Chinese theatre come into conflict.
One of Shakespeare's main themes is praise for the awakening of the subjective
consciousness of human nature. Almost all his protagonists are people who dare to
defy fate and who possess the savage traits of those just entering civilization. They
are vital people with strong characters who suffer failures as well as achieve victories.
Even tragic characters are full of strength and heroism, and seek love with courage
and perseverance. Similarly, traditional Chinese opera also features romantic female
characters, including the Buddhist nun Chen Miaochang91, who dares to break off
religious shackles, and Zhu Yingtai92, who disguises herself as a young man to study
at an old-style private school and at last kills herself for the sake of love. All of them
are brave and would sooner die than submit to the forces of darkness. However, those
who created them were playwrights educated and living in a feudal society, and the
89 Huangmei or Huangmei tone originated as a form of rural folksong and dance that has been in existence for the last 200 years and possibly longer. The music is performed with a pitch that hits high and stays high for the duration of the song. It is unique in the sense that it does not sound like the typical rhythmic Chinese opera. In the 1960s Hong Kong counted the style as much as an opera as it was a music genre. Today it is more of a traditional performance art with efforts of revival in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. 90 Ben Jonson, To the Memory of My Beloved Master William Shakespeare, and What He Hath Left Us, The World’s best poetry, edited by Bliss Carman, Philadelphia: John D. Morris & Co., 1904 Print.p112. 91 Qiang Shen, Chen Miaochang, Beijing : Tong su tu wu chu ban she, 1954, Print. p23. 92 The Butterfly Lovers is a Chinese legend of a tragic love story of a pair of lovers, Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, whose names form the title of the story. The title is often abbreviated to Liang Zhu and often regarded as the Chinese equivalent of Romeo and Juliet. ID number: 10406808 91 characters they created are ultimately quite unlike Shakespeare's. They are different
not only in terms of the degree of their determination in fighting for the emancipation
of human nature, but also in the character of their rebellion and the way in which they
express their feelings.
For example, The Kingdom of Desire was set in the Chinese Warring States
period around 300 BC. It was much influenced by another famous Asian adaptation
of Macbeth, Kurosawa Akira’s film The Throne of Blood. In an interview Lin
Hsiu-Wei, Wu’s wife and the producer of CLT, pointed out that they felt a strong
affinity with Kurosawa’s version. In Wu’s version, the protagonist is called Aoshu
Zheng: the two syllable surname was common in ancient China and the literal
meaning of Zheng or “going on expedition” immediately gives Chinese audiences a
military image of the character.93 Below is a brief discussion of the work based on
various observations of the performance. The few features that struck both Western
and Chinese audiences demonstrate the style of Wu and his CLT. Reviewing the
London performance, Kenneth Rea felt the “exciting theatre” was a “well-conceived
innovation that combines the dazzle of Beijing opera with the strengths of Western
realism”94. James Oestreich, in his review of Wu’s 2005 US tour, offered more detail:
Mr. Wu caught the hero’s wavering balance between resolution and doubt.
His strenuous physical exertions built to a stunning conclusion, when,
mortally wounded by an arrow, he teetered backward to the edge of a high
93 Catherine Diamond, The Masking and Unmasking of the YuTheatre Ensemble. Asian Theatre Journal, Vol. 10, No. 1, Spring, 1993.p12. 94 Kenneth Rea, The Kingdom of Desire, Guardian, 16 November 1990. ID number: 10406808 92 wall and finally dismounted in a back flip — wearing, it was said, some 40
pounds of costume.95
The scene Oestreich described was based on Kurosawa’s arrangement for the
protagonist’s death. However, through the jingju male warrior’s acting vocabulary,
Wu brought home to his audiences the protagonist’s tragedy with more visual effect.
Aoshu was isolated on a towering rock, surrounded by his enemies - not Malcolm, as
in the original, but his own men who wanted to behead him in order to sue for peace.
His armour was torn and his helmet missing. His tightly bound long hair became
loosened and disheveled: a stage convention expressing desperation, fear or horror in
the jingju sheng role. Using his limbs, hands and feet, Aoshu agilely twisted and
turned like a snake to avoid the volleys of arrow shot by the soldiers. When he was
mortally wounded, he reeled and stumbled, then plunged about seven and a half feet,
performing a double back-somersault to land skillfully on the stage while wearing
traditional boots with two-inch-high platforms. Finally, in the lingering death noted
by Oestreich, the audience was struck by the compelling image of Aoshu’s staring
eyes and his arm pointing aloft for a whole minute, as he staggered through the ranks
of soldiers before toppling backwards like a felled tree to the ground. This remarkable
scene blended jingju conventions such as the long hair, the somersaults and the final
fall (“stiff body” in jingju terminology) with modern dance: for example, the
snake-like twist that used Martha Graham’s technique of fierce pelvic contractions
95 James Oestreich, The Orphan of Zhao Review, The New York Times, 4 June 2005 ID number: 10406808 93 and release, and non-stylized gestures with a close-up effect, in particular the frozen
arm.
Not only was the Chinese Macbeth performed in combined skills of different
genres, but Lady Aoshu’s acting was also different from a decorous dan (female
character) of jingju. In the production, she played her assertive and devious role with
“bald villainy”, and Oestreich felt that the actress “cannily let stylization melt into
subtle shades of naturalism”96. Even the soldiers were full of life: “each had specific
characterization…they gave an excellent martial arts display but also revealed a
round psychological dimension of high spirit, fear and tension”97. Most impressive
was the episode where Banquo’s grooms struggled to control his horses which had
become restless in premonition of the murder of Banquo. In the corresponding scene
in Kurosawa’s film, the groom was held helplessly at bay by the wild horses.
However, in the jingju work, there was no direct physical representation of the horses
on the stage. Rather, the whole scene was imaginatively choreographed and superbly
executed using various stage conventions of horse control, including jumps, falls,
twirls, tugs and pushes, together with modern dance movements, accompanied by
strong percussive beats and occasional high-pitched neighing sounds.
Besides the characters, Shakespeare and Chinese opera differ also in overall
tempo and performing skills. Indeed, even for a Chinese audience, the tempo of
Chinese opera often seems rather slow today - not only the external tempo, but also
the narrative speed, the rate at which the plot develops. Shakespeare has both
96 97 James Oestreich, The Orphan of Zhao Review, The New York Times, 4 June 2005 Lu Jianying, The Contemporary Legend of Wu Hsing-­‐kuo, Taipei: Tianxia Wenhua, 2006 Print.p158. ID number: 10406808 94 narrative and lyrical scenes, but they are closely bound up with the execution and
development of dramatic actions, so that, on the whole, the tempo is relatively fast
and neat. In adapting Shakespeare for the operatic stage, it is therefore necessary to
break through opera's usual tempo in varying degrees. For instance, the violence of
emotions conveyed in the Kingdom of Desire far exceeds that in ordinary Peking
Opera. Also, as mentioned in Chapter 2, the play was created by the introduction of
non-traditional music and of instruments rarely used in traditional Chinese theatre.
