Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays 9781472591609, 9781472591630, 9781472591623

Citation preview

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

Also available from Bloomsbury Methuen Drama: The Methuen Drama Anthology of Modern Asian Plays ISBN 978-1-4081-7647-4 Edited by Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr. and Siyuan Liu Modern Asian Theatre and Performance 1900–2000 ISBN 978-1-4081-7718-1 by Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr., Siyuan Liu and Erin B. Mee Performance Studies in Motion: International Perspectives and Practices in the Twenty-First Century ISBN 978-1-4081-8407-3 Edited by Atay Citron, Sharon Aronson-Lehavi, David Zerbib Postdramatic Theatre and the Political: International Perspectives on Contemporary Performance ISBN 978-1-4081-8486-8 Edited by Karen Jürs-Munby, Jerome Carroll and Steve Giles Theatre and Adaptation: Return, Rewrite, Repeat ISBN 978-1-4081-8472-1 Edited by Margherita Laera The Theatre of Martin Crimp ISBN 978-1-4081-8441-7 by Aleks Sierz

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays Transnationalism and Postdramatic Theatre Mary Mazzilli

Bloomsbury Methuen Drama An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Bloomsbury Methuen Drama An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Imprint previously known as Methuen Drama 50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY, METHUEN DRAMA and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2015 Paperback edition first published 2017 © Mary Mazzilli, 2015 Mary Mazzilli has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-4725-9160-9 PB: 978-1-3500-3613-0 ePDF: 978-1-4725-9162-3 ePub: 978-1-4725-9161-6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mazzilli, Mary. Gao Xingjian’s post-exile plays : transnationalism and postdramatic theatre / Mary Mazzilli. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4725-9160-9 (hardback) 1. Gao, Xingjian--Criticism and interpretation. 2. Transnationalism in literature. 3. Literature and transnationalism. I. Title. PL2869.O128Z783 2015 895.13’52--dc23 2015010418 Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN

Contents Acknowledgements Introduction 1 Gao Xingjian and Postdramatic Theatre: The Other Shore – Between Lehmann and Fuchs 2 Gao and Postdramatic Theatre: A Comparison with British Playwright Martin Crimp 3 Dialogue and Rebuttal: The Death of Love in Postdramatic Transnationalism 4 Individualism and Freedom in Nocturnal Wanderer 5 Transnational Postdramatic Realism in Weekend Quartet 6 Latest Postdramatic Attempts at Transnationalism Conclusion Notes Bibliography About the Author Index

vi 1

21 47 89 117 147 181 219 229 239 253 255

Acknowledgements My first acknowledgements have to go to the School of Oriental and African Studies, its incredible people and its resources: Prof. Michel Hockx for his guidance and constant support throughout my career; Dr Henry Zhao for introducing me to the work of Gao Xingjian and his support in the early stages of my research; and Dr Rossella Ferrari, whose advice has led to the current version of this book. Secondly, a big thank you goes to Nanyang Technological University in Singapore for giving me the chance to focus on my research and the writing of this book, in particular Associate Professor Cornelius Anthony Murphy, Prof. C.J. Wan-ling Wee, Associate Professor Sy Ren Quah and Associate Professor Uganda Sze Pui Kwan. My thanks are extended to: Prof. Mabel Lee for her suggestions and for sharing her understanding of Gao’s work; to Prof. David Goodman for inviting me to the University of Sydney where I gave a lecture on Gao Xingjian’s theatre; to Prof. Claire Conceison and her suggestions on the manuscript; and Prof. Elinor Fuchs for sharing her expertise and unpublished material. I acknowledge here that the material cited from Elinor Fuchs’ The Death of Character is ‘Courtesy of Indiana University Press. All rights reserved.’ I also would like to thank Aruna Vasudevan from The Literary Shed, Gillian Wolfe and Caroline Budden for their invaluable advice on my writing, and my editor Mark Dudgeon from Bloomsbury Methuen Drama for this great opportunity. For personal and emotional support I cannot thank enough my husband David Ahlbrecht for his unshaken patience, love and understanding throughout the long period of research, the writing of the book and its tribulations; my sisters Annarita and Francesca for their constant emotional and practical help; and my parents, in

Acknowledgements

vii

particular my mother, who has always believed in me and kept my feet on the ground. Last but not least many thanks go to my dearest friend Bridget O’Dea and Father Francis Leonard for their prayers. To everyone who has been there for me along the way, thank you for your faith in my abilities.

Introduction

In 2000, Chinese-born playwright, director, novelist and painter Gao Xingjian won the Nobel Prize for Literature. At that time, Gao had already been living in Europe for about thirteen years after making the decision, in 1987, to live in voluntary cultural exile – after his work The Other Shore (1986) had been censored in mainland China, possibly because its underpinning political message represented the individual against the masses (Riley and Gissenweher 2002: 125–6). While living in France, Gao published some of his major works, including the novel Soul Mountain (1990), which is based on the ten-month walking tour along the Yangtze river that Gao undertook after he had been misdiagnosed with lung cancer. During his career, Gao has received many awards and honours; these include the prestigious Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1992); the Prix Communauté Française de Belgique (1994) for Nocturnal Wanderer; and the Prix du Nouvel An Chinois (1997) for Soul Mountain. Since receiving the Nobel Prize, Gao’s work has garnered much attention from scholars around the world, who have been interested in his unique style of writing fiction, his theatrical conception and the philosophical exploration of the human condition – all elements that will be considered in this book. However, not many scholars have fully explored his work outside an Asian and sinologist context and related it to a contemporary European and North American context. Most of the scholarship in English on Gao’s theatre has focused on the link between Gao’s work and that of past European (not contemporary) theatrical traditions, in particular modernism and the avant-garde. Towards a Modern Zen Theatre: Gao Xingjian

2

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

and Chinese Theatre Experimentalism, one of the first books on Gao’s theatrical writing by eminent Chinese scholar Henry Zhao, places Gao’s theatre work well within modern experimentalism and the Chinese avant-garde, but also clearly defines it as being embedded within the context of Zen Buddhism. Izabella Łabędzka, in Gao Xingjian’s Idea of Theatre (2009), makes a brief comparison between Gao’s work and the contemporary German playwright Peter Handke, who is associated with postdramatic theatre; however, she does not extend the comparison to a discussion of postdramatic theatre in a larger theatrical context. Jessica Yeung, in Ink Dances in Limbo – Gao Xingjian’s Writing as Cultural Translation (2008), discusses modernist and postmodernist writing in terms of Gao’s theatre but she does not make a direct reference to specific contemporary theatrical trends. Sy Ren Quah’s Gao Xingjian and Transcultural Chinese Theater (2004) is one of the most exhaustive studies of Gao’s theatre and places him in the larger context of performance theory and philosophical discourses; it also defines him as a transcultural intellectual. However, Quah still tends to view Gao’s work in isolation and emphasizes a West–East paradigm. Similarly, Chinese scholars such as Huang Mei-hsü, Lin Kehuan and Gilbert Fong consider Gao’s work and his ‘Chineseness’; they hail him as the main exponent of the Chinese avant-garde. However, other scholars have begun to discuss Gao’s theatre in a different way. Chen Xiaomei’s early chapter ‘Wilder, Mei Lanfang and Huang Zuolin – a “Suggestive Theatre Revisited” ’ (1995) engages in a direct comparison between Gao’s 1985 play Wild Man and American playwright Thornton Wilder’s 1938 Our Town. While such a comparison relates Gao’s work to past traditions, it is still one of the few studies that directly and systematically compares Gao with other non-Chinese writers. More recently, Claire Conceison, in her article ‘The French Gao Xingjian, Bilingualism and Ballade Nocturne’ (2009), suggests that

Introduction

3

there is a need to look at Gao’s work beyond his Chineseness, which she calls ‘fraught and fractured’ (ibid.: 302). She goes on to argue that the parallels between Gao and French contemporary theatre should be explored. Conceison calls for a different approach to Gao’s work, one that would associate Gao with contemporary theatrical practices. Todd Coulter’s 2014 book Transcultural Aesthetics in the Plays of Gao Xingjian does consider Gao’s theatrical work in this light. Both Conceison and Coulter’s works are important because Gao wrote his post-exile plays in both French and Chinese, which is a very significant aspect of his transnationalism. Outside the sinologist scholarly circles, however, Gao is still a figure of mystery, largely unknown in English-speaking countries despite being awarded a Nobel Prize. Those who recognize him most probably only recall his name, as a novelist, in relation to his novel Soul Mountain. Gao began his writing career as a playwright after the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966–76). In the 1980s, he was a playwright in residence at the People’s Art Theatre in Beijing, where he worked with the influential director Lin Zhaohua on such experimental and ground-breaking plays as Alarm Signal (Juedui xinhao; 1982), Bus Stop (Chezhan; 1983) and Wild Man (Yeren; 1985). His plays are scarcely seen in the UK and US, and despite being staged in France, Italy, Austria and Germany, major studies on contemporary European theatre have overlooked and failed to acknowledge Gao’s theatrical work. So why is Gao’s theatrical work not considered as influential as that of other experimental playwrights and directors, to mention a few, such as Elfriede Jelinek, herself a Nobel Prize winner, and Peter Handke, with whom, as we will see in this study, he shares a similar approach to theatre and concerns about writing for theatre? Is Gao, a heavyweight of contemporary theatre, really only destined to be remembered by sinologists and Asian literary academic scholars? If so, why?

4

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

No definite answer can be given but there is the potential for Gao’s work to be regarded as being as significant as that of Handke or Jelinek within the contemporary theatrical context. In Transcultural Aesthetics, Coulter questions Gao’s marginality and his position beyond cultural boundaries which Gao himself wants to transcend. He defines the Gao plays written in France, after he left China in 1987, as belonging both to France and ‘China’s contemporary cultural legacy’ (2014: 135). Coulter’s book, which fills an important gap in Gao’s scholarship, reconfirms Gao as a transcultural intellectual and translator of Western and Eastern cultures, although he questions Gao’s identity by focusing, unlike other scholars, on the French plays. This book, Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays, builds on this past scholarship but tries to avoid the uncomfortable West–East paradigm by transcending a debate on Gao’s cultural identity, because its object is to open up the possibility of locating Gao’s work within the contemporary debate of theatre and drama studies. A discussion of Gao’s identity and the emphasis on his marginality, even his transculturalism, have so far limited the breadth and the impact of his work. Ironically, by defining Gao’s writing as transcultural – what Coulter calls a ‘transcultural sensibility of identity expressed through the unique aesthetics of his dramaturgy’ (2014: 114) – Gao’s work has not only been forced into a secondary marginality, but has also been relegated to a position in between China and the West, two cultural categories that, conversely, have been seen as two monolithic entities with very little in common. In particular, there has been a disregard for the continuous dialogue – and the studies made of the subject – between China and the West, whose boundaries and differences are not so fixed and separate. To be clear, I believe these past studies all point to the need to see Gao’s work within different contexts. Apart from Coulter’s work, Quah’s book is particularly important and revealing of the transcultural nature of Gao’s oeuvre. I am also not defining Gao’s theatrical

Introduction

5

work in strict cultural and artistic categories, the ‘-isms’ that Gao has been so keen to avoid. This book is intended to add a new perspective on the author’s post-1987 theatrical work, to reveal a new relevance that will link it to that of other contemporary greats. The book relates his post-exile plays to the postdramatic theatrical tradition that has developed within a European and North American contemporary theatrical context and has spread beyond the West, to Asia, and to Latin America. In doing this, on the one hand this book attempts to situate Gao more strictly within a Western context and, on the other, challenges Gao’s marginality and allows him his rightful position in European contemporary theatre. Most importantly in this study, I want to consider that postdramatic theatre, though conceived and developed in the West, has a transnational resonance – examples of which can be seen in Latin America, Australia and Asia. In theatre studies there is now academic interest in the connection between transnationalism and postdramatic theatre as well as in the transnational examples of postdramatic theatre. Christina Marinetti’s essay, ‘Transnational, Multilingual, and Postdramatic – Rethinking the Location of Translation in Contemporary Theatre’ (in Translation in Theatre and Performance, 2013), refers to examples of transnational postdramatic theatre as a form of cultural production but strictly within the context of Translation Studies, and the author focuses mainly on performance rather than on the dramatic text. The edited volume of essays Theatre and Performance in the Asia-Pacific: Regional Modernities in the Global Era (2013) opens up a discourse on transnational global theatre in the Asia Pacific; however, it focuses mainly on South East Asia and Australia. Having spent some time in Asia – in Singapore and in China – I have seen first-hand examples of postdramatic theatre. In the Chinese context, upcoming directors like Wang Chong1 have used Peter Handke and Heiner Müller’s plays as a springboard to create a

6

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

physical multimedia theatre. Similarly, in Hong Kong, the famous and eclectic theatre company Zuni Icosahedron2 can be seen embracing postdramatic practices; the same can be said of prominent Taiwanese director Stan Lai.3 The term ‘postdramatic’, which translates as hou huaju, has been used in a Chinese context when talking about contemporary forms of theatre (mainly in papers in the journal Jintian). However, despite many postdramatic plays being adapted and having provided inspiration for contemporary Chinese theatre, the term is not widely used by Chinese scholars. They still prefer to use the term shiyan, meaning ‘experimental’, when discussing a kind of theatre that should be considered postdramatic. This book is an acknowledgement that postdramatic theatre is working through different theatrical and cultural traditions, and, while this is not the place to make a strong connection with non-Western contemporary theatrical work, I do want to call attention to the fact that there is scope to undertake further studies on postdramatic theatre in the context of Asian and Sinophone countries. The aim of this book is twofold. First, this monograph will contextualize Gao’s theatre work, in particular his post-exile plays (post-1987), strictly outside the Chinese context4 and West–East paradigm, to place his work within a larger contemporary theatre tradition. This will enable us to assess the cultural links of Gao’s theatre with the international theatrical community. Secondly, the wider aim of this book is to consider the term ‘postdramatic’ anew by expanding on Lehmann’s definition. I would use here a different expression – ‘postdramatic transnationalism’. By this, I refer to a type of cultural discourse that is, above all, intercultural and cross-cultural. It is a type of cultural discourse that has found its best expression through theatre and drama, but also explains how cultural networks have shaped the contemporary global landscape beyond national boundaries. This expression not only refers to a transnational artistic and theatrical trend that is fluid, flexible and accounts for a variety of

Introduction

7

styles and influences, but also interprets transnationalism by the very nature of a postdramatic discourse. In its original usage, transnationalism often refers to processes whereby immigrants build social fields that link their country of origin to their country of settlement; in this sense the term ‘transnational’ is connected to cultural diaspora. An expanded definition of transnationalism can be found in Robin Cohen’s argument that transnational bonds are no longer ‘cemented by migration or by exclusive territorial claims’ (1996: 515). Similarly, Chris Berry and Mary Farquhar’s definition of transnationalism describes it as a phenomenon that exceeds the national and is part of ‘a larger arena connecting differences, so that a variety of regional, national, and local specificities impact upon each other in various types of relationships ranging from synergy to contest’ (2006: 4–5). Ato Quayson and Girish Daswani distinguish between diaspora and transnationalism by stating that while diaspora creates ‘a distant homeland in the present’, transnationalism is about transcending ‘geographical, social and economic boundaries and the political and cultural barriers and boundary-making processes’ (2013: 18). Building on this expanded definition of transnationalism, postdramatic transnationalism comes to describe a type of cultural discourse that mirrors the development of postdramatic theatre in different countries and continents. The word ‘postdramatic’, moreover, as a suffix to transnationalism, describes a type of transnationalism that is postdramatic in nature, fluid and open, but also that has, above all, moved forward from its ‘dramatic’ peak. Here the word ‘dramatic’ figuratively refers to ‘the bipolar model’ of transnationalism – home country versus destination country (Quayson and Daswani 2013) – whereas ‘postdramatic’ refers to a transnationalism that, beyond this model, has embraced its own hybridity. Postdramatic, like post-human and other post-isms, stands for both the complexity of contemporary culture and also, because of its origin in the theatrical

