theater
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JACK CHEN
ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR
PU 1)ENNIS DOBSON
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PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
. ICONTENTS "
Introduction
CHAPTER ONE
The Classical Theatre Its History. Conventions: Colour, Costume, 'Props', Music Character Types, Make-up, Gestures. The Actor. Types of Plays. The Role of the Classical Drama today.
CHAPTER TWO
The Western Style Origins, Plays and Playwrights.
CHAPTER THREE
The Yangko Theatre
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5
The Chinese Theatre
Tan (female role), to pre-eminence is in itself an expression of the new position of women in Chinese life.
It would be a great mistake to believe that the days of the classical drama are over. There will, undoubtedly, be modifica- tions of its form and content, but as actual practice in the new urban centres and revolutionary areas of North and Central China, have shown, the roots of this art are sunk deep in the soul of the people and are still drawing fresh vitality therefrom.
CHAPTER TWO
THE WESTERN
STYLE
IN '9' 5 A group of Chinese students who had studied in Japan -then the nearest centre of 'Western culture'-and there become acquainted with modern Western theatrical art, returned to China and founded the Spring Willow Dramatic Society in Peking, or as it is now known, Peiping. They were determined to reform the Chinese theatre. They loudly decried the classical drama which was the only style of theatre that China at that time knew. They denounced it as old-fashioned, as feudal. Many of them claimed that it should be scrapped altogether because it was a brake on China's progress. The Spring Willow society aimed to create a modern Western style theatre for China that would present both foreign and Chinese plays with a modern outlook. La Dame aux Camelias and Uncle Tom's Cabin were two of their first efforts.
As was to be expected, the 'Western style' drama found little favour with the popular masses and was disdained by the old Mandarin intellectuals as 'un-Chinese'-a sufficient reason for complete damnation. The new idea however did take root in the young intellectual circles of Peiping, Tientsin, Shanghai, Canton and other university centres. Within the next few years several other serious amateur modern theatre groups were formed in these places while one or two of the 'tea-houses' and professional theatres and 'Coney Island' entertainment centres of the type of the 'New World' in Shanghai or Peiping exploited the novelty of 'Western' staging with 'thrillers' or 'shockers'.
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The Chinese Theatre
Though none of the modem plays written at that time show a serious grasp of modem dramatic technique, they do show that they were inspired by an earnest desire for social reform and intended to make the theatre serve progressive aims while exploring new artistic forms.
China's modem students have always been in the van of the revolution. The students of the first modem universities came mainly from families of the rising young Chinese bourgeoisie, middle class groups engaged in industry, commerce or the pro- fessions, or. from landed aristocratic families who were investing their wealth in urban occupations. Such students were naturally attracted to the Western ideas of a realistic drama as opposed to the mythological and dynastic drama of the traditional classical stage. This was a natural corollary of their attempts to master modem Western science and industrial business methods as op- posed to the unscientific thought of old China and its handicraft- peasant economy. Just as in politics, the rising young Chinese bourgeoisie opposed the feudal autocratic monarchy and deman- ded ~ democratic republic like its Western counterparts, so, in the field of the theatre (though this cultural revolution came subsequent to the political revolution in 19II), it opposed the feudal, Confucian outlook of the classical theatre and strove to develop its own theatre. Just as it sought to learn and copy the Western nations in the field of industry and commerce so it sought to learn from, and copy them, in the field of art. But whereas it was a comparatively simple matter to import a steam turbine and make it work in China, drama was a different matter. Plays that were effective propaganda for good progressive bourgoise ideas in Britain and America, were found to appeal only to a small coterie of Westernised intellectuals in China. It was necessary to develop a modem Chinese repertoire. This is what societies like the Spring Willow tried to do, with varying degrees of success.
Dr. Hu Shih, Professor Soong Tsung-fang and other bourgeois
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The h ero ine in 'Tsai Ting-hua' by Wu T su-kwa ng . A Sh ang hai pro du cti on of 193 7
A Manch u P r in ce in ' T sai Tin g-hua'
A play of stu dent life pro du ced b y the Lu H sun A rt Academy in Y enan , 1941 , in th e modern ' W estern style' .
J.
T wo Yan ko players in a Shensi P rov ince v ill ag,e.
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The Western Style
intellectuals in Peiping's new modern universities did the spade work of the Literary Revolution. China's classical plays and belles lettres up to this time were all written in the Wen Li style, the literary language, the language of the literati, the scholars. In its finer forms it was quite incomprehensible to the ordinary public. To the Chinese man-in-the-street it was often as incomprehen- sible as the scholiasts' Latin was to the man-in-the-street of the European Middle Ages. If a popular, democratic modern liter- ature was to be written therefore, the first task was to forge a new literary medium out of the ordinary spoken language-1he Pai Hua. While the scholars of the Literary Revolution were doing this they were also making earnest efforts to propagandise the wholesale reform of the theatre. They demanded that music and drama should be separated, as in the West, that the Aristotelian unities of space, time and action should be observed, that realistic presentation of life should take the place of the idealistic moralities of the classical theatre, that there should be actresses as well as actors on the stage, that the theatre building itself should con- form to the European pattern, and that the conventions of the classical stage should be exchanged for the conventions of the Western 'picture-frame' stage.