Moreover, the operatic conventions of traditional Chinese theatre are highly
expressive. They stem from daily life, and yet possess the refined beauty of art. For
instance, the facial make-up in traditional Peking opera is far beyond naturalistic. But
it must be admitted that in the development of fast-changing dramatic actions and in
the expression of culturally diverse content, they sometimes prove cumbersome or
inadequate. During the actual writing and rehearsing of operatic Shakespearean
productions, the directors became clearly aware of the deficiencies resulting from
slavish adherence to those conventions. Shakespeare has singing-and-dance scenes,
and his language conforms to its own rhyme schemes, but all these are different from
Chinese stylized song, dance, and rhyme conventions.
It is true that not all problems have been solved, however, and many questions
remain to be confronted. Could all of Shakespeare's plays be adapted for performance
in traditional Chinese theatre forms? How should we present Shakespeare's
philosophical musings and explorations? Such typically Western ways of thinking are
not present in traditional Chinese operas. How can the poetry of the language in the
ID number: 10406808 95 original plays be retained? Indeed, directors, actors, and academics are faced with
many difficulties and challenges, which mean there must be some blind spot existing
in such intercultural adaptions.
Although the cultural boundaries breed blind spots, it should also be stated that
mere reliance on the existing theatrical conventions is insufficient to present the
content and characters of Shakespeare. Actually, in the process of rehearsals and
production, operatic conventions have been developed and changed, absorbing many
realistic movements and gestures, which together with stagecraft, lighting, musical
accompaniment, and costuming go beyond the traditional operatic framework. As a
result, the performing techniques and skills of opera have been greatly enriched, and
this is one major achievement of the operatic adaptations of Shakespearean plays.
Not many years ago, productions of Shakespeare in China using characters in
modern Western dress were scorned as evidence of Western Decadence, and
traditional Chinese operatic adaptations of Shakespeare were not taken seriously.
Today, however, operatic versions of Shakespeare are being produced, and varied
methods of adapting his plays are being explored. Although the recent productions
described here are criticized by some critics, the productions represent the beginnings
of new directions for Shakespearean theatre in China and they cannot be ignored.
3.2 The different purposes of appropriation
Apart from the distortion and blind spots in intercultural performance, these
productions also serve different social, economic and political purposes. The reason
ID number: 10406808 96 for the differences can be complicated. It depends on the theatre practitioners, cultural
makers, as well as the audience coming from different cultural and academic
backgrounds. It somehow reflects the distortion of the original idea of intercultural
performance.
Indeed, when these directors and actors attempt to assimilate, or even present an
alien culture, in other words, to give them their own cultural signifiers, they
inevitably create a different product. This might provide a more recognizable type of
theatre for the general audience, but on the other hand, it will accrue meanings which
would be unavailable and incomprehensible to the audience of the originating culture.
3.2.1 Utilizing the “Western world”: a contribution to the Chinese operatic
revolution
Of course, Shakespeare was an English writer, who appeared at a crucial moment in
the foundation of England as a modern nation-state, then busy expanding its markets
and its borders, and as long as England and the English language endure he is likely
to be claimed by some people as indicative or illustrative of Englishness, whatever
that may mean. Given that the care and feeding of Shakespeare’s reputation in the
twentieth century and beyond have chiefly been in the hands of scholars located in
university departments of English and in the hands of university-educated theatre
directors (like those at the Royal Shakespeare Company) with an equal commitment
ID number: 10406808 97 to English literature and the English language, it is not startling that Shakespeare
would continue to be valued for his linguistic virtues. Nothing wrong with that; there
is no disputing that the marvels of his vernacular dialogue, even in heavily edited
versions of the plays, grant a special, original status to their performance in English.
However, the Anglo-centric approach to the dramatist has been a serious
limitation to understanding his larger significance in world culture. The patterns of
the institutionalization of Shakespeare usually imply, even when they do not directly
state, that converting the texts into other languages - not to mention theatrical
conversion to other cultural milieus - results in a lesser, imperfect product. To put this
another way, for many commentators the value of Shakespeare is essentially
contained in the words he wrote, even when it is recognized that those words were
written as notes for actors with humanly imperfect memories to deliver as personages
in a dramatic action, and were often received in unreliable printed forms.
Therefore, what would happen when Shakespeare is performed without his
language? Actually, the linguistic losses could be significant gains for intercultural
theatre. Conversion of the plays into contemporary English is not really tolerated in
English-speaking countries, an issue that deserves more theoretical attention, but
translation into contemporary dialogue is the norm elsewhere, the usual starting point,
resulting in a much more direct audience understanding. When actors speak
Shakespeare in a language colloquially shared with spectators - the condition of the
performance of most plays and films in history - his archaic verse is transformed into
new writing, without the interruption of archaic English, which demands that we
ID number: 10406808 98 engage in a form of mental translation in order to comprehend. For instance, in
English, Hamlet has become a series of well-known quotations; yet in Chinese it is a
new play. Further gains include a more easily achievable social and political
topicality, often leading to radical appropriation in acting or setting (once the
language has been translated, it seems easier to adapt Shakespeare to overtly
contemporary circumstances or local history); and the replacement of the original
cultural context with sometimes remarkable inventions, often visual in nature
(perhaps in part as compensation for the loss of the original language). As Salman
Rushdie has written, “It is normally supposed that something always gets lost in
translation. I cling obstinately to the notion that something can be gained”98.
Despite Rushdie’s proposal, not all commentators and spectators admire
substantial Shakespearean amendments and some worry that when his text is
aggressively transformed in to a new language and a radically unfamiliar
performative mode, in other words, something essential in Shakespeare disappears. A
more disturbing worry is the idea that there is something essentially ‘Shakespearean’
in Shakespeare: putting aside the tautology, what do we mean when we cite his name?
Do we refer to the man, the actor, the theatre manager, the writer, the cultural
entrepreneur, the financial speculator, the country landowner? Or to the printed text
and its reproduction in history? Or to a nationalist application, an imperial product, an
ensign of high culture? Or to live performance? These potential meanings combine to
make a signifier that is greater than their sum: when we call on Shakespeare to do us
98 Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands: essays and criticism, 1981-­‐1991 London: Granta, 1991Print.p79. ID number: 10406808 99 service we speak of a phenomenon rather than a man and his works, and almost
necessarily allude to an icon, even an idol. Are the meanings the same across the
globe? Does Shakespeare on stage, in a book invoke the same referent everywhere?