8

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

context, relates to the movement and mobility of cultural, artistic and aesthetic forms. Relating this back to Gao, Quah and Coulter have stressed in their studies that the author is a transcultural intellectual. Here, it is worth referring back to Gao’s Nobel Prize speech and his definition of ‘cold literature’ as one ‘that will escape for its own survival’ and that does not ‘let itself be strangled by society’ (Gao 2008: 7–8). He refers to a literature that both transcends national boundaries and makes profound revelations about the universality of human nature (ibid.: 8). Gao’s conception of ‘cold literature’ can also be applied to his belief in a theatre that is not merely transcultural, as is defined by both Quah and Coulter. Quah states that Gao’s transcultural theatre exemplifies a ‘cultural exchange and integration’ that can be ‘collaboratory and contradictory’ (Quah 2004: 14) and asserts that it ultimately promotes a dialogue between cultures (ibid.: 13). Quah’s argument is important in that he views Gao’s work as linked to the origin of modern Chinese theatre and the latter as product of its interaction with twentieth-century Western avant-garde. However, Quah also misses an important point – that Western avant-garde is actually indebted to Asian theatre. For instance, Bertolt Brecht had looked at Chinese Peking opera for inspiration, and Antonin Artaud had found in Balinese theatre an ideal model for a conception of Total Theatre. With this in mind, Min Tian’s The Poetics of Difference and Displacement (2008) gives great consideration to the process of cultural exchange between European avant-garde and East Asian theatre. Picking up on Quah’s definition of transcultural theatre, Coulter defines transculturalism as exemplifying the ‘direct influences’ from China and France and asserts that Gao has negotiated with Chinese and French theatrical traditions, in creating a different form of theatre while relegating himself to a ‘peripheral’ position, dissociated from any ideology (Coulter 2014: 10–1). Both Quah and Coulter have attached the term ‘transcultural’ specifically to Gao’s

Introduction

9

work in theatre and thus stress his freedom and also his intended marginality. Conceison, in turn, highlights Gao’s ‘Frenchness’ and his bilingualism (he writes plays fluently in both French and Chinese, sometimes at the same time) without specifically using the term transcultural. She claims that Gao, especially with regard to Ballade Nocturne (2007), which I analyse in the last chapter of this book, transcends and reconstructs ‘categories of nation, language, genre’ among others (Conceison 2009: 315). All three of these scholars focus on the question of identity, an identity that they all admit is fluid and free from specific cultural ideologies. It is from the fluidity and the freedom inherent in their definition of transculturalism that I take inspiration to define transnationalism in Gao’s theatre, beyond questions of identity. My definition of transnationalism as connected to Gao’s theatre does not look for traces of ‘Frenchness’ or ‘Chineseness’ but merely acknowledges them in the fluidity of the theatrical discourse that is postdramatic in its essence of being post and beyond ideologies, because postdramatic theatre cannot be assigned to an individual nation or culture. On one hand, despite being coined in Germany, the term postdramatic describes theatrical practices that have developed in many countries across Western Europe, North America and beyond. On the other, it embodies a post-essentialist discourse that defies monolithic definitions because it questions, transcends and deconstructs the validity of specific ideological definitions. It is from this perspective that I see in Gao’s theatre a transnationalism that transcends a discourse of cultural and, above all, national identity. I use the term ‘transnational’ because the history of the term, as mentioned above, is embedded within a discourse of transnational mobility, of intellectuals working transnationally and cultural trends and products being produced across several countries and cultures, which define much of contemporary global culture. The word, as seen through Gao’s definition of literature, also points to a transcendence of cultural discourses

10

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

– which, though used by Gao, I do not associate with universality, nor would refer to a constraining cultural-specific discourse. It is, for this reason, that while looking at the aesthetics of theatrical and literary practices, I also strongly refer to cultural discourses that are anti-essentialist and defy dogmatisms, and these are normally connected to post-structuralism and postmodernism. I will make specific references to the ideologies of Lacan, Derrida, Foucault and Baudrillard among others, which find resonance in Gao’s plays and in postdramatic theatre. Within a discourse on the aesthetics of theatre, an important aspect that will be discussed in the second part of this book is that of freedom, of individualism connected to a debate of hegemonic societal forces. This will help me question Gao’s anti-ideological stance and his apolitical approach compared with Lehmann’s approach, in his definition of postdramatic theatre.

Postdramatic theatre My approach to postdramatic theatre reflects the post-essentialist nature of the expression ‘postdramatic transnationalism’ – that which considers the fluidity and the openness of definitions, especially as far as wide cultural practices are concerned. The term ‘postdramatic theatre’ has provoked some scholarly controversy, not least about its origin and about the scholar who first coined it. The German theatre academic Hans-Thies Lehmann used the term in his 1999 German book Postdramatisches Theater, subsequently translated into English by Karen Jürs-Munby in 2006. Lehmann, in turn, referred to Richard Schechner’s 1988 application of the word to happenings (Lehmann 2006: 26).5 However, ignoring Lehmann’s reference to Schechner, the American theatre scholar Elinor Fuchs, in an extremely critical review of the English translation (published by TDR The Drama Review, in 2008), accused Lehmann of having stolen the term from

Introduction

11

Andrzej Wirth, Lehmann’s collaborator and mentor (Fuchs 2008: 179).6 In an issue of the same journal in that same year, Lehmann responded to the accusation, stating that indeed he was the one who theorized the use of the term while in conversation with Wirth. He added that even if this had not been the case, using a word is very different from developing and elaborating a term by making it into a concept (Lehmann 2008: 16). I would agree with Lehmann because even if he did not coin the term, he was the first one to theorize an aesthetic approach based on it. Controversy apart, more than a decade after Lehmann’s German publication, scholars have lamented that the term has been misused, or rather over-used. In ‘After Postdramatic Theater’, Bernd Stegemann, a German critic and dramaturge, criticizes Lehmann’s vision and definitions for exactly what Lehmann was trying to avoid, i.e. being prescriptive and dogmatic. In his view, Lehmann’s notion has become so prescriptive that practitioners in Germany felt compelled to avoid using dramatic forms like characters and narratives in order to attract funding (Stegemann 2008: 23). What needs to be clarified here is that Lehmann does not only attempt to categorize a wide generation of theatre-makers sharing a common aesthetic on both sides of the Atlantic from the 1970s (and in some cases 1960s – Peter Handke’s Offending the Audience, Kaspar are from the late 60s) through to the 1990s. As Lehmann himself states, he also wants ‘to develop an aesthetic logic of the new theatre’ (2006: 18). These practitioners, especially those mentioned by Lehmann following the experimentation of old avant-gardes, were consciously pushing forward the boundaries of theatre and further revolutionizing conventional dramatic structures and playwriting. Moreover, as I said at the beginning, a few years later, similar theatrical practices could be seen outside Europe and North America, in South America, Australia and Asia among others. So, in this sense, Lehmann has imposed an overreaching aesthetic, and has given a name to it, which

12

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

despite being to some extent descriptive, helps understand common theatrical trends amongst several theatre practitioners. In the introduction to his book, Karen Jürs-Munby, Lehmann’s translator, states that the benefits of Lehmann’s approach are in the possibility of discovering ‘surprising new insights’ into existing work (2006: 11) and in providing practitioners, scholars and students with ‘an invaluable theoretical vocabulary for reflecting on this work and for articulating its aesthetics and politics’ (2006: 14). It is my strong opinion that Lehmann’s study explains exactly what has changed in theatrical practices since the 1970s and what all those new theatrical practices have in common. As Fuchs concurs in later and far more positive studies of Lehmann’s concept, another way to understand Lehmann’s contribution is to look to the Hungarian scholar Peter Szondi’s idea of ‘a crisis of the dramatic, witnessed in the failure of “absolute dialogue”’ (Fuchs 2011: 64), which refers to the changes taking place from the end of the nineteenth century, and continuing up to and beyond Brecht in the mid-twentieth century. Fuchs stresses that Lehmann broadens ‘Szondi’s archaeology of drama’ that witnessed the decay of dialogue, to ‘the mutual estrangement of drama and theater’ (ibid.). In this sense, the theoretical breadth of Lehmann’s concept helps continue the debate of a drama–theatre relationship in crisis, as will be explained in Chapter 1. Similarly, Jürs-Munby states that, since the scholars Nick Kaye and Johannes Birringer had rejected a postmodern style based on ‘postmodern theories of textuality and visual representation’ and postmodern architecture that they found ill-fitted to define theatrical practices and relations between performance and text (2006: 14), Lehmann provides an aesthetic of Postmodern Theatre that is a ‘missing link’ between modernistic theatre and contemporary practices (2006: 14). As I stated at the beginning of this Introduction, my understanding of postdramatic theatre in the expression of postdramatic transnationalism is fluid and avoids prescriptive and contrived aesthetic

Introduction

13

norms. What I am interested in is the cultural breadth of Lehmann’s definition, which despite his prescriptive aesthetic discourse has a theoretical relevance in describing how the function of theatre and drama has changed and how the crisis (mentioned by Szondi) has evolved. Consequently, when looking at Gao’s post-exile plays, I will not only look for the aesthetic signs of the postdramatic in his work, but also examine how his plays contribute to a discourse of dramatic crisis. That is why, in terms of theoretical framework, I will refer not only to Lehmann’s study and ideas, but also to Fuchs’, because despite their intellectual differences, both have examined the same kind of theatre and both announced a similar development of theatrical discourses and practices. I discuss this further in Chapter 1. It is no coincidence that at the very beginning of her introduction to Lehmann’s translation, Jürs-Munby mentions Fuchs’ most important book on theatre, The Death of Character, and concurs that, like Lehmann, Fuchs also explores ‘the relationship between drama and the no-longer dramatic forms of theatre’ (2006: 1). In Fuchs’ book, the focus is on the discourse of subjectivity or of ‘self ’ in theatre. This discourse of subjectivity, as Coulter also suggests, is particular relevant when looking at Gao’s theatre.

Gao Xingjian’s theatrical origins How does Gao’s theatre work fit into this debate on postdramatic theatre? Some of the answers to this question can be deduced from looking at Gao’s theatrical journey. The origin of Gao’s dramatic works can be associated with the theatrical debate and the theatrical landscape in China from the end of 1970s into the 1980s, which saw a return to Western sources, and to Chinese tradition (Yu 1996: 5–7, Dong 1998: 13–4, Shi 1998: 1–32, Tian 2008: 175–92). Translations of absurdist theatrical works of the likes of Eugène Ionesco, Jean Genet,

14

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

Samuel Beckett and Edmund Albee introduced modernist Western theatre to China (Shi et al. 1980). Moreover, modernist experimental approaches to theatre by Vsevolod Meyerhold, Bertolt Brecht, Antonin Artaud and Peter Brook entered the Chinese debate on theatre that had tried to distance itself from realist theatre and Stanislavsky. The latter had been associated with, and used to form an idea of, Socialist Realism in theatre (Ferrari 2004: 33–4 and 60). In the 1950s, Shanghai director Huang Zuolin7 began the debate on theatrical methodology by comparing the work of Stanislavsky, Mei Lanfang8 and Brecht in an essay eventually published in 1962 (Huang 1986: 3–8). According to Shiao-Ling S. Yu, among others,9 Huang Zuolin urged theatremakers to opt for a Brechtian methodology as opposed to accepting Stanislavsky’s limitations of realism and naturalism. He recognized that Brecht wrote his essay on the alienation effect after watching a performance by Mei Lanfang (Yu 1996: 5). Ferrari, instead, refers to Zhou Xian’s ‘Bulaixite de youhuo yu women de “wudu”’ (Brecht’s seduction and our ‘misinterpretations’) and discusses a misinterpretation of Huang Zuolin’s preference for Brecht’s approach to theatre. Later on in the 1980s, Huang Zuolin theorized about the conception of a xieyi theatre, encompassing a fusion of Stanislavsky, Mei Lanfang and Brecht’s approach to theatre (Zuolin 1990). Huang, however, still emphasized the importance of Brecht’s idea of the relationship between the actor and his/her role and the actor and the audience in relation to the idea of fourth wall (Huang 1986: 1–18). Gao’s pre-exile theatre developed from the experimental/avantgarde theatre of the 1980s,10 of which he was believed to be a principal exponent. He entered the debate on theatre when he published his first collection of essays, Dui yizhong xiandai xiju de zhuiqiu (In the Pursuit of a Modern Theatre) in 1988, in which he expresses his preference for a Brechtian approach to theatre (Gao 1988: 52–6). Conversely, Huang Zuolin’s idea of xieyi, which stands for ‘a form of art mediation that aims at transcending language or any other medium’ (Zhao

Introduction

15

2000: 170), directly influenced some of Gao’s principles. Huang’s use of the term relates to Brecht and also, to some extent, Mei Lanfang’s anti-illusionist idea of a theatre that breaks down the ‘fourth wall’ (Tian 2008: 177) and stands for non-illusionism. On the other side of the coin, as mentioned earlier on, it is not a coincidence that the European avant-garde theatre of this period borrows elements from Chinese traditional theatre (xiqu), through what Min Tian defines as a process of ‘inter-displacement and replacement of both avant-garde and the traditional’ (ibid.: 198). Thus, while Brecht and Meyerhold borrowed elements of Asian and particularly Chinese theatre in their attempt to create new theatrical practices, Chinese avant-garde theatre-makers rediscovered the practices of xiqu by connecting to Western modernist and avant-garde theatre. This is especially the case of Gao who continued to look back to xiqu. Coulter dedicates his attention to the connection between jingju – Peking opera, one of the many forms of xiqu – and Gao’s theatre, especially in terms of a ‘complex system of self-awareness between performer and character’ (Coulter 2014: 41). In order to avoid a discourse on Gao’s theatre and his cultural identity, it is important to state that the connection between Gao and Chinese traditional theatre has helped shape Gao’s theatrical work. But it is also important to stress that many of the postdramatic notions of presentation rather than representation, of the changed performer–character relationship among others, find strong resonance in Asian traditional theatrical practices, whose principles were not based on the conception of theatre as mimesis of reality. Lehmann himself makes this association: Indian Kathakali or Japanese Noh theatre are structured completely differently and consist essentially of dance, chorus and music, highly stylized ceremonial procedures, narrative and lyric texts, while theatre in Europe amounted to the representation, the ‘making present’ (Vergegenwärtigung) of speeches and deeds on stage through mimetic dramatic play (2006: 21).

