CUHK Series:The Other Shore: Plays by Gao Xingjian

by Xingjian Gao

  Gao Xingjian offers no solution to the problems of the self. Championing a new kind of modernism in contemporary Chinese literature, he claims in 1987 that it constitutes an affirmation of the self, not its negation, as in Western modernism, and a rediscovery of humanism, which has been lost among the insistence on the denial of rationality and the equation of absurdity with existence.[0-7]The self, as life itself, is always in a state of flux, encompassing past and present, good and evil, long-lasting guilt and brief happiness, and life and death. And like a mannequin, the self is made up of many separable parts which can be assembled and disassembled at will, and appear either in one piece or as dismembered fragments to the horrified owner who claims to have held them together. Such is the essence of existence, made meaningless by the horror, ignorance, and injustice surrounding it. But Gao Xingjian is not a complete pessimist; what matters most to him and to his characters is the materiality of living, of being able to live and, most importantly, to speak and write. Thus words, or discourse, are all and everything in life through which man gets to know his own consciousness, even though words may be mangled, rendered nonsensical, or even useless. As he says, the unknowable behind the words contains the real human nature, and the absurdity of language is the same as the absurdity of living.[0-8]

  To Gao Xingjian, literature has no obligations—the moral and ethical controversies arising from literary writings are only figments of imagination trumped up by meddlesome critics and cultural officials. “Literature has no relation to politics. It is purely a personal undertaking, an observation, a look back at past experiences, a speculation, a cluster of sentiments, a certain expression of inner emotions, and a feeling of the satisfaction of contemplation.” Therefore he advocates a “cold literature” (冷的文學 lengde wenxue), i.e., literature at its most fundamental, to distinguish it from didactic, political, social and even expressive writing.[0-9]However, a writer should not totally disassociate himself from society. While refraining from active intervention in social and political issues, he should “exile” himself but at the same time take a position on the margin of society, thus facilitating his undisturbed observations on life and the self. As such, “cold literature” is not art for art’s sake, which he despises as being tantamount to “cowardice,”[0-10]and which is only meaningful in so far as it is practised in a society which prohibits it. “Cold literature” survives by means of exile, and it strives to escape from the strangulation of society to conserve itself.[0-11]

  Needless to say, Gao Xingjian is ambivalent on the question of the relationship between a writer and his society, betraying a love-hate attitude to man’s involvement in society and detachment from it. Society is invariably made up of antipathetic masses, easily manipulated and prone to persecute the individual among them. But then what is a writer to write about apart from the society of which he is a member? This is Gao Xingjian’s dilemma, one that he tries to solve by placing himself on the outside, a stranger to his own community, and by retreating into the innermost depths of the individual, his consciousness. Therein lies his Chinese heritage, not so much in the superficial display of traditional Chinese theatrical conventions which occasionally crops up in his plays, but in his reluctance to totally cut himself off from humanitarianism in an effort to save the human soul, if not collectively, as individual beings. He is characteristic of the modern Chinese intellectual who rebels against his own Chineseness and yet rejects a Western individualism which pays no heed to society. According to his way of thinking, the latter is injurious to human nature—the negation of the very essence of life itself.

  Gao Xingjian does not purposely seek to construct a barrier between himself and his world. He is, so to speak, not much of a joiner; he only desires to seek his own personal peace and freedom. In one of his latest declarations, he proclaims the idea of “None-ism” (沒有主義 Meiyou zhuyi)[0-12], i.e., a refusal to believe in any of the “isms.” “No matter whether it is in politics or literature, I do not believe in or belong to any party or school, and this includes nationalism and patriotism.”[0-13]His “None-ism” advocates an unlimited and unbridled independence, so that the individual can empty his mind of all the shackles of convention to make the choices best suited to himself, to be sceptical of all blind acquiescence to authority, trendiness and ideological detainment, in other words, it is to be a liberation of the spirit. As a writer, Gao Xingjian steadfastly refuses to be categorized as belonging to any school, Chinese or Western. While he was still in China, he struggled to break free from realism and the Stanislavskian method which had dominated the Chinese theatre for more than three decades, considering them to be too logical, neat, and tyrannized by words. On the other hand, he is also particularly harsh about post-modernism. According to his opinion, the means of what is known as post-modernism has become an end in itself, and art vanishes as a consequence.[0-14]In other words, concepts have displaced art in the same way as dialectics and abstractions have taken over from genuine criticism, and anybody can become an artist because artistic skills are not required as prerequsites.[0-15]