Nowhere is the difference more apparent than in live shows, where local cultural
and social conditions extensively affect the nature of representation. The condition of
the bodies of actors, the styles of costuming and mise en scène, the pre-existence of
indigenous forms, the habits and social circumstances of the audience, the cost of
attending a presentation, the position of theatre in the larger culture - all of these
variants play a large part in how we define and understand Shakespeare, and they are
remarkably changed by place. One of the results of the universalizing inclination in
Shakespeare criticism in the past was the obscuring of reception difference; in an
urge to make Shakespeare appear accessible, instructive, and edifying, critics
sometimes ignored or seriously underestimated the chasm that opens up in
geographic transference. No one doubts that even in England the meaning of
Shakespeare is vastly different today than in London in the sixteenth century, and the
greater the cultural difference the greater the reception difference. It is one thing to
produce Romeo and Juliet in Berlin, where despite the altered language and
dissimilarity in political history the German audience is likely to read the ending as
appallingly tragic, in a manner similar to an English audience, based on shared ideas
inherited from the Judeo-Christian tradition and a common European history.
Also, Shakespeare is quite another product in China, where the dual suicide might
well be seen as socially acceptable, an admirable solution to an impossible problem,
ID number: 10406808 100 not so much tragic as honourable, and, since there is a long Chinese tradition of
suicide plays, unsurprising or expected. In Christian Europe suicide is, historically
speaking, a mortal sin, a terrifying betrayal of God’s will that brings eternal
damnation. But in Buddhist China suicide can be an optimistic act, the lovers killing
themselves in the hope of rebirth in a better world, as in the traditional Chinese play
Lian Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai.
So what does Shakespeare do in Chinese literary and performance culture?
Conversely, how do imaginations about China function in Shakespearean
performance? Actually, the Shakespeare contributes to an operatic development in
modern China. From 1949 to 1966, the first seventeen years of the People’s Republic,
none of Shakespeare’s major tragedies were publicly performed; producers
concentrated almost exclusively on the comedies and romances. Regardless of the
text, however, the interpretation was expected to meet the ideological specification
derived from Engels: to extol the overthrow of mediaeval feudalism by the
humanistic forces of early modern civilization, the hero was to be portrayed as a
‘Renaissance giant’. The standards of presentation were set by the model productions
by invited Soviet directors and designers in the 1950s, which emphasized
Stanislavsky’s system of psychologically-based acting and generated the atmosphere
of the European Renaissance through visual means. Chinese actors, pretending to be
foreigners, wore richly embroidered doublet-and-hose costumes, coloured wigs,
‘Western’ make-up, and prosthetic noses, while magnificent senery of an authentic
foreign setting, the effect as perceived by Chinese audiences tended to convey the
ID number: 10406808 101 exoticism of an enchanting fairytale 99 . Shakespeare thus offered mainland
practitioners and audiences a welcome escape from the standard theatrical fare of
contemporary industrial and agricultural themes and the heroic struggles of
stereotyped workers, peasant, and soldiers against the class enemies. It is
understandable because in general the classics of European literature have been
conveniently absorbed into contemporary Chinese culture through ideological means.
(This is only the case in the People’s Republic, but not in Hong Kong and Taiwan).
Shakespeare’s special standing made him one of the very few ideologically safe
Western playwrights. Although his works were banned during the Cultural
Revolution along with all Western art, in the years following that extreme decade
practitioners used Shakespeare to test the acceptability of Western plays. Therefore,
as Alexander Huang says, “Chinese Shakespeares are not only the edgy or dissident
voices but also Chinese artists and audience’s unique (ab)use of cultural
authorities”.100 Chinese Shakespeares reflect a series of crises of representational
practice that are complicated by ethics, aesthetics and politics.
And after all, Shakespeare has given occasion for innovations in traditional
performance genres. Because as mentioned previously, the tempo of traditional opera
is slow, thus the old productions were not only losing its present audience of elderly
knowledgeable supporters but also failing to attract new replacements101; without an
audience appreciative of the subtleties of the form, it would gradually disappear.
99 Ruru Li. The Soul of Beijing Opera: Theatrical Creativity and Continuity in a Changing World. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010 Print. p172. 100 Huang, Alexander, Chinese Shakespeares, New York: Columbia University Press. 2009 Print. p15. 101 Diamond, Catherine, Kingdom of Desire: The Three Faces of Macbeth, Asian Theatre Journal, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Spring, 1994), p. 114-­‐133 ID number: 10406808 102 Younger generations of Peking opera performers, like Wu Xingguo, had to find a
source of renewal that not only gave them artistic inspiration but also validated their
activity in the eyes of the young intellectuals they wanted to attract. At this point
Shakespeare’s plays were largely restaged and adapted in Chinese theatre.
3.2.2 Romanticized “Chinese Culture”: a European reading of Chinese opera
On the other hand, as mentioned previously, The Orphan of Zhao caused
controversy because only three actors out of a cast of seventeen were of East Asian
origin.
Gregory Doran, as the new head of the RSC, had unearthed a drama of
“which most of us were unaware and given it a superlative production”102.
Doran is quoted as saying they auditioned “lots and lots” of East Asian actors103,
that in some cases offers were made to East Asian actors but were turned down, and
that ultimately he had to “choose not based on ethnicity but on the best actor for the
role.” Also, the RSC issued a public apology in which they state, “We commissioned
our World Elsewhere season in order to explore great plays from world culture . . .
recognising that much of this rich seam of drama has been largely ignored in the
West, and certainly by British theatre." They also state that they “intend to present
The Orphan of Zhao in our own way, just as a theatre company in China might
explore Shakespeare . . . we want to approach the play with a diverse cast and
develop our own ways of telling this ancient story and thus explore its universality."