The aims of the innovators, however, far outstripped their achievements. Some, seeing the difficulties of getting the mass audience of the common people to break sharply with the old ways, tried a more oblique approach. They sifted through the old classical repertoire, disregarded the plays based on superstition or respect for the imperial house and revived the plays that contain strong moral and revolutionary implications, plays that satirise the corrupt mandarins, denounce the tyrants and that laud the simple virtues of the common man. Some of these experime~ tal theatre groups were endowed by public-spirited rich patrons from among the modern businessmen.
It must be remembered that throughout this period, from I9II D ~
The Chinese Theatre
to the present, an active revolutionary struggle has been waged that sometimes simmered in one or two provinces and sometimes flared up on a nation-wide scale. As early as 1917 many student groups developed a vivid and increasingly popular theatre of the revolution, based on the Western style. They did not attempt 'big drama'. They were content to present short sketches and 'living newspapers'. Some were club theatricals but many were travelling troupes that performed in temples and fait grounds and in 'one night stands' just as did the classical theatre troupes. Their playlets dealt in simple terms with such evils as opium smoking, foot binding for women, corruption of officials and cowardice in face of foreign aggressors. During the agitation against the grow- ing Japanese aggression, the plays showed the results of Japanese rule in Korea with the implied warning that a similar fate lay in store for China unless the people and its leaders showed greater patriotism and staunchness and self-sacrifice for the common good. They were direct, hard-hitting and did not hesitate to enlist Grand Guignol effects to drive home their points. One play had realistic scenes of Japanese torture-pulling out of nails, beatings and executions. Not infrequently, as in the clowning interludes of the classical theatre, local evil-doers and traitors-sellers of Japanese goods-would be pilloried by means of the stage. These develop- ments not only spread a knowledge of the realistic drama among an ever growing audience in town and country, but prepared the actors and dramatists and other theatre workers for the very con- siderable achievements of the modem Western style theatre be- tween 193 I-the date of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, and 1937, the date of the full scale Japanese invasion of all China and the national resistance of the Chinese people.
During this time the intellectuals of the big university cities developed a mature taste in Western drama. Ibsen had a particu- larly strong influence on all of them. His Doll's House especially has attracted constant attention. Next in importance has been
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The Western Style
Anton Chekhov and Ostrovsky. The latter's Inspector-General is a perennially popular production with the students and public. Its rapier thrusts at grasping officials-the traditional butt of Chinese comedy-have given it all the attraction of forbidden fruit. Under the Kuomintang dictatorship playwrights did not dare to make direct attacks on bad officials. When the Inspector- General was produced however, everyone in the audience knew that the play really referred to the notoriously corrupt Kuomin-
tang bureaucrats. Only Eugene O'Neill and Bernard Shaw among Anglo-Ameri-
can playwrights have any considerable influence on Chinese dramatists. Very few students returned from Western countries have in fact made any serious contribution to dramatic literature. , , All the most significant creative work has been the product of Chinese who have studied only in China or only partly in Europe, though all the successful dramatists have a good knowledge of nineteenth century French, German, Russian and English litera- ture in translation. Modem Soviet plays are well known.
The most influential of the playwrights in the modem Western style, and perhaps the most accomplished in point of technique and mastery of Western dramatic form, is Tsao Yu. His Thunder and Rain is the story of the breakdown of the old feudal family relations in modern times, a poignant drama of incest. Sunrise is a drama of contemporary Shanghai, the tragedy of the Big City.
Yuen Ching is another of the outstanding moderns. His Under the Eaves of Chungking is a mature production both in form and content. Hsia Yen, whose Tears of the Yangtte has been voted the best Chinese film to date, and Wu Tsu-kwang, are more indi- genous as writers. Wu's Tsai Ting-hua presents the famous Peiping prostitute who mediated with the foreign invaders after the Boxer Rebellion. When it was first produced in Shanghai in 1937 it caused a sensation, though this was perhaps less due to its intrinsic merit than to the fact that by innuendo and symbolism,
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The Chinese Theatre
the playwright succeeded in outwitting the Kuomintang censors and castigated the spineless officials who were willing to submit to the Japanese invasion just as the official villains in the play were willing to submit to the foreign invaders of that time.
My personal opinion, shared by most of the leading critics, is. that these plays are mature creations that will live on for many years as good, though not great, plays of their time. They show a knowledge and feeling for modern life and use the pai hua with a literary skill that make the efforts of Hu Shih and his colleagues in the 1920'S seem adolescent. In fact the development of the new pai hua literature passed out of the hands of Hu Shih and his group~who linked themselves with the Chiang dictatorship- into those of the young writers who followed Lu Hsun, leader of the revolutionary wing of the Literary Renaissance. Lu Hsun, not only showed how to write in pai hua but taught and encouraged writers, poets, dramatists, journalists and painters and woodcut artists in the revolutionary use of the new literary idiom. Incur- ably ill though he was, he containued his leadership at a time when scores of progressive intellectuals were being arrested, jailed or shot out of hand by the dictatorship. The central art school of the Communist-led Liberated Areas was dedicated to him. It created the most virile productions in the Western style drama and used this form most effectively for Resistance Propaganda during the Japanese invasion. This school and its various Front Service Corps were tireless innovators. It was in Yenan that in 1938 I saw the first modem Chinese opera on a modem theme-the creation of a guerilla unit in occupied territory-in which the words were in pai hua and the music and general unfolding of the action were in Western form,
Thus by the early 1940'S the Western style theatre had a small repertoire of Chinese plays of consequence. It also had a larger number of good translations from the foreign theatre. Actors and producers have shown a remarkable talent in the Western genres.