  Gao Xingjian’s antipathy towards the canonized is derived from his constant search for a genuine renewal in art. Even though he pursues “the freedom not to peddle antiques,”[0-16]he is nonetheless not iconoclastic. “When someone wants to go forward, there is no need to trample on one’s ancestors.”[0-17]He has not been able to sever himself totally from tradition: we can see him trying to seek inspiration from the theatricality of classical Chinese opera and from folk culture. The latter’s emphasis on rituality and simplicity interests him as an artist, and its uncorrupted character is a kindred spirit to his understanding of the primeval self.

  In rejecting the modernist label in 1987 (when he was still in China), he said that it was more appropriate to place himself at the meeting point between Eastern and Western cultures and between history and the present.[0-18]However, he also claimed that he has paid his debts to all things Chinese since the publication of Lingshan 靈山 (Spiritual Mountain) in 1990, a novel set in the mythical mountains and streams of southwestern China. In his latest plays, he has been striving for neutrality and universality, shying away from Chinese settings and characters.

  We shall not dwell on the idea of interculturalism in Gao Xingjian. Suffice it to say that even our writer himself is conscious of the crosscurrents of the Chinese and the Western interacting in both his personal and artistic life. It is important to point out that he always values the self not in an egotistic manner, but in the knowledge of the imperative to comprehend the self, its relation to the world, and the value of existence. The key here is the Chinese concept of “jingguan” 靜觀,[0-19]or “peaceful observation,” which encompasses the ideas of tranquillity, disinterestedness, and detachment. And it is through this concept that we can begin to understand Gao Xingjian’s idea of the tripartition of the actor, i.e., just as a writer should observe himself and society with the indifference of an outsider, an actor should also be able to observe his performance and the character he is portraying with the same degree of “coldness” and detachment.

  Acting and the Tripartition of the Actor

  Gao Xingjian’s idea of dramaturgy affirms the importance of what he calls theatricality (juchangxing 劇場性). When Aristotle talks about “action,” Gao Xingjian claims, he is referring to action in its fundamental sense, i.e., the kind of action that the audience can see and hear,[0-20]unlike the “action” in contemporary drama which is limited to the conflict of ideas and concepts. This physical aspect of drama is what distinguishes it from poetry, which emphasizes lyricality, and fiction, which underlines narration. Drama is process, and while it may not necessarily be complete in itself, the changes, discoveries, and surprises in a play can be amplified and elaborated upon and made into elements of theatricality, thus generating dramatic action on the stage.[0-21]

  According to Gao Xingjian, stage language can be used to indicate harmony or disharmony as in a musical structure. Like the notes in a symphony
, the phonic qualities of words often highlight their materiality, effectively transforming the utterances into a non-narrational medium. In this manner, stage language acquires the charm and the almost magical power of chanting, and produces a deeply felt compulsion in both actors and audience. Such is the difference between the new language of drama, with its emphasis on materiality and physical impact, and the semantically inclined language commonly used in other literary genres.[0-22]