102 103 Michael Billington, The RSC production Review, The Guardian, Friday 9 November 2012 Michael Billington, The RSC production Review, The Guardian, Friday 9 November 2012 ID number: 10406808 103 However, Dr Broderick Chow, a performer and Lecturer in Theatre Studies at
London’s Brunel University thinks “failure to consider the visibility of Asian
performers in this production is a failure to understand the very nature of theatre, and
the real effects beyond representation that theatre’s choices in terms of what is seen
and what can be seen can have.”104
So why is it a problem that the cast of The Orphan of Zhao is predominantly
non-Chinese? The current production of Much Ado About Nothing, directed by Iqbal
Khan and starring Meera Syal and Paul Bhattacharjee, is selling out in the West
End. Deborah Shaw was behind the World Shakespeare Festival, and she and her
husband’s Iraqi Theatre Company’s Romeo and Juliet in Baghdad shook RSC
audiences out of their comfort zone in spring 2013. Greg Doran’s civil partner,
Anthony Sher, returned to his native South Africa, bringing back a multicultural
production of The Tempest, which was both a post-colonial critique and a cautious
celebration of the new South Africa. Their acting is admirably straightforward and
engenders none of the confusion. Thus the non-Asian face should not be such a big
issue in an intercultural production, just as playwright David Henry Hwang says:
“The Orphan of Zhao casting controversy says less about Britain's Asian acting
community, than it does about the RSC's laziness and lack of artistic integrity.”105
However, the statement that RSC has made is quite problematic. Firstly, the
phrase ‘our own way’ is culturally imperialist. What do they mean by ‘our’? And
who is the oppositional ‘their’? Secondly, a Chinese company presenting
104 105 Michael Billington, The RSC production Review, The Guardian, Friday 9 November 2012 Michael Billington, the RSC production Review, The Guardian, Friday 9 November 2012 ID number: 10406808 104 Shakespeare’s characters as Chinese is about appropriation, and until very recently,
about subaltern appropriation. For instance, when Lin Zhaohua performed Hamlet as
a contemporary urban Chinese youth in 1989-90, he wasn’t aiming for ‘universality’,
a concept which was exploded by cultural critics decades ago, nor was he bowing at
the feet of a Great Briton. He was rejecting a Soviet model that presented
Shakespeare as depoliticized foreign theatre, and instead usurping Shakespeare’s
tragedy for his own dissenting purposes 106 . Thirdly, although Doran’s cast is
multicultural, it is still not enough precisely because Chinese and East Asians are so
invisible in the British media and arts in the first place.
Although some critics think Doran's production handles the story without fake
chinoiserie:
…simply a skillful use of many of the stylized techniques of Chinese
classical theatre. A violent mastiff is evoked through a massive puppet
with three shadowy handlers. Every death is marked by a shower of red
petals descending from the skies. Sundry beatings are suggested by flailing
sticks that never make physical contact. And, lest this sound as if cruelty is
aestheticized, the audience gasps in horror as they hear the sound of a
puppet-baby's neck being broken107.
However, the description sounds more like British people introducing Chinese
106 Li Yuru on the Art of Jingju, author: Li Yuru,edited by Li Ruru, Shanghai: Literature and Arts Publishing House, 2008 107 Michael Billington, the RSC production Review, The Guardian, Friday 9 November 2012 ID number: 10406808 105 cultures to UK audiences, than an intercultural adaptation. It mirrors the audience’s
expectation or imagination of an “authentic”, pure ancient China. That is why the
non-Asian actor causes controversy: both the director and audience just expect a
Chinese story, and visibility is the most important thing in the performance. Thus, the
controversy in terms of ethnicity somehow reflects the problem in intercultural
performance, that is, simply appropriating the aesthetic element without
understanding one culture’s inner structures. To say so is not to suggest that the
Anglo-centric view of intercultural performance ought to be replaced by a
Sino-centric one. However, it will definitely undermine the fantasies of cultural
exclusivity of both Shakespeare and China. It is with this conviction that I examine
the transnational imaginary of China in Shakespearean performance and
Shakespeare’s place in Chinese cultural history.
3.3 Productive reception of foreign theatre traditions
The director and actors are not the only factors contributing to the distortion and
blind spots. On the one hand, theatre makers are largely depended on the market in
their own society; on the other hand, the audience’s evaluation of foreign culture will
also cause the misunderstanding. And the greater the cultural difference, the greater
the reception difference. Thus, the reception of intercultural performance among the
target audience also reflects the problem of current intercultural adaptions.
ID number: 10406808 106 3.3.1 The reception of The Kingdom of Desire
Academics and audiences have had several different reactions to The Kingdom of
Desire. Many academics believe that Shakespeare's plays very strongly reflect the
humanism and new ways of thinking current in the period during which they were
written. In contrast, they feel that the traditional Chinese theatre, or opera, which
originated and developed within the period from the Han dynasty to the Qing dynasty,
reflects a feudal mentality108 . They believe that as an inevitable consequence of this
conflict in backgrounds, Shakespeare's standing as a playwright is reduced through
operatic production and that to treat his plays in this way approaches blasphemy.
Another school of thought is that although the productions may have
shortcomings, they do introduce the playwright to a wide group of spectators, some
of whom may never have heard of Shakespeare before109 . These academics feel that
they have a responsibility to raise the cultural level of the people, and believe that
exposure to this kind of theatre can help to widen the cultural awareness of the
general public.
Similarly, the audiences who attended the plays can also be divided roughly into
two groups. In one group are those who think that this new approach to an old form is
very interesting and compelling. Others, however, feel that it is strange and awkward,
lacking both the spirit and poetry of Shakespeare and the conventions and beauty of
108 There are a number of different interpretations of Chinese theatre history. The belief that traditional Chinese theatre reflects a feudal mentality is perhaps the most widely held, and can be found in such recent works. 109 In April 1986 The Kingdom of Desire was premiered in Taipei. After the show, a small group of audience members told the director that although the play had originally been written four hundred years previously, and in a foreign language, they had understood the characters and motivations, and expressed pride in their ability to appreciate an internationally renowned playwright whom they had never heard of before. ID number: 10406808 107 traditional Chinese theatre. Although audience and academic opinion may differ with
regard to The Kingdom of Desire, the fact that it is possible to stage Shakespeare as
traditional opera cannot now be denied, and this itself is of immense significance.
Zhong Mingde, a drama scholar in Taipei, recorded the following anecdote about
Desire to commemorate the CLT’s tenth anniversary:
Three people were sitting together. After the first act, the person on the
right walked out saying “this is not jingju”. After the second act, the
person on the left remarked “this is not huaju”, then walked out. The
people who sat in the middle remained to the end of the performance and
then departed in silence. Such perplexity was echoed at the council for
Cultural Planning and Development because the company’s bold
experimental approach could not be categorized as either
or huaju, and
therefore it was difficult for the arts administrators to assign funding for
it.110
However, many people, including artists and young students who had first been
drawn to Peking opera performances by Wu’s experiments, were thrilled by the
boldness, emotion and the gripping presentation of Wu’s work. Lin Huaimin recalled:
The premiere of Desire was an amalgamation from different sources of the
110 Ruru Li. The Soul of Beijing Opera: Theatrical Creativity and Continuity in a Changing World. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010 Print. p11. ID number: 10406808 108 accumulated energy of Taiwan’s theatre. Reflecting the raging thirst for a
change of the old form that the younger jingju generation had had since the
late 1970s . . . Young jingju actors on the stage were burning with passion.