16

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

To some extent, through a process of inter-displacement and replacement, through the borrowing of theatrical practices of theatremakers like Brecht and Meyerhold, Asian theatre has influenced Western contemporary theatre. This demonstrates the transnational nature of postdramatic theatre and that it is an evolution of modernist practices whose origin lies in a connection to non-Western practices. Conversely, this is at the heart of Gao’s transnationalism which has, to some extent, reintroduced back into Western theatre theatrical practices which were born through a dialogue between Western and Eastern practices. Vsevolod Meyerhold was one of the major influences on Gao. His method for actors, ‘biomechanics’, reduces acting to the expressions of emotions through controlled movements, ‘a sense of complete self-awareness and self-control in performance’ (Brown 1995: 176). Directors like Jerzy Grotowski and Peter Brook have also made use of this approach and have been associated with Gao’s theatre. Gao incorporates their ideas into his theatre, but, in his own response to the director’s tyranny, he urges dramatists to think about stage directions, urging them to take more control of their plays (Gao 1993: 54). In his post-exile plays, Gao focuses on performer–character relation through the notion of jiadingxing.11 This forms the basis of many of his post-exile plays and will be explored further in Chapter 1. Chen Jide links Gao’s theatre, also, to the idea of Total Theatre, wanquan de xiju, which revives Chinese traditional dramatic practices, making use of a wide theatrical linguistic spectrum or chang nian zuo da (singing, reciting, playing and acrobatics) (2004: 120). An example of this can be found in all Gao’s plays with their consistent use of dance, physical theatre, puppetry and mime and especially in the last two theatrical works, Snow in August (Bayuexue; 1997) and Ballade Nocturne (2007), both analysed in the last chapter of this book. The plays from the pre-exile/pre-1987 period, Bus Stop, Alarm Signal and Wild Man, reflect the theatrical debate of the time, but

Introduction

17

also see Gao’s experimenting with modernist theatre, which is still rooted on the dramatic. The Other Shore (Bi’an; 1986) signals a breakthrough in Gao’s plays and also in his personal life and career. The play was written in 1986, but never reached the stage in mainland China. In Chapter 1 we will examine the new paths opened up by this play, while giving a more exhaustive explanation of definitions and approaches. Through a close analysis of his plays,12 which will not only engage in an aesthetic–theatrical investigation, but also examine cultural and theoretical debates, this study will rediscover Gao’s theatre. Two aspects that will be taken into account in the analysis of the plays are: self-referentiality as connected to the idea of performativity (see Chap. 1 Note 2), a notion that will be explained in Chapter 1; and subjectivity, the representation of the self as exemplified in the theatrical practices, that can be equated with Gao’s concern about the role of the individual and the actor–performer–audience relationship as well as Fuchs’ idea of the self and the death of character. The second and the third chapters of this book apply a comparative perspective to Gao’s plays and also examine the motif of death and the fragmentation of the self with a focus on the function of language. Chapter 2 engages in a detailed comparison of Gao’s Between Life and Death (Shengsijie; 1991) and British playwright Crimp’s Attempts on Her Life (1997). The latter’s work has represented an alternative kind of theatre in his native Britain and like Gao, he also stands in the shadows of other postdramatic greats. Coincidentally, both plays deal with a woman’s social and psychological displacement and the idea of female entrapment within societal and narrative structures. Both plays tell the story of a woman, who is present on stage in the case of Gao’s and absent in the case of Crimp’s. Such a direct comparison will highlight more clearly the link between Gao and postdramatic theatre. Drawing on Beckett’s Happy Days and debating Beckett’s contribution to postdramatic theatre, Chapter 3 looks at one of Gao’s

18

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

most violent plays, Dialogue and Rebuttal (Duihua fangjie; 1992), in which the metaphorical death of two characters, a man and a woman, is enacted through a series of dialogues and through the characters’ physical embodiment of self-destruction. The motif of after-death catastrophe, present in both plays, exemplifies a theatre of perception – the dynamic of gazing and the self – the relation between the theatrical and reality, which, according to Fuchs, is determined by a crisis of ontological belief in the external real. There is an element of self-orientalizing in the play, with the introduction of a clearly religious Buddhist figure on stage. However, the selforientalizing element of the play does not diminish its postdramatic transnationalism. Transnationalism, in this case, can found in a kind of theatre that recreates a beyond-dramatic, beyond-death, transnational dimension, through the transcendence of a ‘staged death’. Chapters 4 and 5 introduce new elements to Gao’s theatre that question Gao’s anti-ideological stance in connection with the debate on the political and ideological in postdramatic theatre, which have been rejected by Lehmann’s vision. Both chapters deal with the idea of freedom and individualism, while still continuing to focus on the self and on theatrical openness. In one of Gao’s most complex but underrated plays, Nocturnal Wanderer (Yeyoushen; 1993), nuanced by the use of non-linear narrative, one can recognize an underpinning hidden political stance where individualism and the idea of freedom are questioned. The debate on the political potential of the postdramatic will be investigated. The paradigm of the death of character is also discussed in connection with Gao’s characterization of the main character who embodies a complex subjectivity. Here, transnationalism is questioned because it is the only case where Gao clearly states how a play can be adapted for a Western and a Chinese audience. Chapter 5 looks at Weekend Quartet (Zhuomo sichongzou; 1995), which is distinctly different from the other plays under discussion in that which presents semi-realist ‘named’ characters

Introduction

19

and a semi-realistic situation. The discussion on freedom and the political still continues to raise issues on representation of the real, this time linked to the concept of spectacle in theatre as connected to Baudrillard’s vision. The semi-realistic elements in the play question the possibility of a realist form of postdramatic theatre, a vision that seems to resonate in Fuchs’ more recent studies of postdramatic theatre. In a play that Coulter has deemed to be embodying a strong Frenchness, postdramatic transnationalism lies in Gao’s experimenting with theatrical approaches, transcending theatrical artistic boundaries and national ones. Moving onto Gao’s later plays, the last chapter assesses Death Collector (2000)13 – with some references to Snow in August (1997) and Ballade Nocturne (2007), and the way in which Gao is moving towards a postdramatic form of Total Theatre in a style that presents both an apparent textual and visual cacophony – while returning to the Chinese traditional genre of Peking opera in Snow in August, as well as to forms of dramatic closures in all three plays. References to Nietzsche’s ideas of tragedy and its relevance within postdramatic theatre will be also discussed.

1

Gao Xingjian and Postdramatic Theatre: The Other Shore – Between Lehmann and Fuchs

This chapter explains in further detail the terminologies used and the approach I have chosen to take in this book. I will start by looking at Gao’s 1986 play The Other Shore, which started a shift in Gao’s work towards a less ‘dramatic’ theatre. I then reconsider Lehmann and Fuchs’ positions in order to reconcile Gao’s shift within the context of postdramatic theatre.

The Other Shore – a shift in Gao Xingjian’s work While earlier plays Bus Stop, Alarm Signal and Wild Man see Gao experimenting with modernist theatre and are still rooted in the dramatic, it is The Other Shore that signals a breakthrough in his dramatic work – and, also, in his personal life and career. Written in 1986, the play never reached the stage in China. The Deputy President of the Beijing People’s Art Theatre, Yu Shizhi, despite being the most open-minded ‘art leader’ of the time, stopped rehearsals, because of the allegedly political meaning of the play, denouncing the masses as an oppressive group against the individual. A year later, Gao moved to France and has not returned to China since. Artistically in this play, Gao moves towards a non-representational kind of theatre by developing abstraction through a disruptive structure.

22

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

In approaching The Other Shore, no assumptions can be made about the story and its plot. The play opens with a playful intermezzo of actors playing with a rope that structurally introduces the passage of the characters to the other shore, a passage that is both physical and emotional. Characters/actors are introduced in their new physical and emotional dimension, which are set in dreamlike situations, where characters/visions appear and disappear after interacting with one other. There are two elements that help create the structure of the play: the stage directions in the text and the characters themselves. It is the sequences of exits and entrances that shape the development of the play, which, in turn, does not follow temporal or logical order. The pattern, as such, is created by the stage directions, the external non-speaking characters (for example, Card Player, Zen Master, Plaster Seller) entering the stage, the dialogues between two or more characters and the disappearance of either one of the characters or all of them from the stage. These sequences of scene units add a rhythm of sorts to the development of the play, one that picks up speed towards the end. The speed is indicated by the use of more dialogues in the first unit of scenes, fewer dialogues in the following units, and monologues and a lack of extensive dialogue towards the end. Moreover, the role of Crowd and its behaviour is another point of reference in the change of rhythm: Crowd’s behaviour is more dynamic at the beginning of the play and towards the end, whereas in the middle it is restricted to the background. The more pressing role of Crowd towards the end, and the diminished length of scene units, create a certain climax, which can be seen as a resolution of the dialogic rhythm of the play and, to some extent, it signals the gradual end of the characters’ actions on stage. The penultimate scene sees Man and uncontrollable mannequins and is the high point of the action; there is an almost total absence of dialogue in the scene as Man is left dealing with almost neurotic mannequins. In the last



Gao Xingjian and Postdramatic Theatre

23

scene, the actors cease to be characters, look back at their play and reveal themselves in their function as actors. I see the two aspects – the ‘diegetic location’ and the ‘characters’ – as being important elements of the play. The diegetic location is signified by the play’s title, The Other Shore (Bi’ an in Chinese, meaning the ‘other shore’ or the ‘other side’; L ’Autre rive, also meaning the ‘other shore’ in French), which represents the overall theme of the play, the essential drive of the characters’ search. The ‘other shore’ is the place the characters are striving to reach at the beginning of the play and also is the place where the characters find themselves, as well as the object of their search. It is the drive behind their journey. It is interesting to note that in Zen Buddhism prajñā pāramitā means literally ‘the wisdom that leads to the other shore’, also referred to as wisdom (Kapleau 1980: 374). The characters are faced with the impossibility of defining what the other shore is and this constant motif to the play is suggested by the surreal ambience that surrounds the characters, the stage directions that Gao uses to describe the location of the play and the actors’ actions themselves. Especially in reference to the latter, spatial references and spatial embodiments can be read by Gao’s idea of jiadingxing. The term jiadingxing refers, here, to a type of acting where the actor returns to storytelling and, from that point of view, he/she enters the role of the character he/she is performing; by doing so, he/she works through his/her own acting self and the role of the character but maintains some kind of neutrality in performing it. Actors’ actions shape the location through appealing to the audience’s imagination and not through the physicality of objects. Liu Zaifu interprets the play as representing the struggle of individuals to overcome loneliness under the pressure of society (Liu 2004: 86), hence adding a philosophical meaning to the play. Sy Ren Quah, instead, explains the ambience of the play by referring to Gao’s conception that the starting point of acting is in the use of theatrical space through actions and words (Quah 2002: 165). The focus is on

24

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

the use of space, strictly relating to the actors’ actions on stage, which exemplifies the idea of jiadingxing.1 In theatrical terms, Gao’s notion of jiadingxing is based on the idea that the stage representation of a play does not benefit from bearing a resemblance to reality, yet it still implies that what is offered on stage could be true. Quah uses the term ‘suppositionality’, suggesting that every element in the theatre is ‘artistically represented, subjectively imagined and thus, fundamentally unreal’ but still has some connection with reality (Quah 2004: 169). Zhao, instead, uses the term ‘hypotheticality’, stressing a degree of resemblance to reality by stimulating the audience’s imagination. Thus, we can call Gao’s theatre as a form of ‘hypothetical or suppositional theatre’. Going back to the role of characters/actors, Gao’s notion of acting does not totally obliterate the character’s psychological entity, but splits it. The lack of personal connotations and psychological depth makes them a functional part of the system of the performance, creating the rhythm of the performance. The only way to distinguish their role in the play is through the antagonism and the internal conflict between counterparts, gradually coming out from the unfolding of events and situations presented on stage. However, to some extent it is possible to draw a distinction between the main characters, such as Man and Crowd, from the sort of characters presented as a vision, such as Mother, Woman, Young Girl and the inhabitants of this strange place, such as Card Player, Zen Master and Stable Keeper. In particular, Man seems to show the traits of a more complete and fuller personality through the story he tells of himself, but again the emphasis is on the performability of the words that are spoken, and the theatrical effects of behaviour. As the denomination Man indicates, he is not referred to as a specific person with a name and identity. In this case, generality depersonalizes Man as a character, who comes to represent a man sui generis. The best example of the depersonalisation of characters is Crowd, who is referred to in



Gao Xingjian and Postdramatic Theatre

25

most of the text as an indefinite group having one voice that speaks for all. The use of these characters can be explained as a consequence of Gao’s original intention to use the play for actor training. In this case, Crowd would represent a group of actors trying to conform with one another. Within this context, the actors, who make use of their fullest potential by creating their role together with their acting partners, would use the second and third person alternatively when referring to themselves. According to Quah, Gao develops the principle of jiadingxing to deal with the direct connection between physical space on stage and the psychological impact of actors’ actions using this space in relation to the audience (Quah 2002: 166): he refers to Gao’s idea of ‘psychological field’ (xinli chang) (Gao 1996: 225), which through the exploration of actions and words, creates the suppositional setting of the play. In this sense, Quah stresses Gao’s interest in subjectivity, a feature which is intrinsic to Gao’s post-exile plays and will be one of the main areas analysed in this book. The theatrical implication of the use of jiadingxing principle and the exploration of subjectivity is the application of what Zhao calls ‘a theory of “Triplication”’: He first called it the triplication of the actor (yanyuan sanchongxing), but later triplication of the theatre (juchang sanchongxing) […] His main idea is that while realism stresses the performed, and theatricism stresses the performance, triplication tries to separate both of them from the actor leaving him a neutral ‘self ’ in between. The subjectivity, isolated and extracted in this manner, stands at the distance to the performance. The actor is now able to examine both his own person and his role but rising above both the presented and the presenting (2000: 119).

In practical terms, tripartition (sanchongxing) is conveyed by the actors’ use of split-person lines, which Gao argues derives from the use of asides and self-addressing in Chinese opera. Gao explains

26

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

that the three persons correspond to ‘his/her own person’, ‘an actor, a neutral medium that does not bear a relationship to his/her own particular experiences’, and ‘the character he/she creates’ (Gao 1988: 211). Another related term used to define Gao’s approach to character and acting is that of the neutral actor which will be looked at in more detail later, in the analysis of other plays. As we will see, some of the theatrical elements introduced by this play find a resonance in both Lehmann and Fuchs’ theoretical conceptions of postdramatic theatrical practices.

Lehmann’s postmodern theatre The term ‘postdramatic’ implies more than a simple rejection of the theatrical: postdramatic theatre has surpassed or transcended the dramatic by leaving narratives, plots and especially actions behind, and is focused instead on the ‘states’ or ‘aesthetic figurations of the theatre’, thus ‘showing rather a formation rather than a story, even though living actors play in it’ (2006: 68). In order to understand Lehmann’s definition, one should look at the journey of the ‘dramatic’ towards the privileging of the ‘theatrical’. Lehmann’s definition of the dramatic cites Aristotle’s Poetics as ‘an artificially constructed and composed course of actions’ (ibid.) based on the idea of mimesis: Aristotle’s Poetics couples imitation and action in the famous formula that tragedy is an imitation of human action, ‘mimesis praxeos’. The word ‘drama’ derives from the Greek δραν = to do. If one thinks of theatre as drama and as imitation, then action presents itself automatically as the actual object and kernel of this imitation (Lehmann 2006: 36).