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The Western Style
Productions of Shakespeare, Moliere, Gogol, Ostrovsky or Ibsen are comparable to the finest in the West. Up to the outbreak of the Japanese invasion in 1937, however, the Western style theatre remained almost wholly an urban form of entertainment, and even there it was limited still to the intellectuals and small upper middle class groups.
During the period of the Japanese invasion, however, the West- ern style groups developed their activities on a considerable scale to reinforce the defence propaganda work of all other cultural groups. This was particularly the case during the early period of the war when all the political parties were united in a national front against the invader. In 1940, the third year of the war, there were as many as 2,500 dramatic propaganda groups with a total of 60,000 members-actors, playwrights, musicians, artists, pro- ducers. They were organised by the veteran writer Kuo Mo-jo, and by Tien Han, a nationally known figure in the world of the theatre. Most of these groups were attached to various army units and lived on soldiers' pay with the honorary ranks of majors or sergeants. Performances usually included concert turns, sketches and full length plays. In some ways this was a time of dramatic growth though there was little time for serious dramatic quests. The people in their tens of thousands were brought a first-hand knowledge of new art forms, and the intellectuals were brought into closer contact with the people than ever before. Scholars learnt to appreciate anew the riches of folk art-the ballad, the song, the recitation and the dance, Many incorporated their finds in sketches, plays and musical and dance compositions. The intellectuals and the theatre emerged from the war spiritually enriched.
The Western style drama has come to stay in China. It is a pro- duct of middle class Chinese urban culture and that culture will only develop to the full in the coming period. Hitherto the pro- gressive middle class theatre has had more than ordinary difficul- ties to contend with. First it had to make its way against the com-
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T he Chinese T heatre
plete theatrical monopoly of the imperial feudal culture and its cla ssi~ cal theatre. Then, when the last dynasty was overthrown in 1911) it had to battle in an unequal struggle not only against the ideologi- cal resistance of the old culture, but against the persecution of the new dictatorship of Chiang Kai-shek and his allied war lords and fascist groups which used every means at their command to combat democratic and progressive ideas. This resulted in severe pressure against the modern Western style theatre for, as I have already suggested in discussing the classical theatre, Chinese cultural tra- dition has always regarded the theatre not only as a place of entertainment, but primarily as a place of instruction. Thus there has never been any serious argument in Chinese intellectual circles about the necessity or even the desirability of 'art for art's sake'. As Hsia Yen, one of the four leading contemporary drama- tists, writes: 'The overwhelming majority of modern Chinese dramatists have consciously used their plays as a means to advance social reform'.
In the present phase of the political and social revolution that is taking place in China, the peasant and the middle classes are freeing themselves politically and economically from the old feudal system and from the shackles that have been riveted on them by the small group of big business monopolists gathered around Chiang Kai-shek. Success in this revolution which by an historic 'paradox' is led by the Chinese working class, and which now seems to be a matter of the near future, will present a full and favourable opportunity for the development of a progressive Chinese middle class culture, just as it will present the middle classes with a broad opportunity to develop trade and industry. This presages a rapid and widespread development of the Western style theatre-both progressive middle-class and proletarian- in China.
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CHAPTER THREE
THE YANGKO THEATRE
A STUDY OF THE Chinese Yangko Theatre is a study of the development of a modern theatrical art form out of a primitive folk art within the space of the last few years. In I938-ten years ago-Yangko dancing was a folk art curiosity in North-west China's Shensi Province. Today it has spread in its modern form of Yangko drama dealing with the most complex contemporary subjects, all over North and North-east China. In the wake of the revolutionary People's Armies it is conquering the imaginations of the people of Central China. In parts of Shensi-notably the famous Yenan Border Region on the verges of Shensi, Kansu and Ninghsia-one out of every twelve people enjoy the pleasures of a Yangko dance as a regular feature of their life.
Shensi Province is bounded by the great U-shaped bend of the Yellow River. It is one of the cradles of Chinese civilisation and therefore one of the sources of the classical Chinese theatre. Down to this day you can find here survivals of the primitive folk rituals from which the classical theatre sprang .. Such a survival is the original Yangko. It is a folk song and dance performed at the time of field labour; a fertility rite danced by youths and maidens. As performed in the recent past it was a group dance with some twenty or thirty dancers to a group. The leader held an open um- brella or a metal rod and he sang the theme of the play while the chorus chanted in answer. Male and female dancers faced each other in opposite lines. In later days, however, the female parts
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