The conventional eight extras who used to stand on either side of the
protagonist, often in a state of stupefaction. All became energetic and
expressive. Their bodies and limbs conveyed emotions while their
movements on the stage gave them individuality. The stage steamed with
action while audiences were feverish with excitement.111
Both Kingdom of Desire's premiere in 1986 and its revival in 1990 met with an
exceptionally enthusiastic reception from audiences and critics in Taiwan. Although
some critics claimed that Kingdom of Desire was neither Shakespeare nor Peking
opera and others noted that it owed too much to Throne of Blood, the production was
publicly acclaimed as the most successful attempt in Taiwan thus far to revitalize the
art form and arouse the interest of young people. On the insistent recommendation of
Tadao Nakane of the Ninagawa Company, who had seen the production in Taipei,
Thelma Holt, producer of the International 90 Festival for the London National
Theatre, invited the troupe to London. It was the first time a Taiwanese Peking opera
company traveled abroad to perform a play not firmly fixed within the Chinese canon.
The critical reception of the performance in London was not only mixed but also
revealed the perplexity of the Western observer encountering a wholly foreign theatre,
111 Lu Jianying, The Contemporary Legend of Wu Hsing-­‐kuo,Taipei: Tianxia Wenhua, 2006 Print.p23. ID number: 10406808 109 even though, in this case, the attraction was its exotic interpretation of an English
cultural icon112 .
Most of the English critics praised the splendour of the spectacle, the
exquisiteness of the costumes, the supple execution of the acrobatics, and the multiple
talents of the main actors. However, while recognizing the production as an
East-West fusing, they were divided in their assessment of how successful the fusion
had been. Kenneth Rea, the most enthusiastic, asserted:
It is one of the best blends of Eastern and Western techniques that I have
yet seen. ... In any language this is exciting theatre. But it is a bonus to see
such a well-conceived innovation that combines the dazzle of Beijing
opera with the strengths of Western realism"113.
Others thought the integration of such disparate styles was less satisfactory. And
while they could not judge the production according to Peking opera standards, they
criticized it for emphasizing the element of spectacle that "dazzles the senses but
leaves the emotions unstirred"114. As one might expect, the English critics were
preoccupied with how Kingdom of Desire related to Macbeth - their familiar point of
reference - and questioned whether or not the Taiwanese company had performed
tragedy or whether Peking opera was even capable of it. Overlooking the difficulty
112 Taiwanese newspapers reported the reactions of British critics in detail. Rea, Kenneth. 1990. "The Kingdom of Desire." Guardian (London), November 16 114 Spencer, Charles. 1990. "A Macbeth Made in Taiwan." Daily Telegraph (London) November 16. Tang Biyun. 1986. 113 ID number: 10406808 110 that Western scholars and dramatists alike have in defining exactly what tragedy is,
most of the critics were quite certain that Kingdom of Desire was not it: it was
somehow too reductive. Some were not so quick to jump to that conclusion, however,
for they were aware that a good deal was happening onstage which they did not
understand. Relying on an intuitive sense and comparing the play with other foreign
adaptations, they struggled to comprehend where exactly their dissatisfaction lay:
Over the whole evening there hangs a question: do the Taiwanese find this
to be tragic drama? Shakespeare's play can of course be adapted and
translated without losing a tragic core: see Verdi's opera or Kurosawa's
film. But there's something so pat about Beijing opera, especially in its
rhythm. I kept hearing and seeing perky little metric patterns that sounded
sheer music hall.115
Whether or not Peking opera or Chinese theatre in general ever produced tragedy
is really a moot point; but by adapting a tragic text, Kingdom of Desire inevitably
became the target of this query. Perhaps merely in the process of being adapted into a
form that does not recognize tragedy, it ceases to be tragedy. And although Wu
Xingguo may have wanted his Peking opera altered sufficiently to be able to
incorporate tragedy, he never declared this to be part of his plan. Furthermore, others
have argued that Throne of Blood does not have a tragic core either. As Desser points
115 Macaulay, Alastair. 1990. "The Kingdom of Desire." FinancialTimes(London), November 16. ID number: 10406808 111 out:
On a narrative level, there is a de-emphasis of humanity via the removal
of free will. If a fundamental paradox of Greek tragedy is the illusion of
free will in a universe ruled by fate, the fundamental problem with Throne
of Blood is the total absence of even this illusion116
What the English critics might be complaining about, however, are the occasions
when the pantomimic exaggeration detracts from the seriousness of the moment and
renders it almost farcical. One such moment occurs at the beginning when the king,
hearing nothing but bad news from the battlefield, consults with his nobles. In the
play, the nobles sit glum and depressed, scarcely able to utter their contrary pieces of
advice. In Kingdom of Desire, they bob up and down in their chairs and shake their
fists looking silly and puppet-like. On another occasion, when Aoshu Zheng and his
wife are plotting the death of the king, they bump into each other, back to back. In
Peking opera acting technique, this may indicate that they are working in darkness,
but in the context of the current action it seems inappropriately.
Also, the most important aspect in Peking opera performance is the singing.
Critics in Taiwan have always praised Wei Haimin's singing; the English critics,
however, did not understand how the music and gestures worked together to create
the emotional subtext to the arias. Their inability to appreciate the music itself
116 Desser, David. The Samurai Films of Akira Kurosawa. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press. 1983 Print.p112. ID number: 10406808 112 rendered them incapable of judging whether the omissions in the text were
sufficiently reinterpreted through music and movement. Instead, the music alienated
them in a somewhat Brechtian way. Unable to get emotionally involved, they sat
back and analyzed what they were watching, attempting to imagine the reactions of
the Taiwanese audience.
The singing has always been difficult for Western ears to appreciate, since the
pinched nasal sound is contrary to what Westerners expect of beautiful singing in
their own operatic tradition. From the time that Western visitors to China first
encountered Peking opera to the present day, the singing, so highly prized in China,
has remained the least pleasing feature for non-Chinese audiences. In fact, the critics'
descriptions of the singing are virtually identical to those of their nineteenth-century
predecessors, one of whom, M. de Bourboulon, asserts that the singers "use a voice
piercing beyond description. The effect of this shrill melody recalls the meowing of a
cat whose larynx was particularly badly organized"117.