A narrative, a plot with beginning, middle and end, is what Lehmann calls Aristotle’s need to give ‘a logical (namely dramatic) order to the confusing chaos and plenitude of Being’ (ibid.: 40). Szondi, instead,



Gao Xingjian and Postdramatic Theatre

27

considers the ‘Drama’ – with a capital ‘D’ – of modernity (or neoclassical drama) that stems from the Renaissance but also corresponds to ‘the traditional conception of the Drama’ (1983: 197). It is an absolute concept of drama as being ‘always primary’ and whose internal time is ‘always the present’. He argues that ‘time unfolds as an absolute, linear sequence in the present’ (ibid.: 196), dominated by dialogue, and intended as ‘interpersonal communication’, thus making Drama only the reproduction of ‘interpersonal relations’ and making the actor–role relationship invisible (Szondi and Hays 1983: 195). The nineteen-twentieth century ‘crisis of Drama’ that Szondi describes, citing writers such as Henrik Ibsen, Anton Chekhov, August Strindberg, Maurice Maeterlinck and Gerhart Hauptmann, is in the emergence of narrative practices in which the dramatic present is subjugated to the past and past events motivate the present (1983: 202).2 These writers created a ‘middle-class salon Drama’ that replaced neoclassical drama and transformed this into the epic,3 – in their view, to patch up the contradictions between content and form (Szondi and Hays 1983: 218). Lehmann clearly criticizes Szondi for turning ‘the epic theatre into a kind of universal key for understanding the recent developments’ (2006: 29), predominantly because he feels that this has made Brecht, with his idea of epic theatre, the rightful successor to the ‘dramatic’ (ibid). In Lehmann’s opinion, Brecht’s conception of theatre was still anchored to the element of fable (story) (2006: 33). Lehmann’s critical opposition to Brecht – he refers to postdramatic theatre as ‘post-Brechtian theatre’ (ibid.) – does not translate to a total rejection of the Brechtian theory of theatre. When he states that postdramatic theatre ‘situates itself in a space opened up by the Brechtian inquiries into the presence and consciousness of the process of representation’, we understand that he acknowledges Brecht’s influence on postdramatic practices. In this regard, I agree with John Freeman when he argues that the spectator’s self-awareness

28

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

of the artificiality of theatre is implied in Lehmann’s rejection of dramatic illusions in their representational mimetic function (2013: 226). However, Lehmann gives much importance to theatre practitioners like Artaud and Grotowski: Artaud’s Total Theatre, where spectacle is a primary element in the sequence of elements, and Grotowski’s focus on the actor as breaking through the unconscious. Besides the question of influences and roots of the postdramatic, what is important is the fact that Lehmann depicts the journey of dramatic to what he sees as its redundancy and this gives way to new theatrical practices rejecting the idea of theatre ‘as a representation of a fictive cosmos’ (2006: 31): When it is obviously no longer simply a matter of broken dramatic illusion or epicizing distance; when obviously neither plots, nor plastically shaped dramatis personae are needed; when neither dramatic dialectical collision of values nor even identifiable figures are necessary to produce ‘theatre’ (and all of this is sufficiently demonstrated by the new theatre), then the concept of drama – however differentiated, all-embracing and watered down it may become – retains so little substance that it loses its cognitive value. It no longer serves the purpose of theoretical concepts to sharpen perception but instead obstructs the cognition of theatre, as well as the theatre text (Lehmann 2006: 34).

The concept of the dramatic, as synonymous of unity and mimesis of reality, thus becomes inadequate and we need to talk, instead, about the ‘theatrical’ and about theatrical texts where unity and mimesis disappear. The postdramatic in the journey Lehmann describes – from pre-dramatic Greek Tragedies, dramatic Racine and postdramatic post-1970s theatre, such as ‘Robert Wilson’s visual dramaturgy’ (ibid.) – points to a kind of theatre that is anti-representational and breaks the invisible actor–role relation, as defined by Szondi. Lehmann uses the analogy of a painting and its relation to the viewer to explain the changes in the new kind of dramaturgy:



Gao Xingjian and Postdramatic Theatre

29

The seemingly ‘static’ painting, too, is in reality merely the now ‘definite’ state of the congealed pictorial work, in which the eye of the viewer wanting to access the picture has to become aware of and reconstructs its dynamic and process (2006: 68).

The dynamic he refers to is not a ‘dramatic’ but rather a ‘scenic’ process. The painting analogy is telling in that it represents two aspects of postdramatic theatre: the self-referential nature of postdramatic theatre, namely the theatre that brings attention to its own construct – the viewer’s awareness of the painting creative process ­–­and the active participation of the spectator in extracting meaning from the theatrical experience – the viewer reconstructing this very process. These two aspects define the main features part of Lehmann’s definition of postdramatic theatre. The self-reflexive or self-referentiality is connected to Lehmann’s emphasis on the ‘real’ as being ‘on equal footing with fictive’ (2006: 103): It is not the occurrence of anything ‘real’ as such but its self-reflexive use that characterizes the aesthetic of postdramatic theatre. This selfreferentiality allows us to contemplate the value, the inner necessity and the significance of the extra-aesthetic in the aesthetic and thus the displacement in the concept of the latter (ibid.).

He asserts that the relation between content and form is no longer relevant. It is the aesthetic and the extra-aesthetic that counts; here the ‘aesthetic’ refers to the ‘staged construct’ and the ‘extra-aesthetic’ to the ‘real contiguity’. He defines a ‘theatre of the real’, a theatre that brings attention to its own physicality, its own tangible reality. He uses the example of the presence of crude violence on stage, which, in his view, brings the audience closer to the physical happening on stage, where ‘the real asserts itself against the staged on stage’ and forces ‘the spectator to wonder whether they should react to the events on stage as fiction (i.e. aesthetically) or as reality (for example morally)’ (Lehmann 2006: 104).

30

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

Before going into detail about the role of the spectator in this predicament, we need to look for a wider signification to this notion of ‘theatre of the real’, that will better define self-referentiality. Elsewhere in the book, Lehmann refers to a theatre of events as ‘a matter of execution of acts that are real in the here and now’. The focus is on the very moment the events, the actions, happen, beyond the ‘traces of meaning or cultural meaning’ (2006: 104). The real, in this sense, refers to the immediacy of the act on stage, not to the meaning the act could refer to. Looking at Stegemann’s paper ‘After Postdramatic Theater’, we find that the implication of this notion of ‘there and now’ theatre does not only emphasize the real but also the performative, especially when we look beyond the actions portrayed on stage at the function of language used on stage. As we will see later on, when examining Gao’s post-exile plays, performativity4 and self-referentiality are essential elements of his theatrical conception. Stegemann uses the analogy of the rose, intended here as a word pronounced on stage, to explain this: ‘A rose is a rose is a rose’ became the emblem of this epoch and the model of the dual concept of a symbol. On the one hand, the rose refers to nothing more than the word rose; on the other, the assembly of the words creates its own construct, and its own reality. Just like a childhood game, where a word is repeated again and again until it loses all meaning, this assembly of words causes the word rose to lose its reference to the flower. Instead, priority is placed on something performative, in which the words mean nothing more than that which their pronunciation itself creates (Stegemann 2008: 15).

Thus, ‘rose’ as a word loses its signifying connotation and is reduced to the level of meaningless sound but has a performative value. The implication is a ‘fascination with self-reference’ that focuses on ‘the act of performance’. In terms of the language being used, the focus is on the utterance itself. The voice of the actors loses its function to create meaning, to stand for the illusion of a character’s psychological



Gao Xingjian and Postdramatic Theatre

31

depth and fictive narrative role; but it is the ‘material value of the voice’ (Stegemann 2008: 15) that becomes important. Performativity and self-referentiality do not only indicate the physicality and the real in theatre but also refer to the idea of metadrama,5 the idea of a ‘play within a play’ that is used in modern drama by writers such as Brecht and Handke with strong self-referential reference to the artificial medium of drama (Hornby 1986: 15). David Barnett explains that dramatists such as Brecht and Pirandello used metadrama or variations of it to question both representation itself – creating a ‘representational hall of mirrors’ (2008: 15) – and the idea of the dramatic creating such a representation. However, they still use representation, while postdramatic theatre is beyond representation (ibid.), beyond fiction. Its aim is to present situations in which ‘theatre is emphasized as a situation not as a fiction’ (Lehmann 2006: 128). Thus, Lehmann is not really in favour of using the term ‘metadrama’, even in relation to some writers, who normally fall under the postdramatic umbrella and can be associated with metadrama. Handke’s early plays, like Offending the Audience (1966) and Self-Accusation (1968), are all about the process of performing, questioning the audience about what has been staged. Lehmann sees these plays, despite still being bound to metadrama, as having a self-referential quality that contributes to the ‘internal erosion of theatrical signs’ and that problematizes the ‘“reality” as a reality of theatrical signs’, the latter being reduced to the metaphor of their own ‘depletion’, their ‘empty circularity’ (Lehmann 2006: 56). Lehmann is making the point that, despite being rooted in metadrama, Handke’s plays not only question the ‘dramatic model of communication’ but use language without addressing a representational meaning or referring to a reality beyond the physical act of performing. In this sense, he states that the audience has to read ‘the forms themselves, the language games and the players in their here and now presented “being-as-it-is”’ (ibid.) and this creates a different

32

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

audience–actor dynamic and a different relationship between the audience and the actions on stage. This leads to another aspect of postdramatic theatre, that of ‘spectatorship’. The role of the viewer in the theatrical experience is important – according to Lehmann the spectators themselves are encouraged to define their situation, by taking responsibility for their participation in the theatre (2006: 103). As mentioned earlier on, Lehmann states that the audience should take a moral stand, almost in a political sense, when watching a play. For example, when violence is used on stage, the spectators should decide whether or not this is acceptable. However, the active role of spectators is, above all, in making sense of what is presented to them and being able to work through the theatrical signs. In the absence of a plot, where theatre is no fictional mimesis of the real but more an enactment of the real in its own randomness (Lehmann 2006: 83), Lehmann asserts that it is a theatrical experience dense in signs, and illustrates ‘an aversion to organic closure, a tendency towards extreme, distortion, unsettling uncertainty and paradox’ (ibid.). He discusses the audience’s own ability to react and make decisions on how to participate in the process presented to it when the actor does not play a role but is ‘a performer offering his/her presence on stage for contemplation’ (Lehmann 2006: 135). The actor–audience relationship is radically changed when the spectators actively participate; their ability to experience the ‘situations’ shown on stage make the theatrical experience a text, partially written by the spectators themselves. Thus, signification only occurs through the spectators’ attempt to discern events/facts amongst the chaos. The ‘chaos’, the paradoxes or unsettling uncertainty, are created through different theatrical strategies, alternative forms used by directors and writers to create a non-dramatic kind of theatre. In the course of this book, I have chosen to discuss a few of these elements, those that can be easily traceable in those of Gao’s works under



Gao Xingjian and Postdramatic Theatre

33

discussion: dream images, the use of monologue or what Lehmann calls ‘monologies’ and narrative plays, and finally, physicality and musicalization. ‘Dream images’, which Gao employs in his work through the presentation of surreal dream-like situations, originate in surrealism. They make use of the fragmented nature of dreams and are considered ‘the model par excellence of a non-hierarchical theatre aesthetic’, and they take shape for example in collages and montages (Lehmann 2006: 84). The second element calls on Lehmann’s term ‘monologies’, which are slightly different from dramatic monologues. These will be explained in more detail with regard to Gao’s theatre and are ‘a symptom and index for the postdramatic displacement of the concept of theatre’ (ibid.: 128). It is a kind of theatre that has lost its representational function, with actors no longer playing characters but reduced instead to being an ‘apostrophe on the theatron axis’ (ibid.). Thus, within this context ‘monologies’, ‘symptom and index’ for such displacements become ‘a basic model of theatre’ (Lehmann 2006: 128), a kind of theatre beyond the dramatic, where language spoken on stage is no longer mimesis and is no longer dialogue. Among the forms of monologies, Lehmann describes lamentation, prayer and confession – or rather ‘self-accusation’ – which we see appear frequently in Gao’s post-exile plays, especially in Between Life and Death (which are described in the next chapter and refined in two later plays, Death Collector and Ballade Nocturne, which are analysed in the last chapter). Elfriede Jelinek and Peter Handke, and to some extent Martin Crimp, have made use of monologies in their plays. The third element is the use of narrative texts that enact the principle of narration in which theatre becomes ‘the site of narrative act’ (Lehmann 2006: 109). Following the emphasis on performativity, the emphasis here is on presence over representation. Similarly, Lehmann stresses that many forms of postdramatic theatre prefer to use a ‘postepic narration’ or ‘the form of an account being given’ (ibid.:

34

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

108). As in Crimp’s work, these are not necessarily monologies per se, but can be made up of dialogues, which function as monologies because the actors are engaged in an action of reporting, offering a ‘casually communicated’ account (ibid) and are not strictly engaged in dialogical exchanges. This form of dialogical monologies is used in the plays analysed in the central part of this book: Dialogue and Rebuttal in Chapter 3, Nocturnal Wanderer in Chapter 4 and Weekend Quartet in Chapter 5. The final strategies I discuss are the non-textual or non-linguistic elements. Lehmann refers to the process of ‘musicalization’ (2006: 91–3), through which the emphasis is on the auditory elements of the theatrical experience, the voice of the actors. Lehmann mentions the German director and composer Heiner Goebbels in this context and the theatre–musical work that combines the logic of text, vocal material and musical (ibid.: 92). He also discusses visual dramaturgy where the visual is not subordinated to the text. ‘Physicality’ is an important aspect of this kind of theatre and the body on stage comes to play an essential part of it: the body is dissociated from the character, no longer defined as an emotional and narrative entity but as ‘inscription of collective history’ (Lehmann 2006: 97). There is a latent contradiction in this definition of the body, in the external signification attributed to the body, an external connection to an abstract meaningful notion. Lehmann acknowledges that this ‘paradoxical result’: is often that [the body] it appropriates all other discourses … as the body no longer demonstrates anything but itself, the turn away from a body of signification and towards a body of unmeaning gesture (dance, rhythm, grace, strength, kinetic wealth) turn out as the most extreme charging of the body with significance concerning the social reality. The body becomes the only subject matter. From now on, it seems, all social issues first have to pass through this needle’s eye, they all have to adopt the form of physical issue (Lehmann 2006: 96).

The ‘turn away’ from signification that he refers to addresses a



Gao Xingjian and Postdramatic Theatre

35

rejection of a ‘mental structure’ of the psychological depth of the character. The body, however, becomes an index for social issues, as it stands for abstract concepts that are expressed through the body, but with specific social resonances. For example, love is referred to as a sexual presence, death as AIDS, and beauty as physical perfection (ibid.). This suggests to the tangible and the concrete but ultimately attaches signification to what is presented on stage, which is in contradiction with the notion of performativity and the theatre of presence, whereby what is presented on stage is not meant to refer to external signification apart from the act itself. Beyond this contradiction, the use of non-linguistic elements is relevant when looking at most of Gao’s post-exile plays, where much importance is given to physicality on stage. This translates to the use of dance, actions that are not always connected to the text and are not just used to compensate the narrative logic of a text. In Gao’s case, this approach is perfected, especially in examples closer to the ideal of Total Theatre, such as Snow in August and Ballade Nocturne, both hybrid forms of theatre, as we will see analysed in the last chapter. Lehmann’s definition of postdramatic theatre sets out to describe a kind of theatre that is open to possibility because there is no ‘hierarchal order’ between the different components of the theatrical experience and, as such, they assume an equal role. It is a theatre that proclaims the end of narrative and textual logic. Since most of the examples that Lehmann gives are connected to a director-centred theatre, the question arises about the nature of postdramatic texts, in relation to how to read the work of postdramatic writers without looking at concrete examples of staged productions but purely from examining the texts as scripts and their performative potential as set out in writing. With regard to the role of text in postdramatic theatre, Jürs-Munby reiterates that beyond drama does not mean beyond text (2009: 47), and recognizes in Jelinek a type of non-dramatic text that is essentially postdramatic. She adds that ‘the postdramatic form

36

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

of communication arguably emerges in response not to a canonical dramatic text but to a challenging new type of theatre text provided by the writer’ (ibid.: 48). Beyond the scepticism for a textual approach to theatre, Jürs-Munby’s statement places an emphasis on the role of the text in postdramatic theatre and postdramatic writers like Jelinek. On the one hand, Lehmann himself notes the predominance of performative text – intended as ‘the mode of relationship of the performance to the spectators, the temporal and spatial situation, and the place and function of the theatrical process within the social field’ – over the written text (2006: 85). Yet, on the other hand he states that the reality on stage is partly ‘inspired by the text’s idiosyncrasies’ (ibid.) and that there have been important texts that ‘question the dramatic model of communication more clearly than the practice of directing’ (ibid.: 56). Here, I embrace Natalie Meisner and Donia Mounsef ’s position against the condemnation of the written text, in that they recognize that theatre scripts are never only literary texts: The text designed for theatrical production is never purely ‘linguistic.’ On the level of composition, dramatic texts already speak in hybrid ways through the textual, the paratextual, and the subtextual, making use of music, sound, movement, media collages, etc. (2011: 93).