  There is yet another aspect to the making of theatricality. Drama is nothing but performance, and the actions on the stage are meant for the enjoyment of the audience. In order to facilitate this communication and to enhance its directness, Gao Xingjian maintains that the actor has to be self-conscious of his craft, being aware not only of the character he is playing but also of the fact that he is putting on a performance as a performer. This awareness is in contrast to Stanislavsky’s total immersion method, and to an extent it is also distinguished from Brecht’s “alienation,” which breaks the illusion of realism and underlines the distance between performance and audience. To Gao Xingjian, there is no denying that drama is ostentation—the many attempts at realism by the modern theatre are nothing short of spurious and futile efforts to achieve impossibility. Ostentation is helpful and also essential to communicating with the audience: in fact, an actor should highlight the act of pretending, as if he is saying to himself and to the audience, “Look how well I can pretend to be somebody else!” As in Beijing opera or the Japanese kabuki, even though the actor focuses his attention on how to perform his role, he still manages to retain his identity as an actor—his job is to give a good performance but not to live the life of the character.[0-23]The pretending still exists, and is even accentuated, but it coexists with a more direct and true-to-life actor-audience communication, in which the actor has become the centre and disseminator of artistic awareness. In other words, besides the character-centred and audience-centred theories of Stanislavsky and Brecht, Gao Xingjian has ventured his own actor-centred theory in an argument for a more self-conscious art.

  How does one achieve self-consciousness and yet still be “in” the performance and a good actor at the same time? The answer to this is Gao Xingjian’s idea of the tripartition of acting. In traditional Chinese theatre, Gao Xingjian explains, when the actor gets ready for the role he is to play, he extracts himself from his everyday activities, relaxes his body and focuses his mind to enter into his performance. During this time, he “purifies” himself into a “state of neutrality”; in other words, he is in a state of transition between his everyday self and his role. This neutrality can be explained by looking at the convention of liangxiang 亮相[0-24](literally “to reveal oneself”) in Beijing opera. At the time of liangxiang, the actor freezes his movement for a few seconds to mark his entrance or the completion of a display of martial arts, dance sequence, etc., thus making himself “appear” before his audience, who applaud and voice their approval. The performance is briefly suspended, as the actor neutralizes his acting capacity and calls attention to the exhibition of his art.

  Thus in any performance, there exists in the actor three identities—the self, the neutral actor, and the character. Neutrality is not tantamount to self-effacement; it demands a self-consciousness in the actor of his own make-believe. At the same time this also equips the actor with a “third eye” of inner vision which, because of the detachment from the character he is portraying, is capable of observing his performing self, the other actors on the stage and, more importantly, the audience. Neutrality then becomes a medium which enables the actor to control and adjust his performance, helping him to be in and out of his character not only before the performance but also many times during the performance. And because the actor is both experiencing (acting) and observing himself while performing, he is more able to project his feelings into the character for the audience’s enjoyment. In any theatre, what needs to be communicated is not reality but the feeling of reality. By embodying the three identities on the stage, the actor can challenge the character he is playing, empathize with him, pity, admire and even criticize him. The dramatic tension resulting from this kind of acting is beyond that produced by mere yelling and shouting which disguise themselves as theatre. In this way, not only the plot but also acting itself can be interesting and become the focus of the audience’s attention. And the actor, because his feeling for the character is not derived exclusively from his physical self, is awarded a high degree of satisfaction through an awareness of his own artistic creation.

  Points of View in Drama

  Gao Xingjian is concerned about acting, but being first and foremost a writer, he is also equally concerned about playwriting. He laments the demise of the playwright in the contemporary theatre. The playwright, according to Gao, has been forced to give up his former prominence to the director, who is now the absolute ruler of the stage. With the weakening position of the playwright, theatre increasingly relies on technology to support its predominantly visual presentation, and music, which is capable of generating tension through contrasts and variations (e.g. in a symphony), has also been abused, being given the task of covering up the inadequacies in performance. As the peripherals have taken over from real dramatic action, and abstraction, in the form of exegesis of ideas, emerges as the only objective, theatre tends to become non-drama or even anti-drama and comes closer and closer to the end of the road.[0-25]

  As a playwright, Gao Xingjian is motivated by the desire to wrestle the centre stage from the hands of the director. He insists on the dramatic, the “drama” (戲 xi) happening on the stage. His plays may not feature a well-made plot, and they may even resort to abstractions from time to time, but there has to be structural integrity—expositions, contrasts, conflicts, and discoveries, the essentials with which drama is made, and which are seen as “action” by the audience. The dramatic is not confined to externalities; most of Gao Xingjian’s recent works feature internal conflicts, the psychological drama within a character’s consciousness.