Indeed, the English critics had fun exercising their metaphorical wit on the
singing of Wei Haimin. Startled by the rather abrupt juxtaposition of Lady Aoshu
viciously killing the assassin of Meng Ting in one scene and her querulous descent
into madness in the next, they were utterly bemused by her long mournful aria. From
the Times Literary Supplement to the Daily Telegraph, they described Wei Haimin's
singing as " 'sound effects' half-warbled, half-squeaked in a spiraling soprano giving
the impression of a killer mouse oddly turned into distraught canary"118; "her voice
117 118 Pronko, Leonard. Theatre East & West. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974 Print.p40 Nightingale, Benedict. "Macbeth as Martial Art." Times (London), November 16, 1990. ID number: 10406808 113 pierces the air like a twanging needle"119; "the sing-song voice, like a meowing cat in
a Disney cartoon, may be regarded as beautiful in Taiwan, but I began to wonder
whether her husband hadn't murdered Duncan simply to get her to shut up a bit"120;
"to my Western ears, this is ugly singing, its tone raw or shrill or harsh"; "and if the
crazed meowing’s remind you of a cat that should be put out of its misery, this is a
perception which might be cured if you could find out what they remind a Taiwanese
of."121
The implications of this unanimous condemnation of the singing are clear: not
only does the music not have an immediate appeal but it also requires knowledge of a
completely different aesthetic. Aside from their general condescension, these critics
mock their own ignorance, and one senses their genuine curiosity about why an
audience might like this music. The fact that the music did not enhance the tragic
mood but militated against it might have proved a more insuperable obstacle to
entering the world of Aoshu Zheng.
It is interesting that both in Taipei and in London, some critics emphasized the
strain revealed in linking two incompatible forms - Shakespeare's psychological
realism and Peking opera's role-based stylization - while others stressed the
achievement of creating a new type of theatrical performance. No one, however, has
considered the full scope of Kurosawa's influence, not just in the textual alterations
and visual embellishments, but in the Buddhist subtext that re-contextualizes
119 Shulman, Milton. "Macbeth as Martial Art." Evening Standard(London), November 15, 1990. Spencer, Charles. "A Macbeth Made in Taiwan." Daily Telegraph (London) November 16, 1990. 121 Taylor, Paul. "Throne of Blood." Independent November 16. 1990. 120 ID number: 10406808 114 Macbeth's actions and their result into an Asian worldview.
Perceiving himself a victim of fate's malicious pleasure, Aoshu Zheng, even more
than Washizu, is like all men deluded by the temptations of the world and led astray
by half-concealed auguries. He is less an individual wrestling with the desires of his
unique will than a symbol of the dangers of overweening ambition; his life descends
less into a private hell than along the well-trod path of karmic retribution. That the
creators of Kingdom of Desire did not turn to Shakespeare's text as their primary
source but instead applied Peking opera's techniques to the Japanese adaptation
suggests that Asian dramatists are creating a canon of their own in which the
relationship with Western sources and approaches is becoming increasingly
attenuated. Macbeth is accruing his own Asian persona, and while one can peel back
the various guises and masks, one does not necessarily find the Elizabethan character
behind them.
Overall, the receptions in Taiwan and in UK reflect different focuses and different
understanding of theatre and performance in two cultures. Moreover, the academics
and general audience’s reaction in same context can be extremely binary as well.
Taiwan people’s ambivalence towards Wu’s bold attempt somehow indicates the
dilemma of experimental or intercultural adaptations in contemporary society.
3.3.2 The reception of The Orphan of Zhao
Compared with The Kingdom of Desire, the UK production’s controversy
concerns the exclusion of British-Asian artists from the mainstream culture, and
ID number: 10406808 115 erupted when the Royal Shakespeare Company gave only three minor roles to East
Asian actors in "the Chinese Hamlet". Here is a photograph of the members of the
RSC Company with director Greg Doran as they discuss The Orphan of Zhao. (See
picture 4)The image portrays a sense of diversity in casting that seems to refute the
critique that Doran has been facing by a number of British-Asian actors.
Picture 4: the members of the RSC Company with director Greg Doran as they
discuss The Orphan of Zhao122
As mentioned previously, the debate in terms of the non-Eastern actors seems
somehow to reflect the reception of a Chinese story among UK audience. They are
looking for something regarded as authentic and original rather than an experimental
mixture. As Wang Anqi says,
I've attempted here to document in chronological order the key events in the
122Link:http://www.google.nl/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=pHNHwnB
iHJiOSM&tbnid=AvKonDroXhbPkM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.whatsonstage.com%2Fl
ondon-­‐theatre%2Fnews%2F10-­‐2013%2Fchanging-­‐of-­‐the-­‐guard-­‐gregory-­‐doran-­‐at-­‐the-­‐rsc_32284.html&ei
=g_muUof_N9HK0AWZ7IHACA&psig=AFQjCNHxLIiLGofDIRgAivrGCDG5gscaQQ&ust=1387285237990565 ID number: 10406808 116 campaign to get the RSC to recognize there was a problem with its unfair
casting policy — and to make a serious effort to change it.123
Also actor Paul Courtenay Hyu exclaims:
They have an all-black Julius Caesar and an all-Indian Much Ado, but
when they decide to do the Chinese Hamlet, they cast 14 out of 17 actors
and all of the major parts as non-Chinese. In the 21st century, that's
unbelievable.124
The campaign hit the public eye after attempts had been made over some time by
actor Daniel York to get the matter addressed. However, apart from the controversy
over the actors, the production was regarded as a Chinese production. As the
Guardian reported, “Gregory Doran, as the new head of the RSC, has unearthed a
drama of which most of us were unaware and given it a superlative production . . .
There's no fake chinoiserie: simply a skillful use of many of the stylized techniques
of Chinese classical theatre”125. The Guardian also said that,
Yet these were fine performances. This was the only production in the
World Elsewhere trilogy to cast two ethnic minority actors in protagonist
123 Writer, performer, poet and broadcaster Anna Chen Madam Miaow, RSC Orphan of Zhao: British East Asian Actors' statement, permanent link http://madammiaow.blogspot.nl/2012_10_01_archive.html#sthash.2vc5cxSl.dpuf 125 Michael Billington, the RSC production Review, The Guardian, Friday 9 November 2012 124 ID number: 10406808 117 roles, the hero and the villain, proving that a major British classical theatre
company risks no threat to their artistic reputation by foregrounding talent
from a broader spectrum than is the norm.126
The acting is admirably straightforward and engenders none of the confusion
experienced in the company's recent Mexican fiasco, A Soldier in Every Son. Joe
Dixon appears as the brutal courtier, Graham Turner as the honest doctor, Jake Fair
brother as the restored orphan and Lucy Briggs-Owen as his demented mother. Chris
Lew Kum Hoi also makes a haunting belated appearance as the doctor's son who was
sacrificed for the greater good.
Compared with Western critics and dramatists, the Asian Performing Arts Forum
opened their roundtable discussion on interculturalism. The play led to the creation of
a new group, British East Asian Artists, which has won widespread international
support for its demands that artists of East Asian heritage are included in all areas of
their own culture. That is because minority groups rightly feel aggrieved at
under-representation or misrepresentation. The companies accused of insensitivity in
casting when they have produced a previously unperformed ‘non-Western’ play on a
mainstream Western stage may well feel that they are unfairly singled out.