They argue that writers have reacted to the condemnation of the text by making writing ‘a form of acting out the impossibility of writing through the sonic, the corporeal, and the graphic’ (2011: 95). These writers are aware of the impact of the non-literary elements of both the staging and the relationship of the actor–spectator; they exploit these elements to create theatre that is no longer dramatic but feeds out of the principles of fragmented narrative, non-linear structures. Among the examples of such writers cited by Meisner and Mounsef is the Québécoise playwright/performance artist Marie Brassard, who treats storytelling as a physical act (2011: 98). The use of storytelling



Gao Xingjian and Postdramatic Theatre

37

can be extended to writers who are not performers and are not always involved directly in the staging of their texts. It is worth noting here that Gao, although assuming the role of the writer in the context of his plays, is a director himself, and expresses through his scripts a particular theatrical vision that translates into a particular theatrical discourse. We should not forget that Gao, like Jelinek, has written many essays on theatre and the performative process, which I will refer to later in relation to his post-exile plays. Thus, this study moves away from a director-centred theatre that seems to have dominated most of Lehmann’s work and his definition of postdramatic theatre. It considers the theatrical performative potential in the works of writers like Gao, who has been closely involved in the staging of his works and has focused on the performative aspect of his writing.

Elinor Fuchs’ The Death of Character Although not explicit in Lehmann’s account, the paradigm of ‘the death of character’ that Elinor Fuchs associates with postmodern paradigms such as Barthes, and Foucault’s death of the author (Fuchs 1996: 6), is at the heart of her 1996 book The Death of Character. As with Lehmann’s work, Fuchs’ book is an examination of new forms of North American and European theatre from the 1970s. It carefully describes an evolutionary development of these forms from early modernism (from 1870s). To some extent Fuchs agrees with Lehmann: for example, she recognizes that the theatrical discourse, emerging in 1970s, privileges the self-reflective and self-referentiality, a process that she calls the ‘literalization or textualization of theatre’ (1996: 74). She links this ‘literalization’ back to the work of Brecht and Beckett. In particular, she refers to Beckett’s 1959 play Krapp’s Last Tape. In the play, the audiotape and the recording of the actor’s voice functions as ‘an unsettling junction between voice and writing,

38

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

present and retrospect’ (ibid.: 75) and stands as ‘an image of the problem of writing itself ’ (ibid), because the audio recording reduces the character/actor to mere voice, to mere enunciation. For Fuchs, this has meaningful consequences on the role of the character in theatre. The character, the centre ‘for the entire chain of representation and reception that theatre links together’ (Fuchs 1996: 8), is displaced; it is emptied of its psychological unity, and reduced to an inscription, to the act of writing – a voice on stage without a self, a subjectivity. The implication for this process of literalization is that the character in the theatrical experience assumes what she calls its ‘cursive, pre-psychological meaning­– an impression or inscription’ (1996: 74). The word ‘inscription’ reminds us of the definition that Lehmann gives about the function of the body, which is defined as ‘inscription of collective history’ (ibid.: 97). In this case, Fuchs’ paradigm does not imply that the character is inscribed by a signification external to itself. She identifies a pre-psychological meaning, where the words ‘inscription’ and ‘cursive’ point to a comparison that she makes to a notion of a language beyond the signifier/signified dichotomy, a language that is reduced to its own very impalpable impression. It is about the dissolution of the character, devoid of psychological individuality, trapped in a performative act. Fuchs’ careful analysis of theatrical strategies comes across, in places, as a work in progress: trying to come to terms with how these theatrical forms, by rejecting the representation of a psychological unity, have killed the character. It is not easy to discern whether what Fuchs refers to is in actual terms the rebirth of a new figure in the theatrical experience, no longer a character, or whether its death is just apparent. This becomes marginally clearer if we reflect on the correlation with Buddhism and the character. This is of particular interest because of the theatrical connection in Gao’s work to Zen Buddhism, something which Zhao analyses in detail in his book Towards a Modern Zen



Gao Xingjian and Postdramatic Theatre

39

Theatre. In the introduction and also in a 1983 article called the ‘The Death of Character’ (Fuchs 1996: 169–76), Fuchs makes a connection between Postructuralism and the Buddhist idea of anatta or ‘no-self ’. She argues that the idea of the death of character refers to the denial of a continuous self that can be traced in the corollary of the Buddha’s precept that all human suffering arises from the grasping for an illusory permanence (ibid.: 9). In the article, she links the death of both the individual and the character to the Buddhist teaching that ‘individual functions are impersonal weavings in the universal flux’ (1996: 175) and are part of a ‘fragmented, ephemeral constellations of thought, vision, and action’, which is in Buddha’s conception of the truth of nature (1996:176). This correlation makes it clear that the death of character signifies a disbelief in an organic self. It is a notion of a fragmented self, almost part of a cosmological indeterminacy that makes the character impersonal, displaced and dissolved in a real that is in itself transient. If we refer back to Lehmann, this means in theatrical terms that it is only in the performative, in the present act of enunciation, of utterance and gesture, that the character, or more precisely the performer has its place. At a narrative and structural level, there are no narrative roles to be assigned. It is only the presence, the act, words and images as such that count; the non-character and the performer have no impact in the making of narrative, but only in the presenting of it. There are some fundamental differences between Fuchs and Lehmann’s approach, however. The language Fuchs uses when discussing the literalization of writing suggests a more literary focus to theatrical experiences from that of Lehmann’s. She uses much clearer references to narrative structures and an approach that comes from post-structuralism. To reiterate, Fuchs uses the word ‘literalization’ while Lehmann talks about the ‘body’, but both refer to the character as inscription, as an impression. Examining terminology specifically, Lehmann defines the term

40

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

‘postdramatic theatre’ as an alternative to the term ‘postmodern theatre’, because the term ‘postdramatic’ – as opposed to the ‘epochal’ category of the ‘postmodern’ – means a concrete problem of theatre aesthetics (2006: 21). Fuchs, instead, refers to postmodernism as a cultural discourse foregrounding her analysis of her theatrical experiences. In the chapter in her book dedicated to postmodernism and theatre she concludes: Postmodern art and culture have not only aspired to the condition of theatre, but have normalized and even celebrated the spectacle of spectacular society. Contemporary social practice of all kinds, since 1980, has seemed to confirm the insight of theatre as a grounding principle in a period of conflicting or dissolving truths (1996: 157).

Fuchs’ understanding of postmodernism is time-bound, and is extended to the ‘theatrical’ as a concept that is not only intended as a platform for theatrical improvisation but also as a concept that describes politics, ethics and culture – all the making-principles discourses. In postmodernism, the theatrical highlights the unstable ‘spectacular’ (here intended in its etymological meaning of public show) of contemporary society. However, even though Jürs-Munby relates Fuchs’ approach to postmodernism, Fuchs never uses the expression ‘postmodern theatre’ herself.6 The real difference between Lehmann and Fuchs’ approach is that, while albeit tracing a theatrical and aesthetic exploration of theatre, the latter engages in a cultural analysis that draws predominantly from post-structuralism. This diverges from Lehmann’s scepticism of philosophical approaches to theatre, which he sees reduced to ‘key concepts of theoretical discourse’ (2006: 18). With regard to the dramatic/theatrical dynamic, in a 2011 article ‘Postdramatic Theatre and the Persistence of the “Fictive Cosmos”’, Fuchs argues that there has been a reappearance of the dramatic, of what she calls the ‘fictive cosmos’, an expression used by Lehmann (2006: 30–1),7 in recent theatrical experiences by American



Gao Xingjian and Postdramatic Theatre

41

experimental groups. She considers a Wooster-inspired collective, the Elevator Repair Service (ERS), and their adaptation of the The Great Gatsby – Gatz, a successful show that toured around the world from 2006 to 2012. She explains that this reappearance of the dramatic is perhaps a consequence of a process of naturalization of postdramatic forms and a need to return to a narrative theatre. She refers here to Szondi’s link to Lehmann: This repositioning of Brecht within the purview of the dramatic not only undermines Szondi, but opens Lehmann’s thesis too to the canker of histori­cization. If Brecht was once viewed as radically other to the dramatic, and is now absorbed within it, a shift in perspective could also lessen the distance between drama and its departed twin, theater. Or rather, the two may display, over time, as perhaps suggested by my American examples of the return of narrative theater, a new rapprochement after the divide that Lehmann de­scribes (2011: 69).

In Fuchs’ view, the same way in which Lehmann normalizes Brecht’s once radical theatre, current theatrical experiences have started to opt for the dramatic and ‘retain the organ­izing principle of the fictive cosmos’ (Fuchs 2011: 71) – resulting in ‘rapprochement’ between the dramatic and the ‘theatrical’, a division that Lehmann has so much advocated. While Fuchs’ point is interesting, I feel it needs more examples to support the idea of a trend across different theatrical productions,8 and that is not the remit of this study. However, the implications of Fuchs’ argument are very important because they point to the possibility that the dramatic can coexist with the ‘theatrical’, and that the division between dramatic and theatrical cannot be always so strictly defined. The examples of the later productions that she uses, such as that of Elevator Repair Service, highlight the possibility that such a mélange of approaches can create a variety of styles and theatrical experiences. This is relevant to studying Gao, because in most post-exile plays the dramatic is never totally forgotten, and from Weekend Quartet to Ballade Nocturne we can identify a return

42

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

to dramatic elements, especially to a sense of closure that finally brings to life again the fictional cosmos. Unlike Lehmann, Fuchs’ argumentations and approach are less prescriptive and dogmatic and fit the principles of this study in that they account for the fluidity and openness of concepts and notions. Moreover, and perhaps most importantly, I would argue that the attention that Fuchs dedicates to the idea of the dissolution of subjectivity/self in the theatrical process, relegated to a secondary position in Lehmann’s work, signifies that the notion of the self and subjectivity in a psychological and cultural sense are still important aspects to consider when looking at theatrical experiences – in the same way that they are in Gao’s approach to theatre, as I shall explain later in this book.

Looking back at the The Other Shore and the postdramatic There are some strong postdramatic elements in Gao’s theatrical conception that become evident for the first time in The Other Shore. The text and its structure, new to Gao’s theatre, can be identified as postdramatic devices: the structure of The Other Shore can be understood as multiple narratives with multiple beginnings and endings. The focus on performativity rather than representation is clear – especially at the beginning, in the game with the rope, when the actors seem to be engaged in self-training. Exploring the similarities with postdramatic theatre even further, the lack of plot reminds us of Richard Foreman’s theatre as described by Chantal Pontbriand, who stated that the spectator in Foreman’s plays is bombarded with a multiplicity of visual and auditory events (Connor 1997: 144). Foreman himself described his theatre in these terms:



Gao Xingjian and Postdramatic Theatre

43

The pleasure I take is the pleasure of undercutting; interrupting; an impulse I want to (and do) make. The impulse is registered, but allowed to twist, turn, block itself, so that blockage, that reaction to its energy, produces a detour, and the original impulse maps new, contradictory territory (Foreman 1985: 191).

However, if postdramatic theatre relies on the immediacy of the present as opposed to the horror of repetition and slavery to the text, Gao remains faithful to the textuality of theatre. In particular, the type of language used is colloquial, as Gao’s intention is not to use ‘institutional’ theatre language but a sort of ‘living language’. Gao praises the use of the vernacular in the literature of the fifteenth century as being closer to the living traditions of the time and being more appropriate to theatre than the cultivated language of modern theatre in China (Gao 1992: 212). The use of language itself in the text of the play has an important function. Gao himself has stressed that in The Other Shore he focuses clearly on the power that theatre can derive from language: it is not only the literal meaning of the words that matters but the musicality, the connection of words in a phrase (Gao 1996: 10). Within this vision, beyond the written word, language is a celebration of total theatrical experience that exploits all tools of communication: movements and physicality creating a kinaesthetic visuality that talks directly to the audience – the voice as music, as pure auditory element, which resonates with a theatrical process of musicalization. In terms of representation versus presentation as scope of the theatrical experience, one can argue that the principle of jiadingxing, hypothecality/suppositionality, resonates with Lehmann’s definition of the theatre of perceptibility, which he uses to explain Belgian multimedia artist Jan Fabre’s theatre and which describes the incomplete nature of the theatrical perception – the potential to perceive and discern but the impossibility of grasping signification from a labyrinth of theatrical signs (Lehmann 2006: 90). The idea of neutral

44

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

actor/tripartition contains elements from the notion of a theatre of presence, with an emphasis on performativity and self-referentiality. It also reduces the role of the actor to inscription, using Lehmann terminology, and to literalization, using Fuchs’ definition. However, it is also important to go back to Gao’s idea of a psychological field and Quah’s stress on subjectivity. In this regard, Fuchs’ definition of theatricalism, borrowed from Harold B. Segel (1996: 202), is rather poignant: Because of its ability to hold two or more planes of reality in ambiguous suspension, theatricalism has emerged in the twentieth century as a favoured dramatic mode to express the relative and multiple nature of self-identity (ibid.: 33).

Her definition highlights an attention to the idea of subjectivity and the question of identity, the relation between the actor and the character that, while similar to Quah’s view, also determines the relation to the spectator. Theatricalism, which Fuchs mentions in relation to modernist theatre, is another word for ‘metatheatre’, as Fuchs herself explains (1996: 202). However, it does not totally explain Gao’s attitude to subjectivity and its relation to the theatrical experience, which, as is more clear when reading his post-exile plays, shifts between a focus on performativity and subjectivity. As result of this, the use of tripartition can come to signify a further development of subjectivity/self. According to Lai, in Gao’s post-exile plays the tripartition seems to evolve towards a further abstraction of the self and its fragmentation: Lai explains that the dramatic narrative no longer wants to achieve an alienation effect, but the alienation itself becomes the theme of the play (Lai 2002: 139). Moreover, she adds that another consequence of the self-fragmentation is the characters’ sense of failure in the post-exile plays: Gao’s characters are unable to control their consciousness, and therefore are imprisoned within their subjectivity/self (ibid.). To some extent, fragmentation and



Gao Xingjian and Postdramatic Theatre

45

alienation create the theatrical experience. Moreover, as mentioned before, Gao’s conception of theatre appears to have an attachment to Zen Buddhism,9 a blend of Indian Buddhism with Chinese Culture, as Zhao explains. While one would hesitate to claim that creating a play around the theme of otherness or another being is intended in a solely Buddhist sense, Gao is certainly exploring such a state on the stage – itself another world. One element of Buddhist philosophy can be seen in the search to step beyond oneself, to reach a state on nothingness, have no-thought (Zhao 2000: 128).