  Gao Xingjian admits that his idea of the tripartite actor is not universally applicable to all kinds of scripts, and he remains unsure whether this theory of his has been the driving force behind his style of playwriting or vice versa. The idea is part of Gao Xingjian’s search for a new language for the contemporary stage; the drama of the modern man’s frenzied schizophrenia demands such acting as a complement, or even prerequisite. His understanding of performance, namely, the coexistence of the self, the neutral actor, and the character in the actor, opens up new possibilities in playwriting. Just as consciousness is capable of being realized by the tripartite actor, so it can also be interpolated on the discourse level to project different modes of perception.

  It is evident that Gao Xingjian’s latest works, which are included in the present collection, all feature his newly developed ideas about narrative modes in drama and put into effect his demands on the actor. In these plays the characters not only speak in the first person, as is the case by dramatic convention, they also speak and refer to themselves in the second and third persons, being in and out of their own selves in the same play or even in the same scene. For instance, in Dialogue and Rebuttal, the hero and the heroine speak in the first person in the first half of the play, and then switch to the second and third persons respectively in the second half, when they are languishing in a state of apparent meaninglessness as spirits after their deaths.

  Gao Xingjian’s experiments in the narrative modes of drama may have been inspired by the special features of the Chinese language. Many times he has commented that the Chinese language, being an uninflected language, facilitates shifting the “angle” or perspective of narration. “As the subject in a Chinese sentence can be omitted and there are no verbal conjugations, it is quite natural to displace the ‘I’ as the subject by a zero subject. The subjective consciousness can be transformed, achieving a pan-subjective consciousness or even self-effacement. And it is just as easy to change the ‘I’ into the second p
erson (you) or the third person (he/she). The ‘I’ as ‘you’ is a case of objectification, and the ‘I’ as ‘he/she’ one of detached observation, or contemplation. This really affords the writer tremendous freedom!”[0-26]

  Commenting on the new possibilities of his dramatic strategy, Gao Xingjian says:

  The character, which usually appears on stage in the first person, can be divided into three different points of view and can speak in three different persons, and the same character will then have three psychological dimensions. The character as both agent and receptor is enriched by many perspectives, which enable a more complete mode of expression. And from his various observation platforms, the same character will be able to generate and express many different attitudes towards the outside world and towards his own experience of it.[0-27]

  The shift in narrative mode is not a mere substitution of “I” by “you,” “he” or “she”; it also has implications for the actor and the audience’s point of view. With the “I” relating the story of “you,” “he” or “she,” the character is functionally divided into two separate roles of addresser and addressee, or narrator and narratee, even though they are both physically embodied in one person. The second or third person self functions as the observed, who operates in the external world made up of other characters. As the “I” is insulated from direct contact with the external world, he is equipped with a different perspective from that of his divided double, and in his capacity as a non-participating narrator, he can be more objective in assessing his own consciousness as that of someone other than himself.

  The discourse situation in Gao Xingjian’s plays mostly points to the exploration of the self, the centre around which all the happenings revolve and towards which all the meanings gravitate. In combining the narrating and experiencing selves, the narrative situation is capable of generating tension among the divided selves of the same character, with the “you” being closer to the implicit “I,” but not less confrontational than the third person self (“he/she”), who is further removed. According to Lacanian psychoanalysis, “otherness” can never be firmly grasped. The other is basically a locus of the subject’s fears and dears; they do not belong to an external category, but are internal and unchangeable conditions of man’s existence. Viewed in this perspective, the dreams and speeches, when they are expressed on the stage, illuminate the split in the subject’s imaginary register and its elements.