As a reaction, many writers, academics and other people have contributed to the
protest by East Asian artists on the RSC's Facebook page. From the States the outrage
and anger has been palpable as has the love and support towards their fellow East
126 Michael Billington, the RSC production Review, The Guardian, Friday 9 November 2012 ID number: 10406808 118 Asians with statements of solidarity. This show of very vocal protest from a minority
group so long thought of as silent, passive and obliging is unprecedented. East Asians
as an ethnic group have been the forgotten corner of multicultural Britain and in
terms of the performing arts they are usually bypassed in the most brusque of
fashions, left to scrap over tokenistic roles, often comprising heavy accents and
minimal character, that makes building any kind of career next to impossible. And
when they have complained they have often been told to "stop whining" and "get
over it". Someone even referred to one of them as a "selfish, stupid ethnic" when they
suggested on a Guardian comments forum that they wanted equal treatment127.
Amongst all the anger and hurt there is a sense of deep regret that the audience
have found themselves at loggerheads with a company like the RSC that most of
them have loved and respected down the years. In the East Asian artists’ perspective,
Greg Doran has clearly made an error of judgment but the entire apparatus behind
him is also culpable. So often have they cited the “cross-casting demands” as an
excuse for not casting more East Asians, that they can only assume the “powers that
be” in the world’s biggest theatre company - for whatever reason - simply could not
countenance the idea of people from their racial background playing central roles in
works by Brecht and Pushkin.
However, on the bright side the RSC have since engaged in discussions with
Equity on the issue and wish to partake in a series of initiatives along with the Arts
Council and Society of London Theatre/Theatrical Management Association
127 Madam Miaow, RSC Orphan of Zhao: British East Asian Actors' statement, permanent link http://madammiaow.blogspot.nl/2012_10_01_archive.html#sthash.2vc5cxSl.dpuf ID number: 10406808 119 including a day-long event in early 2013 designed to facilitate introductions, increase
understanding and broker partnerships between East Asian actors and theatre makers
and the wider theatre industry.
Compared with the Kingdom of Desire, it is interesting that the comments on the
RSC production are more linked to ethnic issues. Few critics and audience members
view this production in an aesthetic sense. From the Western critics’ point of view, it
is a UK production introducing a Chinese story; and for those East Asian actors and
artists who work in the UK, the play is more like a weapon for protesting the
unfairness and discrimination they encounter in Western society. These two binary
attitudes somehow reflect the unequal process of intercultural adaptation in two
different worlds.
ID number: 10406808 120 4. Conclusion
4.1
Intercultural
adaption:
inequality,
dislocation
and
misunderstanding
Intercultural theatre is quite simply when one culture seeks to engage with
another through specific performance forms, practices, languages and aesthetics.
Intercultural performance, as a daunting prospect to challenge the liberal
establishment, a revered institution and one that, to be fair, has made strides in
developing multicultural production. However, in this instance, the RSC have made a
sore misjudgment.
The Orphan of Zhao somehow reflects the Orientalist arguments surrounding the
controversy of Peter Brook’s nine-hour stage version of The Mahabharata in 1985.
The RSC’s product did not take into account its own position and the power that
accompanied it because of its view that cultures are all, supposedly, equal. Brook was
heavily criticized for simplifying the Mahabharata, its characters and its plot, turning
its meanings into something that was easily consumable and digestible for ‘Western’
audiences. Rustom Bharucha in The Theatre and the World criticized Brook for
downplaying caste, the core organizing principle of Indian society and for avoiding
“a confrontation of the historical context of Indian culture”128. The problem with any
kind of cross-cultural work is that there is a tendency to strip culture and signs of
128 Rustom Bharucha, Theatre and the world, Performance and the Politics of Culture, London: Routledge, 1993. Print.p12. ID number: 10406808 121 culture from source texts, and the international casting of Brook’s Mahabharata
reinforced this problem because the casting raised questions around “can anyone
portray Indian cultural figures?” and “who owns culture?”129
There is a slew of critical work on this production but intercultural theatre critics
have since become highly sensitive to what forms of culture are used in theatrical
enterprises, what the politics and ethics of a cross-cultural collaboration might be, of
who is doing the representing, who is doing the talking and in which language, whose
voices are and are not heard and how that fits into consumer demands. These are the
kinds of questions that intercultural theatre has been dealing with for years and which
are glossed over by the RSC’s stance regarding The Orphan of Zhao and its casting.
It is clear that the rise of China economically is forcing Western audiences to engage
with its culture and history – and of course the RSC are acutely aware of this as a
marketing strategy. But while I would like to think that there was real cultural
engagement in operation on the part of the RSC, I have yet to find any evidence of it.
I would like to know more about the version of The Orphan of Zhao James Fenton
has adapted, how he came to it and what he was seeking to portray through it. Would
there be Chinese movement in this production – is this why there was a workshop on
jingju? Or is this contextualizing the play through a simple exoticism via an
engagement with a culturally different form that bears little relevance to the actual
production? If you read Doran’s blog on the week-long research trip to China on the
RSC website it reads like a white man’s travelogue c.1850 and aside from the trip to
129 Edited by Patrice Pavis, The Intercultural Performance Reader, London: Routledge, 1996. Print. p10. ID number: 10406808 122 the Shanghai Opera, it was not clear which context they were researching anyway?
Intercultural theatre so often engages with difference for the sake of difference,
and it seems the RSC may have fallen prey to this trap as such short periods of
exploration frequently lead to superficiality because they prevent any real
understanding of a play’s original context. Let us not forget either that white British
people were making the artistic translations on this production and aside from Dr. Li
they have little idea of if and how anyone Chinese person was consulted.
Of course, the casting is the main issue at stake here and the director cannot
conflate culture and race. But the casting is deeply offensive to the people that the
play supposedly represents. In his response Gregory Doran called the outrage ‘sour
grapes’ but this fails to recognize the issue of whose stories are being told and by
whom – the central question of any critical cross-cultural work. As Greg Watanabe
wrote on the RSC thread:
When large, well-funded, prestigious theatres finally tell an Asian story
and fail to use Asians, or British East Asians to tell that story, they have to
try to understand how that feels to us. It feels like orientalism, like a
minstrel show, like you think we’re not good enough to tell our own
stories, that you would presume to tell our stories for us, dictate to us our
culture and identity.”130
130 Greg Watanabe, The Orphan of Zhao: Inequality, Interculturalism and National Abjection in Casting, ID number: 10406808 123 If East Asians in this country cannot get the opportunity to play ethnic specific
parts written for them, then what roles can they play? They rarely play non-specific
roles anyway because their faces literally do not fit director expectations. Current
casting practices at the RSC in particular are based on track record and networks.