According to this interpretation, Gao’s play explores a sort of Buddhist spirituality, which is by its nature rather abstract and based upon search and projection of the self towards nothingness. Gao’s use of Zen Buddhism has a slightly more positive meaning than Fuchs’. While Fuchs describes individuality of the self as an annihilated entity lost in an undetermined universal flux of meanings, Gao seems to suggest the possibility of an enlightenment that occurs at a kind of transcendental level10 beyond language. The exploration of a Buddhist spirituality exemplifies what Terry Siu-han Yip and Kwok-kan Tam call the originary self (Yip and Tam 2002: 217). This idea of the originary self, as we will discuss especially in Between Life and Death, does not merely imply the end of the self, nor original self, but a higher status of the self beyond materiality and language; and it explains Gao’s idea of subjectivity or, using Fuchs’ approach, that of the death of character. Whether or not Gao wholly subscribes to this idea of originary self, I would argue that Gao’s interest in the self and the role of the character goes beyond the Zen paradigm. Gao’s post-exile plays manifest also a strong interest in the relation between actors and characters and Gao’s intention to change the conventional idea of an actor impersonating a character. This implies a focus on the individuality, the idea of self and subjectivity, which, as Coulter describes (2014: 100–20), allows the writer to reflect upon the

46

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

function of a character in a play – in some cases allowing him to enact displacement, dissolution and annihilation, and question the possibility of the death of character as a psychological and philosophical entity. It is not a coincidence that in almost all the post-exile plays analysed in this book, death as a consistent motif is equated with an exploration of the self and within the theatrical exploration challenges the relation character–actor–audience. With The Other Shore, Gao embarks on a journey of exploration, breaking further away from the dramatic and exploring the possibilities of the theatrical. By doing this he creates a kind of theatre of hypothecality/suppositionality that converges the exploration of the actor–role–spectator relation, the boundaries of the performative, into an investigation of the subjectivity of the self – what Fuchs calls ‘a dispersal ideal of self ’ (1996: 9). In this sense, Gao’s post-exile plays embody a transnationalism that is not only manifested in his attachment to his Chinese roots – as we see in the importance that has been given to the Zen paradigm as interpretation of his theatrical scopes – but above all is part of the openness and unstable discourse of postdramatic theatre. The latter has developed beyond Lehmann’s perspective aesthetics and can be traced back to Fuchs’ model of contemporary theatre which advocates that the fictive cosmos and the theatrical can coexist, an aspect that will be explored in relation to Gao’s later plays in Chapters 5 and 6. We will also examine theatrical experiences that very often incorporate and balance the two categories of the self-referentiality/performativity and subjectivity/ self, the perspectives adopted in the process of analysis and investigation of Gao’s post-exile plays. In this sense, Gao is neither a postdramatic writer/theatre-maker nor is he following theatrical trends, but rather, like Handke and Jelinek, he creates his own kind of theatre which contributes to a theatrical discourse of the postdramatic, incorporating and balancing itself between the dramatic and the theatrical.

2

Gao and Postdramatic Theatre: A Comparison with British Playwright Martin Crimp

When I came across Martin Crimp’s play in the early 2000s and had already started studying Gao’s work, I was amazed to find, by coincidence, that a play of Martin Crimp’s, Attempts on Her Life – Seventeen Scenarios For Theatre, first staged at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 1997, would resonate with Gao Xingjian’s Between Life and Death, written in 1991 and first staged at the Théâtre Renaud-Barrault in Paris in 1993. The fact that most interested me was that Gao and Crimp do not know of each other, yet their work shares a number of common themes, heavily influenced by a common passion for French and continental European theatre. This is what prompted me to systematically compare the works of the two writers in my PhD thesis, whose point of departure was these two plays. Both plays, written in the 1990s, deal with a woman’s social and psychological displacement and entrapment within societal structures; both tell the story of a woman, who is present on stage as a character in the case of Gao’s play and absent in the case of Crimp’s play. Both plays share a similar approach to form and theatrical modus operandi: the role of the actors on stage, which is stripped down to that of story-teller or ‘énonciateur’, and the attempt to break the fourth wall, the use of postepic narration, and self-referentiality. Looking further into their works, other commonalities are easily discovered: both authors’ backgrounds have a strong origin in French avant-garde theatre; they studied French literature, and both looked

48

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

to Beckett as a role model. Martin Crimp’s first play Clash was clearly written in a Beckettian style, while in Gao’s Bus Stop there are strong resonances of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. In the context of this study, the comparison of Gao and Crimp will serve to highlight how Gao, with his second post-exile play,1 enters the postdramatic scene with its unique theatrical conception – Crimp’s work also having been associated with postdramatic theatre. Such association, however, sits uncomfortably on Crimp’s shoulders mainly because not all his works can be easily recognized as fitting a postdramatic aesthetic – Attempts on Her Life and to some degree the later trilogy of short plays, Fewer Emergencies, show clear postdramatic features. In his paper ‘Attempts on Her Life’, the German scholar Heiner Zimmermann defines Attempts on Her Life as a postdramatic play, as a narrative text: it is a play written with no identifiable characters, only dashes representing the change of voices that are performed by a group of anonymous performers who do not impersonate characters (Zimmermann 2003: 75). David Barnett’s reading of the play compares it with Sarah Kane’s 4:48 Psychosis, within the context of postdramatic theatre, but also stresses that the play differs from other postdramatic writers’ work: Other writers have indeed charted ‘landscapes of consciousness’ where unattributed speeches have gone into more collective realms of memory and experience; Crimp is, however, mainly writing recognizable dialogues, which are relatively unstylized and conversational. While early drafts of Attempts did have character names, Crimp has sought to problematize the status of the speaking subject in the published versions by replacing nomination with dashes (Barnett 2008: 16).

Barnett makes an interesting point in distinguishing Crimp’s play from other postdramatic scripts: Crimp’s play is not merely a narrative text but is presented in a dynamic dialogical format, set out to narrate,



A Comparison with British Playwright Martin Crimp

49

reporting accounts on the identity of the absent character. Looking at Fewer Emergencies, Aleks Sierz insists that Crimp’s theatre cannot be seen as postdramatic because, firstly, Crimp’s work still ‘foregrounds the author’s individual vision, expressed through his own idiosyncratic and written voice’ and secondly, unlike Jelinek’s Sprachflächen, which makes no distinction between narration, description and dialogue (Sierz 2007a: 380), Crimp’s texts are distinctively dialogical. Furthermore, with regard to the original version of the play mentioned by Barnett in an interview with Aleks Sierz, Tim Albery, the director of the first staging of Attempts on Her Life, sheds more light on how the script developed into the present format. Albery describes the rehearsal process and states that the original text contained quite a few stage directions and even a setting for each scene, which Albery himself suggested removing so as to allow the audience and the actors to ‘think literally’, i.e. to focus on the words of the text, its musicality and rhythm. He adds in his interview that: Attempts is a template for the purest kind of play: it’s just dialogue. There is nothing else: no character, no plot, no setting. The only character is Anne, who – as we know – has several different personalities, most of which are mutually exclusive. Starting with the title, which has multiple meanings, the play in its fragmentation and irresolution, is a quintessentially modernist play (Sierz 2006: 192–3).

His definition of this play as a modernist play contradicts the views of Zimmermann, Mary Lockhurst and many others (Angel-Perez 2002, 2006: 197–212, Lockhurst 2003). Albery sees the play as embodying a modern aesthetic of purity, but he fails to account for the fragmentation of meanings it creates. Zimmermann, instead, regards the play as belonging within the postdramatic tradition of a theatre that mostly exploits visual effects and the immediacy of the performance, uses improvisation as a means to create theatrical pieces, and overlooks the textual element of the play. In this regard, Augusti identifies a hybrid quality of Crimp’s theatre between postmodernism and

50

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

eighteen-century English moralism (2005: 104). Élisabeth Angel-Perez, by contrast, defines Crimp’s theatre as the ‘theatre of the absence’, about ‘the mourning of representation’ beyond the principle of mimesis (‘Crimp creates in this play a spectropoétique [my italics] of the scene that defines theatre anew beyond mimesis’) (Angel-Perez 2006: 209–12). Furthermore, she defines this play as a ‘hypertext’ like Joyce’s Ulysses and T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, with which it shares the construction of a universal character and an aesthetic of fragmentation and ruin. However, she later adds that this link with modernist writers is broken ‘by the Postmodern mark of blindness’, i.e. that of ‘spectralisation’ (Angel-Perez 2006: 209), which is further explained later in the paper. As we see from the different scholars’ interpretations, Attempts on Her Life, as well as Crimp’s theatre work, have generated interesting academic discussions. However, one cannot deny that, like Fewer Emergencies, this play brings Crimp to the forefront of British postdramatic theatre, in a similar league to other British playwrights such as Sarah Kane – as Jürs-Munby mentions in her introduction to Lehmann’s English translation (2006: 6). I would, then, argue that the reason why scholars have found the postdramatic connection with Crimp’s play problematic is because people like Sierz are dealing with a strictly dogmatic definition of postdramatic theatre, whereas this book accounts for a more fluid definition. Both Gao’s and Crimp’s plays are examples of a postdramatic theatre that is fluid, paradoxical and above all informed by the authors’ creative uniqueness, which is revealed through the comparison of the two writers’ plays.

What happens in the two plays At the level of content, both plays unfold the disintegration of a female character, which in a literal and metaphorical sense enacts the death of character. Between Life and Death (1992) (Shengsijie



A Comparison with British Playwright Martin Crimp

51

in Chinese literally means ‘at the border of life and death’; Au bord de la vie in French means ‘at the margin of life’), has been seen as expressing the general existential unease of modern society (Liu 2000: 84) as well as dealing with human predicaments, yet only from an internal emotional perspective (Liu 2004: 109). More simply, this play can be seen as Woman’s (la femme in French and nüren in Chinese) unconscious trip through her present and past, and between life and death. Elements distractive to the main narrative focus are a number of background characters (a Man and another Woman, both playing different characters),2 whose actions on stage seem to mirror Woman’s speech and interact with her. The sense of a narrative element is given by the use of ‘she’ instead of ‘I’. This play lacks a formal division into scenes and acts, but could theoretically be divided into three moments which gradually unfold. In the first hypothetical part, her general sense of guilt and search for consolation and a resolution to her misery is concerned with reflections on life and death, but life is seen as a journey through despair, where men are the source of sin in her life: she defines her state of perdition as wandering into a big chaos (hundun). Her anger is, then, directed towards men in general, symbolically presented through Woman’s interaction with Man, the side character that never speaks. In the second part, after interacting with Man, Woman finds that one of her legs has been amputated. At first, she is surprised and questions whether or not the amputation is real and whether or not she is still alive. Then she talks about death and pain, connecting pain to death as necessary proof of her own existence (Gao 2001a: 210). Another clear reference to death is at the beginning of the final part, where a masked man (mengmian nanren) appears in a long black robe. At that moment, Woman is talking about her experience of driving in the middle of the motorway, seeing flashing headlights and being caught in the midst of fog. Suddenly the masked man

52

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

turns round and blocks her way, and from his left arm a red sleeve falls down. This physical, bodily dismembering is followed in the last part of the play by further images of bodily violence, which mirror her internal turmoil and despair. This is graphically presented through another side character/performer, a nun (nüni, bonzesse or Buddhist nun), who, in a gruesome depiction, cuts into her own stomach and gives Woman her intestines.3 This scene is the beginning of the end of Woman’s physical destruction, and leads to her state of total mental disarray. In Crimp’s case the whole play is constructed around a centre, a female figure, who never appears on stage: the actors are talking about a woman, Anne or Anya etc. As the scenes develop, the characters on stage attribute different identities to her, such as a film star, a terrorist, and even an Italian car, ashtray, etc. Unlike Gao, in the final text, Crimp does not give any guidelines on the number of actors or any stage directions and, unlike Gao’s play which shows no visible textual division, Crimp’s text presents an unusual division into seventeen titled scenes. In Crimp’s play, the first three scenes reveal the background to and the object of the play. In particular, Scene One introduces the absent character through the messages on her answering machine, which have supposedly been left by an employer, by her mother, by friends in different parts of the world, and by a mechanic who has repaired her car, who we suppose is her ex-lover and who, worried, begs her to answer the phone. The callers’ identities are not made clear and guesswork is needed. The scene suggests that Anne is listening to the messages and to some extent wants to hide from the world, as we can imagine her deleting all the messages at the end of the scene. This scene, which is only heard by the audience and not presented on stage, is ironically the most realistic of the play; it suggests the idea of a character, in a particular location, whom the audience is going



A Comparison with British Playwright Martin Crimp

53

to get to know throughout the play. The following scenes develop with a certain degree of randomness, building up and fragmenting Anne’s identity. First, for instance, the scenes ‘The Occupier’ and ‘The Camera Loves You’ define the perspective on the character: ‘The Occupier’ gives details of the character’s habits – she is very superstitious and a non-smoker. ‘The Camera Loves You’ suggests, in a playful almost poetic way, how the actors are going to talk about the absent character, and they announce that she has different identities. The next scene, ‘Mum and Dad’, starts by talking about a picture, in which Annie is described as smiling, and goes on to talk about other possible pictures showing her in various places around the world, which depict the character as part of a globalized world where travelling is easier and the distance between countries seems to have grown smaller. Taking up the motif of self-objectification, in the ‘The New Anny’ and ‘Particle Physics’ Annie is referred to as a new car model in a series of statements made by the actors, first in English and then translated into several languages. Then she becomes an ashtray, the kind found mostly in cheap hotels where lovers meet. In the same scene she is depicted abruptly, in an odd twist, as a physicist who speaks five languages and has discovered a new particle that will revolutionize astronomy. Scenes Nine to Twelve continue to depict her as a human being and develop the allusion in the scene ‘Mum and Dad’. Indeed, she is described as having achieved her dream of becoming a terrorist; a loner; an independent, cruel woman fighting for ideas which are not clearly mentioned in the play. In the scene ‘Kinda Funny’, there is a change in the speakers’ perspective; they stop focusing on her and start talking about a man taking his new family to his mum’s. We are then informed that Annie is in actual fact this man’s wife, and his liaison with her seems to be linked to terrorism. The aura of danger surrounding Annie gradually disappears when, in Scene Eleven, she is described instead as a psychotic artist. From Scene Fourteen

54

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

onwards, the disintegration of the absent character’s identity takes a fast turn. First, there is a vague allusion to her being a porn star; then she is described as the saviour of the world. In the last scene the fragmentation of Annie’s identity is taken to the extreme: they start discussing her reading habits and speak in greater detail about an article she read. Their focus is no longer on her but on the story of the article on the one hand, and on an object on the other. By moving the focus of the play from Annie to the story of the article and the object, the playwright brings the play to an end. Although she refers to herself in the third person, the presence of the woman in question, in Gao’s play, makes this process more emotionally charged. It is developed in the words of the main figure on stage, which are full of pathos and make this play almost a personal introspective journey, a journey which I will later define through subjectivity. In many respects, it is a narrative text with long sections of monologue from one main performer impersonating one main figure. However, it is important to take into account the use of side characters/performers that never speak but are engaged in physical movements and gestures and in some cases interact with Woman. The use, towards the end, of graphic violence and acts of disembodiment, indicate that Gao is making use of a kind of visual dramaturgy that feeds on dream-like imagery, which are typical postdramatic elements. One obvious difference in Crimp’s play is the absence of the female figure, which, as well as adding a sense of mystery to the play, makes it more abstract and surrounded by a sense of irony and playfulness that is also in Gao’s dark dramatic experience. Crimp’s play is potentially an open text for directors to experiment with. It is no coincidence that Katie Mitchell’s production at the National Theatre, London, in 2007, ten years after the play’s premiere, was performed with a large cast of eleven actors (four men and seven women) in a hi-tech, multimedia style that filled the stage with video projections



A Comparison with British Playwright Martin Crimp

55

and actors singing and dancing to rock music. Going into more detail about the two plays will reveal both similarities and differences; the comparison will focus on two aspects of the two plays: first, the notion of self-referentiality, which defines the relation between the actors and the text and deals with the idea of subjectivity, and, secondly, the relation between the spectator, the actors and what is presented on stage.

Self-referentiality In considering postdramatic theatre, we have pointed out the idea of self-referentiality, which stresses the ‘real’ of theatre: This self-referentiality allows us to contemplate the value, the inner necessity and the significance of the extra-aesthetic in the aesthetic and thus the displacement of the concept of the latter. The aesthetic cannot be understood through a determination of content (beauty, truth, sentiments, anthropomorphizing mirroring, etc.) but solely – as the theatre of the real shows – by ‘treading the borderline’, by permanently switching, not between form and content, but between ‘real’ contiguity (connection with reality) and ‘staged’ construct. It is in this sense that postdramatic theatre means: theatre of the real (Lehman 2006: 101).