These things are hard to accumulate when they are consistently discriminated against
because of their race. When the RSC suggests they chose the “best person for the
role”131 this cannot be taken at face value. Actually, they picked people they already
knew, all of whom are fantastic actors, so unlike the all-black Julius Caesar where
the RSC admirably went to great lengths to find an all-black cast, that was not the
case here.
Comparatively, The Kingdom of Desire is considerably more analytical. Wu
Xingguo attempted to elucidate objectively the relevance of the foreign text to
Chinese operatic traditions. Complicating Wu’s dilemma over how to make his acting
profession relevant to modern Taiwanese audiences was the changing attitude of the
authorities towards the traditional Chinese theatre. At the post-show discussion of
The Kingdom of Desire, those pleased with the experiment praised it for its
preservation of authentic Peking Opera, in spite of the foreignness of the source story,
and for its abandonment of the egregious blond wigs, tongue-twisting foreign names,
and incongruous costumes common in Chinese Shakespeare132. Those who were
displeased criticized the same authenticity, arguing that it was so genuinely in the
131 James Fenton, The Orphan of Zhao at the RSC: a very modern massacre, The Guardian, Tuesday 30 October 2012 132 Ruru Li. The Soul of Beijing Opera: Theatrical Creativity and Continuity in a Changing World. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010 Print. p222. ID number: 10406808 124 mode of Peking Opera there was nothing of Shakespeare left. In fact, the dissention
merely clarified that the performance proceeded by a systematic replacement of
references. Though the original story was relocated to the Chinese historical period of
the Warring States, much of the plot followed Shakespeare’s play closely, the
obvious historical accuracy, replete with meticulously prepared costumes and a
familiar performance style, reminded Peking Opera fans of famous piece in the
traditional repertoires. So half the discussants liked the show because it was not
Shakespeare and half disliked it because it was not Shakespeare.
The discussion also uncovers the real circumstances surrounding the reception of
western art and cultural production in general in China. These circumstances, which
Chinese artists have come to take for granted, are characterized by a frenzied quest
for wealth, fired in the past two decades by a series of institutionally engineered
social and economic agendas promoting the process of globalization. In this context
Shakespeare has become a symbol of the power of the language in which he wrote. In
tandem with China’s vigorous endeavor to carve out a share of the world capitalist
system, proficiency in the language of the English national poet, which of course is
also the language of international business, has become a requirement to enter the
land of hope and riches. It has usually been true that for many Chinese the social and
political relevance of western works has determined their value. Productions of
Shakespeare that might appear as expedience on the part of politically minded theatre
practitioners have been considered perfectly legitimate, so long as they were
compatible with the spiritual, intellectual, and social needs of the Chinese nation.
ID number: 10406808 125 All of these lead me to a final point that the current intercultural performances
exist in a state of national abjection. Abjection is “an attempt to circumscribe and
radically differentiate something that, although deemed repulsively other is,
paradoxically, at some fundamental level, an undifferentiable part of the whole”
133
.
So the director brings something into visibility, into existence, whilst simultaneously
repelling and expelling the object of some attractions. And so it is with East Asians in
the UK – the audiences are fond of finding out about Chinese culture on film, in TV
documentaries, in theatre, but these interests are nearly always mediated through
white people and there is little interest in people of Chinese origin, or people who are
British Chinese. Such a sentiment evokes the spectre of ‘yellow peril’134 and the
resulting desire to expel Chinese bodies from sight, mind and shores. And by contrast,
Chinese theatre practitioners partly abandoned the orientalist route and turned
westward in stylistic pursuit. Shakespeare was no longer used to showcase Asiatic
curiosities but to display a theatrical equivalent to Chinese “export porcelain”.135
Thus, the two cases truly reflect the inequality among current intercultural
performance. The conflicts of two cultures are not only at an aesthetical or technical
level but also an ideological and ethnical level: from the beginning of the twentieth
century cultural transfer obtained an entirely different status and dimension. Since the
mid-nineteenth century, European travellers had increasingly brought home detailed
133 Karen Shimakawa, National Abjection: The Asian American Body Onstage, New York: Duke University Press, 2002 Print.p2. 134 Yellow Peril (sometimes Yellow Terror) was a color metaphor for race that originated in the late nineteenth century with Chinese immigrants as coolie slaves or laborers to various Western countries, notably the United States. It was later associated with the Japanese during the mid-­‐twentieth century, due to Japanese military expansion, and eventually extended to all Asians of East and Southeast Asian descent. 135 Ruru Li. The Soul of Beijing Opera: Theatrical Creativity and Continuity in a Changing World. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010 Print. p228. ID number: 10406808 126 accounts of diverse, predominantly Asian, performing arts. Half a century later,
intercultural performance today is no longer a one-way street although discrimination
still exists. It is hoped that the current intercultural performance could “interweave”
different cultures in an equal way.
4.2 A calling for adaptation as equitable process
Comparing the history of intercultural performance in two different contexts, the
international adaptation or appropriation in UK and in China are two unequal
processes. The two cases made me conscious of a basic cultural imbalance: the
Chinese are far more likely to have heard of Hamlet than British people in the West
are to know The Orphan of Zhao, as Doran says, "How many theatre-literate people
here could name a single classic Chinese drama? Very few."136 Also the non-Asian
actor protest somehow reflects the Western audience’s expectation of a Chinese
adaptation.
Indeed, China should neither prescribe a role for non-Western theatre practices,
nor simply provide new strategies for interpreting the Eastern theatrical productions.
To quote Erika Fischer-Lichte,
Given that performances arise out of the encounter of different groups of
people who negotiate and regulate their relationship in different ways,
performances cannot transmit given meanings. Instead, they themselves
136 Greg Watanabe, The Orphan of Zhao: Inequality, Interculturalism and National Abjection in Casting ID number: 10406808 127 bring forth the meanings that come into being over their course.137
To sum up, The Kingdom of Desire and The Orphan of Zhao, as two productions
from different theatre traditions yet sharing the same name of “global Shakespeare”,
on one hand, interweaved two different cultures, yet on the other hand, reflect the
inequality and abjection in intercultural performance. Through the lens of global
Shakespeare we can see that globalization determines the beginning of a new mode of
interweaving cultures in performance. The process of intercultural adaptation went
hand in hand with the coming into being of a modern theatre in Europe and other
parts of the world. The globalization of cultures is mirrored and partly anticipated in
the global performance landscape that increasingly functions within a framework of
transcultural entanglements. Interweaving cultures in performance does not mean
erasing their differences or homogenizing them, on the contrary, it calls for a more
equal way of exchange.
137 Erika Fischer-­‐Lichte, Politics of Interweaving Performance Cultures Beyond Postcolonialism, London, Routledge, 2011 Print.p23. ID number: 10406808 128 Bibliography
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