By contemplating ‘extra-aesthetic in the aesthetic’, the theatre of the real displaces the ‘aesthetic’ by bringing attention to its own theatrical process though a self-referentiality that exemplifies what Lehmann calls the process of ‘making the production of theatre visible and repeatedly addressing itself to the audience’(ibid.: 169). As an example, Lehmann cites Peter Handke’s 1966 play Offending the Audience and the use of Sprechstücke. In Handke’s play, four characters endlessly discuss and deny the theatrical process. Similarly at the end of Heiner Müller’s Hamletmachine, ‘the actor playing Hamlet’ (that is

56

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

the way it is referred in the text) talks about the meaningless of words and denies the existence of drama, while looking at his own role and character. Gao’s and Crimp’s plays do not enact such an extreme act of displacement through self-referentiality, but there are self-referential statements that test language, representation and the role of actors/ characters. In Gao’s play, especially in the second half, Woman’s comments highlight the ephemeral nature of language, questioning the truthfulness of narration and the object of the narration, but with a psychoanalytical and subjective connotation. What is the self again? Besides words, devoid of substance about nothing, what else is left? (Gao 2001a: 237)

The comments are not only intended to question language, narration and objectivity in general but to question the individual’s position as centre, as origin in the participating process of using language, narration etc. First, she states that she does not even know what she is talking about (‘she says she doesn’t know what she’s saying […] maybe she didn’t say anything […]’) (Gao 2001a: 231). Second, we see her lost in her own dreams, in which she sees herself naked and plunging into darkness and surrounded by ghosts (ibid.: 233). Surrounded by clouds and fog she walks blindly, in the mist of chaos, looking hastily for the way but she has no aim, only the awareness that she is sinking into an abyss (Gao 2001a: 229).

Woman’s confusion in recollecting past events suggests not only the limits of language as a subjective instrument of the ‘subjective’ individual and therefore lacking objectivity, but the limits of human beings in recollecting past events precisely and objectively. The dreamlike imageries can be read in psychological terms. As Amy Lai comments, in post-exile plays characters are unable to control their consciousness, and are imprisoned within their subjectivity/self (Lai 2002: 139). One could argue that the unconscious plays a disturbing



A Comparison with British Playwright Martin Crimp

57

role in diverting Woman from recollecting her own memories towards a sense of perdition and confusion. It is no coincidence that Liu Zaifu refers to the importance Gao attributes to the self by using the expression ‘ziwo shangdi’ (oneself is god) (Liu 2004: 206), which can be read in further connection to the idea of ‘originary self ’ mentioned in Chapter 1 in regard to Gao’s Buddhism. According to Kwok-kan Tam and Terry Siu-han Yip, Gao was deeply interested in exploring the originary self, which was a focus that comes up in much of his theatre: Gao Xingjian’s interest in the self is not just to show how the self can be understood through the processes of detachment and objectification, that is the use of pronouns […] he seeks to return to the originary self as a way to explore human existence in the primordial state […] he sees the role of language to uncover the preconscious mode of self […] Gao believes that the true self lies in the pre-linguistic state of human being (Yip and Tam 2002: 217).

In psychological terms, the originary self would refer to the state before language itself, the state of the child before it learns the use of language, or, to use Lacan’s terms, the subject before the mirror stage (Lacan 2006: 1–7). Lacan’s idea of the unconscious and language helps us to understand that it is language itself that creates subjectivity: To lend my voice to support these intolerable words, ‘I, truth, speak …,’ goes beyond allegory. Which quite simply means everything that can be said of truth, of the only truth—namely, that there is no such thing as a metalanguage (an assertion made so as to situate all of logical positivism), no language being able to say the truth about truth, since truth is grounded in the fact that truth speaks, and that it has no other means by which to become grounded. This is precisely why the unconscious, which tells the truth about truth, is structured like a language … (Lacan 2006: 737–8).

The unconscious is structured like a language, and language and its symbolic order are founded on the unconscious itself. In his explanation of the ‘mirror stage’ Weedon argues that:

58

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays the subject as split and governed by a lack that is produced by the non-unified, non-sovereign status of the subject as an effect of language. It [mirror stage] points to the lack of control over meaning in the symbolic order and non-sovereign status of the subject (Weedon 2004: 12).

Lacan’s rewriting of Descartes’ cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am) as ‘where I think “I think therefore I am” that is where I am not’ demystifies the rational and objective attempt to use language: That is, it wasn’t going very far to say the words with which I momentarily dumbfounded my audience: I am thinking where I am not, therefore I am where I am not thinking. These words render palpable to an attentive ear with what elusive ambiguity the ring of meaning flees from our grasp along the verbal string. What we must say is: I am not, where I am the plaything of my thought; I think about what I am where I do not think I am thinking (Lacan 2006: 430).

Therefore, as truth cannot be told or represented, Woman’s confusion and her references to language express mistrust in one’s own rationality and one’s own language. Woman is portrayed living in a limbo between reality and dream, built by her own unconscious. Taking into account this view, I would argue that in Woman’s speech it is not language that is at stake but the control of the speaking subject attempting a narration. By the end of the play, in fact, Woman’s language is fragmented and nonsensical as if she has totally lost control of what she is saying. If we read this with regard to postdramatic theatre, Lehmann’s notion of language also echoes Lacan’s ideas: In this principle of understanding the speech act as an action, a split emerges that is important for postdramatic theatre: it provokes by bringing to light that the word does not belong to the speaker. It does not organically reside in his/her body but remains a foreign body […] (Lehmann 2006: 147).



A Comparison with British Playwright Martin Crimp

59

He mentions that Jacques Lacan had advanced the thesis that the voice (just like the gaze) belongs to the fetishized objects of desire that he refers to with the term ‘objet a’. The theatre presents the voice as the object of exposition, of an erotic perception (147–8). Lehmann’s reference to Lacan’s idea of language as a voice that does not belong to the subject is very similar to the idea of the subject losing control over language as expressed in Gao’s play, and the similarity lies in the way they both strongly reference Lacan’s ideas. Besides reading Gao’s play through Lacan’s ideas, however, a further look at Gao’s approach to subjectivity and identity in his essay ‘Wode xiju he wode yaoshi’ (My drama and my key) reveals his scepticism about the psychoanalytical approach or any ideologies regarding the self: The so-called self is just a big chaos. Freud’s research on the psychology of sex did not uncover this big mystery. Modern psychoanalysis and psycholinguistics are highly speculative but while they provide a variety of solutions, they cannot either unravel this mystery. East-Asian contemplative cognition of the self tends towards metaphysics; Buddhism’s eight consciousnesses of the self are also attributed to the so-called mystics (Gao 1996: 250).

Gao’s clear statement reveals that he prefers to regard subjectivity as a ‘big chaos’, hundun (chaos). In the play, in the Chinese text, towards the end, Woman’s statements are all about the exhaustion of language and her perdition, and she uses hundun twice in the last part of her speech. This term not only refers to the original pre-linguistic state, as suggested by Yip and Tam, but also to the Daoist mythological figure of a ‘featureless deity’ or the abstract concept of ‘featurelessness, shapelessness and lack of definition’ (Birrell 1999: 99). In this regard, Kirk Denton, in his discussion of modern Chinese writer Lu Ling (1921–94), referring to the mythic figure of the Emperor Hun Dun, explains that in Daoist terms, chaos as a primal state is an ‘essential spiritual nourishment’, a state

60

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

that is part of the sage’s journey in the cyclic regeneration of the Tao and process of rebirth (Denton 1998: 226). This primal stage is defined as a ‘state of origins prior to the civilizing divisions of language’ (ibid.). It is in these terms that hundun can also refer to the pre-linguistic state that defines Gao’s idea of un-gendered/ originary self. The first time Woman uses hundun is in a sentence that describes the image of an aimless wandering through a surreal landscape, and expresses Woman’s sense of perdition. This image reminds us of the abovementioned depiction of a primordial state in Chapter 14 of Huai-nan Tzu.4 Surrounded by clouds and fog she walks blindly, in the mist of chaos, looking hastily for the way but she has no aim, only the awareness that she is sinking into an abyss (Gao 2001a: 229).5

The second sentence uses the emphatic expression hun-hun-dun-dun, which can be connected to the word at the end of her speech, jimie, which means “perishable” but also “quiescence”.6 Everything disappears. It is chaos. In her heart there is only a spark of secret light. Possibly also this cannot be stopped from disappearing, and everything will perish (will lead to a state of quiescence) (ibid.: 234–5).

In both cases, and to some extent also in the French version of the play with its reference to an inevitable death, the use of the term points to perdition but also to a primordial stage and a longing for an inner peace – the same Daoist equilibrium that Denton refers to, one that transcends materiality and language. It is in this vein that one can read her speech, which seems to affect and lead to the collapse of the narration itself. At the very end of the play, Woman stops questioning the truthfulness of the narration, but attempts to define the function of her recollections and her actions on stage – ‘Is it a story? A romance? A farce?’ (Gao 2001a: 236) – and the



A Comparison with British Playwright Martin Crimp

61

object of her discourse – ‘Is this about him, about you, about me?’ (ibid.). As her speech affects the collapse of the narration, so the collapse of the narrative elements affects the collapse of language and the action on stage, as the presence of the nun, a woman in bandages and a ghostly man point to a dark end. Language is reduced to floating signifiers, to self-referential expressions that, drawing the audience into its own breakdown, mirror the disintegration of Woman’s identity. Woman’s last statement shows that she has discovered a state of nothingness. The fragmentary use of language by the character, her perdition, can be read in this light. However before drawing any conclusion, we need to go back to Gao’s essay: I do not attempt to explain the self but I only want to provide a performative experience. When we talk about the actors, it is about grasping the self by means of the three personas. I reckon that up to now human consciousness can be achieved only through language. The distinction – I, You, he/she – might not account for the starting point of human consciousness but at least [by using different pronouns] one can grasp a significant part (Gao 2000b: 281).

The above quotation highlights two important aspects. First, like Lacan, Gao assigns much importance to language as creating human consciousness (or unconsciousness). Even though he does not dismiss the possibility of grasping the ‘self ’ – the starting point of awareness (yishide qidian) can be intended as a primordial state – the emphasis is on the theatrical experience, the use of the three personal pronouns. Taking into account the above quotation, in order to fully understand how Gao attempts to explore the pre-linguistic stage we need to look at the use of pronouns and of theatrical devices, which is exemplified in the play by the use of the pronoun ‘she’ instead of ‘I’, exploiting the so-called principle of tripartition. In another essay, Gao comments on the use of tripartition in this play:

62

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays Between Life and Death is probably the first to use the third person pronoun throughout the character’s inner monologue. […] The actress playing the Woman’s role always should keep on stage the identity of the neutral actor, she can either act or not at all, in other words there will be times when she is in character and others when she is not in character. Moreover, when she is in character, she can either be completely in character or to some degree, thus, creating some confusion. This role with her projection of the self is another image of her internal self. The neutral actor becomes the narrator. When she is not in character, in other words, the narrator becomes her role (Gao 2000b: 294–5).

In this regard, the expression used by Gilbert Fong, ‘ziwo de huashen’, or ‘embodiment of the self ’, points to an external perspective, a reading that I find useful in understanding the play (Fang 2004: 177). As the narration is in the third person, the audience’s attention is diverted, and therefore it does not read Woman’s life story only in a subjective key. In terms of acting, the actress playing Woman can distance herself from the character and go in and out of the character. This keeps the actor from totally identifying with the character, which results in a critical rendering of the character. Moreover, taking into account the performative value of the use of these pronouns, Amy T. Y. Lai states: Through the filter of the subjectivity of a third-person narrator, the emotional characteristics of the character under description thus appear to be distorted, diluted and exaggerated, with the result that a psychological distance is established between the narrative text and the truth about the character (2002: 139).

In this light, regarding the self-referential nature of a character’s comments in discussions on language and the narrative process, we could argue that this use of pronouns results in the performer’s objectification of the character of Woman as well as the objectification of the narration. Most importantly, beyond the idea of a primordial



A Comparison with British Playwright Martin Crimp

63

state, the so-called ‘originary self ’, the audience is invited, through tripartition, to participate in the making of the play by questioning the character, the mechanism of narration and ultimately the nature of the theatrical presentation itself. This leads back to Lehmann’s concept of self-referentiality and theatre of the real whereby the self-reflexive use of the real (2006: 103) enacts an act of displacement of the aesthetic, of the fictive and of the representational that also induces the audience to actively participate in making choices for themselves (ibid.: 88). In the case of Gao’s play we can, then, conclude that postdramatic self-referentiality indeed takes place in the creation of different perspectives on stage where the character’s subjectivity is split into different personas, displaced and fragmented in the same way as the theatrical language is. This idea of splitting, which implies the use of different perspectives, will be looked at in the section about Gao and the terms of his theatrical representation. In relation to Fuchs’ idea of an undetermined self, Gao’s play does not enact an idea of total dissolution of the self but rather one of creating different perspectives.

Crimp’s self-referentiality In the case of Crimp, self-referentiality can be found in a seemingly random nonsensical use of language that is devoid of a specific connotation. This mirrors the process of constructing and fragmenting the many identities of the absent character, where the actors become the narrators of the play without being active participants; their function as the different voices is to create and recreate the object of their narration. This play could be about theatre itself and the exploration of its function, as suggested by both Sierz and Zimmermann. In the same way that Gao’s play can be read using Lacan’s ideas, Crimp’s play can be read with reference to Derrida’s ideas and within

64

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

the context of deconstruction, which, as mentioned earlier on, AngelPerez calls ‘the postmodern mark of blindness’, i.e. ‘spectralisation of Crimp’s theatre in terms of a linguistic fragmentation of the absent character’s subjectivity’ (Angel-Perez 2006: 209). Before engaging in a Derridean reading of this play, some considerations need to be taken into account. In Crimp’s play, as in Gao’s, the self-referential statements about the use of language allude to a formal report, or written text, by mentioning elements of the speech in the course of the narration: for instance, they mention the words ‘quote and unquote’ to mark the beginning and the end of a formal speech. Moreover, there are clear references to the narration, which becomes the object of the play more than in Gao’s play: It is. It’s like a spittoon. Or what’s the other thing? What thing is that? That thing. That word. That other word (Crimp 1997: 77).

In reporting the story, the actors give a sense of perspective on the story. Anne or Anya etc. is the object of the speech and is looked upon from the outside, which is made explicit by the image of the camera in ‘5 Camera Loves You’, describing the actors’ attempt to capture the ‘utterly believable three-dimensionality/THREEDIMENSIONALITY/of all things that Anne can be/ALL THINGS THAT ANNE CAN BE’ (Crimp 1997: 19). Moreover, in ‘6 Mum and Dad’, the actors, functioning as observers, look at some of Anne’s pictures – and impose their own perspective on the absent character, which is mostly superficial – mainly of her travelling to different places and countries (Crimp 1997: 21–6). Throughout the play, the depiction given of the female figure informs us mostly of her role in society – her job, her visible skills – and of her appearance but not of her feelings. There is only one attempt to look closer and guess Anne’s internal feelings and this is again in ‘6 Mum and Dad’,



A Comparison with British Playwright Martin Crimp

65

where the actors also speculate on whether or not a picture of hers shows her internal turmoil, and for the first time we can actually hear her voice, reported through the actors/narrators on stage. ‘I feel like a screen.’ […] ‘Like a TV screen,’ she says, ‘where everything from the front looks real and life, but round the back there’s just dust and a few wires’ (Crimp 1997: 24).

The above quotation, and the image of the screen as a hollow object in its function of projecting images, confirms the idea of Anne as a character reduced and condemned to be only projecting imaginings that are not her own, and a fragmented hollow self, constructed by a multiplicity of external perspectives imposed on her. This definition is key to explaining the different actors’ descriptions of the absent character, which produce a fragmented figure, one that emerges through the subjectivity of the observers. Gao’s exploration of character occurs at the level of subjectivity: Woman’s memories, her past and present emotions. In Crimp’s case there is a tendency to objectify the absent character by trying to see her from different angles. However, the point of observation is purely external and each observer ends up giving their own opinions on Anne. The effect is the emergence of a more fragmented figure through the use of different observers giving their subjective views on the object of the narration, which Zimmermann explains as Crimp’s disbelief in the original subject: ‘The original subject cannot be represented. Historical reality cannot be retrieved. […] The play’s center is an absence’ (Zimmermann 2003: 77). In this case, the original subject is not to be confused with Gao’s originary self. It is a narrative subject, the female figure whom the different actors on stage are trying – but fail – to define. The fragmentation of personality is, in this case, enacted through different points of view being adopted, whereby a multitude of connotations defy any

66

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

objective understanding of that person. We could define this as an act of deconstruction. Deriving from post-Lacanian theories, deconstruction is understood as a particular kind of reading practice and, thereby, a method of criticism and mode of analytical enquiry: Deconstruction is not synonymous with ‘destruction.’ It is in fact much closer to the original meaning of the word ‘analysis’ itself, which etymologically means ‘to undo’ – a virtual synonym for ‘to de-construct’ […] If anything is destroyed in a deconstructive reading, it is not the text, but the claim to unequivocal domination of one mode of signifying over another. A deconstructive reading is a reading which analyses the specificity of a text’s critical difference from itself (Cuddon 1991: 146–7).

In this sense, ‘deconstruction’ is an attempt to dismantle the binary opposition, the signified/signifier that governs a text. This enacts Derrida’s idea of language operating on the basis of discontinuity, of meaning as the product of an interweaving of signs and of text as produced only through the transformation of another text.7 This kind of reading focuses on the ‘aporias’, or impasses of meaning, or, to quote Derrida, ‘the point in argumentation where one appears to arrive at a place of contradiction and paradox from which no simple exit is possible’ (Simons 2004: 93). A deconstructive reading identifies the logocentric assumptions of a text and the binaries and hierarchies it contains as well as demonstrating how a logocentric text always undercuts its own assumptions, its own system of logic (Norris 2002).8 Crimp’s fragmentation of the object of the narration is concerned with the fragmentation of the personality not in a psychoanalytical sense, but in a linguistic or textual sense, which goes through different stages of fragmentation. Halfway through the play, in ‘7 The New Annie’, Annie is also playfully depicted by the actors to be the name for a car model (Crimp 1997: 30–5); later in the play, in



A Comparison with British Playwright Martin Crimp

67

‘14 Girl Next Door’, the actors/narrators give a list of the different personas and objects that Anne could be (ibid.: 59–61). Both scenes diminish the character even further from an incoherent human figure to a thing. Crimp’s depiction of multiple aspects of her identity, at the very end of the play, leads even further to reduce the female figure to an object with little or no specific connotations. Anne as a text is being read and investigated to show its internal aporias. Essentially, Crimp’s interest differs from Gao’s in terms of focus; whereas Gao is interested in investigating and deconstructing Woman’s identity, Crimp’s interest lies in deconstruction, or the concept of textual aporias. While a Lacanian approach can be used in the case of Gao’s play, Derrida’s approach explains the dynamics in Crimp’s play, those concerning the ‘other’ and the ‘difference’ and language itself as a product of this duplicity. Due the nature of the sign (the signified is composed of other signifiers), the meaning of any signifier as a chain of signification, i.e. text, is deferred and ‘kept under erasure’ and any text is ‘always out of phase with itself, doubled, in an argument with itself ’, only conceived through the aporias it generates (Derrida 1997: 158). The originary as a philosophical understanding of logic is, here, defined always as a ‘copy of itself and therefore a place where there is no originary, only a supplement in the place of a deficient originary’ (ibid.). In this sense, Crimp’s self-referentiality, his use of language, is closer to Fuchs’ understanding of theatrical practices, which since the 1970s started to use what she calls the ‘literalization of theatre’. Coincidentally, Fuchs’ notion finds a parallel with Derrida’s attack on phono-centrism and logo-centrism and the idea of writing as displacement and absence where there is no bond between thought and speech, no starting point from which utterance originates, where even the idea of an originary principle is an illusion (Fuchs 1996: 73). To discard these illusions is to treat writing without assigning any

68

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

origin and any signification in the continuous process of difference and displacement. The concept of theatre that is generated from this discourse defies the role of the dramatic tradition in creating the illusion of ‘spontaneous speech’ and in asserting ‘the claim to be a direct conduit to Being’ (Fuchs 1996: 74). This literalization or textualization of the theater event has appeared in a number of forms, as subject, as setting, as stage business. Writing, which has traditionally retired behind the phonocentric texture of performance, in a surprisingly large number of works now declared itself the environment in which dramatic structure and theatrical performance are situated. […] this has important implications for dramatic character, which begins to re-assume its cursive, pre-psychological meaning – character as impression or inscription (ibid.).

The examples that she uses – it is important to note that she sees Brecht, Beckett and Handke as ‘pre-history’ to this phenomenon (Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, Adrienne Kennedy’s A Movie Star Has To Star In Black And White, Richard Foreman’s ontological theatre among others) – bring the attention to the process of writing (and reading) and textuality in a self-referential way.9 The textualized theatre that she is referring to is one that rests on the ‘entire tradition of self-referential irony’ (Fuchs 1996: 74) and where the text cannot be understood, in a dramatic sense, but is part of the theatrical process, like an actor on stage in its self-reflexive function. Similar to Lehmann’s theatre of the real, she refers to a theatre of presence where the deconstruction of the writing/speech (signified/signifier) binary connection reflects ‘the association of the speech with presence in the most concrete form’ (ibid.). It is a kind of theatre where the actors/ characters are reduced to inscriptions and writing/speech is an actor playing a role (Fuchs 1996: 91) in the theatrical process, in the concrete happening of the actions on stage.



A Comparison with British Playwright Martin Crimp

69

Literalization or textualization of theatre is part of Crimp’s play in that it denies an origin – we never get to know the woman that the actors are talking about – it is self-referential in its textuality and enacts a process of deconstruction. These factors all determine the death of character, intended in a dramatic sense carrying a psychological meaning and with the ability of creating signification. Gao’s play exemplified a process of splitting perspectives by presenting the figure of Woman on stage and still giving the possibility for her to speak about herself in and out of her role and still relying on an originary starting point of consciousness, of the self, regardless of how split and dissected it is. In Crimp’s case, even if in Mitchell’s production the woman figure is physically present on stage, the female absentee is reduced to the signifier of its own absence, of its own death.

The theatrical experience and the spectator Moving on to focus on the theatrical dynamics of the two plays, we must go back to the idea of narrative text, narration and the use of monologies as described by Lehmann. Both plays unfold what Lehmann calls postepic (post-epic) narration, a type of narration whose account is being given, ‘narrated, reported, casually communicated’ (2006: 1). He describes this kind of device: Here the theatre is oscillating between extended passages of narration and only interspersed episode of dialogues; the main things are the description and the interest in the peculiar act of the personal memory/narration of the actors (Lehmann 2006: 109).

Postepic narration is, in practice, largely realized through the use of long expositive monologies, which is not Crimp’s case but is definitely Gao’s. However, one cannot deny that in Crimp’s case as well, the interchange between the different voices is a form of account being

70

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

reported or, more precisely, being casually communicated, in what looks like a guessing game about the absent character. The commonalities between Crimp and Gao can be found in the use of this similar postdramatic form. Monologues or long expositive speeches are not used merely as a way to look into the character’s feelings and thoughts, but, in a postdramatic sense, the monologue serves to reinforce what Lehmann calls ‘the certainty of our perception of the dramatic events as a reality in the now, authenticated through the implication of the audience’. The implication can be found in the ‘transgression’ of the limits between ‘the imaginary dramatic universe’ and ‘the real theatrical situation’ (Lehmann 2006: 127). It is a conception of a theatre that as an ‘external communication system’ can exist without the construction of a ‘fictional internal communication’ (ibid.: 128). Lehmann uses the term ‘monologies’ to define this kind of monologue, which functions as a ‘symptom and index for the postdramatic displacement of the concept of theatre’ (ibid.). It is the theatre of events, a theatre of the now, focused on the performative as well as on spectatorship, as we have seen in the case of Gao’s play. The function is experiential, putting the characters in almost direct communication with the audience, who are invited to participate in the theatrical experience by making sense of what is presented to them and by responding, through that, to the characters, who are the presenters of a narration. So even in the case of Crimp, who does not use monologies or monologues, we can still recognize this function of theatre whereby the different voices/performers engage in a casual conversation that is open to the audience as they try to define the absent character. While the previous section of this chapter focused on the relation between the characters/actors and the text/theatrical material, here attention will be given to the relationship between the spectators to the text and the role of the actors/characters, as was already



A Comparison with British Playwright Martin Crimp

71

introduced in the analysis of Gao’s play, and the reference to the split perspectives. Other elements, including the visual elements of the play, the use of violence and the body as part of theatrical experience, will also be taken into account.

Gao’s tripartition In Gao’s case, we need to go back to the concept of tripartition. Sy Ren Quah identifies two aspects of the playwright’s technique of alienation or tripartition that go beyond Brecht’s ideas (Brecht 1978: 150). First, Brecht demanded that his actor should not ‘become completely transformed on the stage into the character he is portraying’, as the ultimate aim of his alienation was ‘to make the spectator adopt an attitude of enquiry and criticism in his approach to the [dramatic] incident’ (ibid.: 134). By contrast, Gao seeks to achieve alienation from the psychological contradictions of a character. The enquiring attitude that the audience develops towards the dramatic events is just a by-product of the revelation of the character’s psychological contradictions. Second, Brecht occasionally instructed his actors to deliver their lines in the third person and in the past tense, but these practices were carried out only during the rehearsal process. Gao, instead, writes third-person lines into his scripts. Thereby, the narrative is not just a means to achieve the effect of alienation, but becomes the enactment of the alienation itself, as suggested by Quah (2004: 85). The effect is that this play provides an exaggerated version of the character, or rather an exaggerated version of Woman’s reality; and the audience fully understands that her speech is fictional, subjective and therefore, unreal. This is also conveyed by the relationship between the visual elements and the speech of the actor playing Woman. The actions and gestures of the other performers on stage emphasize the

72

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

theatrical effect and the added performative value of Woman’s speech – these characters/actors being external forces carrying their own meaning, which affects that speech. Moreover, since these characters are played without any personality or subjective traits, the actors are reduced to mere tools of their own actions. Their very non-verbal nature could be regarded as a pre-verbal force menacing Woman’s verbal entity, which imposes a strain on her and to which she finally succumbs. Going back to Lacan, the dynamic of the play, in which Woman succumbs to the external, the pre-verbal, pre-symbolic prevailing over the verbal and symbolic. In this sense, Woman’s linguistic journey can be linked to the Zen Buddhist concept of no-language,10 if we follow Zhao’s interpretation that the use of the third person can be explained by Gao’s attempt to describe a journey towards enlightenment. In theatrical terms, going back to Lehmann’s monologies as displacement of reality, we can see that Gao’s theatre is not only about displacement but – thanks to the use of tripartition, third person pronouns and external characters creating a sense of neutrality – he plays with different perspectives and points of view. This becomes typical of Gao’s theatre and is used in all the other plays analysed in this book. The focus is on the viewer, as Gao plays with the perception of reality, examining how different perspectives can change how we perceive reality by merely having Woman talking about herself using the third person pronoun and in this sense adding an extra layer distancing the audience from identifying with the character. Furthermore, by showing the gradual disintegration of her thoughts and of her ability to recollect, until she reaches final dissolution, Gao calls into question the audience’s ability to follow and understand the Woman’s narration, especially towards the end. The exploration is achieved through alienation and by splitting both the character’s and the audience’s points of view. This becomes clear if we look at the visual elements and the function of the body on stage.



A Comparison with British Playwright Martin Crimp

73

The postdramatic body in Lehmann’s account is an absolute material element, a physicality that transcends meaning. The body is intended not as a carrier of meaning but in its physicality and gesticulation, in its ‘auto-sufficient physicality’ (Lehmann 2006: 95). The autonomy of the body and its physicality is indicated in Gao’s play through the presence of two additional performers on stage, as well as the physicality of Woman. The latter exemplifies the idea of embodiment of pain and pleasure that in postdramatic theatre becomes emblematic of a process that connects body to language, an embodied language where the body as an ambiguous signifying character can turn into an insoluble enigma (Lehmann 2006: 96). Dance and movement on stage become an extreme expression of this process of embodiment that creates the needed ambiguity (ibid.), and combined with spoken language further enact a process of displacement. Most importantly, in my view, in Gao’s play, embodiment offers an additional perspective to the theatrical experience. This occurs both through Woman’s embodiment and pain in the process of disintegration and through the presence of external characters. At the beginning of the play, Woman addresses Man, who attempts to respond in the background through his body language to Woman’s accusations: Man shrugs, makes faces, tries to speak to Woman, and shakes his head, till he totally disappears. Then, a barefooted clown appears and disappears on stage twice, while Woman goes through Man’s clothing, from which a wooden leg and arm appear. Afterwards, the shadow of a Woman is visible on stage with an umbrella, for a very brief moment. Woman finds that one of her legs has been amputated, an act that seems to be self-inflicted. At first, she is surprised and questions whether or not the amputation is real and whether or not she is still alive. Another clear reference to death is at the beginning of the final part, where a masked man appears in a long black robe. At that moment, Woman is talking about her experience of driving in the middle of the motorway, seeing flashing headlights

74

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

and being caught in the midst of fog. Suddenly the masked man turns round and blocks her way, and from his left arm a red sleeve falls down (Gao 2001a: 225). She interprets this action as a warning of a calamity (ibid.). The passage that follows gives a vivid embodied and physical description of her reaching out for death: She feels like she’s gliding on a glacier and she can’t stop, she sees only a big mass of blackness, any time now she’s going to slip into the cracked icy layers and plunge into the deep dark water of death (ibid.: 226).

Owing to their menacing potential, the figures and their shadows appearing and disappearing on stage exemplify and mirror Woman’s turmoil and descent into madness. As the play unfolds, it is through a visual dramaturgy of violence to which different perspectives are applied. Woman, first, speaks about the pain and violence that she has suffered through out the course of her life. This is then materialized when we see that her leg has been amputated. The attention directed to her pain and suffering, which up to that point appears as a secondhand account through the use of third person pronouns, is suddenly embodied by the concrete image of her amputated leg. The audience is suddenly directly faced with her pain and suffering as they look at her amputated leg, while also experiencing also her pain through the secondhand account of Woman talking about her condition. Moreover, if we consider the use of third person pronouns and the actor/character binary position that Gao describes, we see not only the character of Woman experiencing pain through the amputation, but the performer herself looking at the character she is impersonating, and experiencing this pain, as well as thinking as an individual about the potential to experience that pain in an attempt to embody it on stage. This becomes even more complex when bodily images are presented by the other characters on stage, in particular the figure of the nun.



A Comparison with British Playwright Martin Crimp

75

In the later stages of the play the nun cuts her stomach, takes out her intestines and offers them to Woman. If, as said previously, the nun’s action to some extent mirrors Woman’s internal turmoil and despair, we can assume that in witnessing this act of violence it is actually as if Woman is looking at herself, her own dismembered body, in the mirror – and, in a sort of cinematic double gaze, the audience is again experiencing first-hand her pain through this violent act and through the Woman’s account. We are shown not only what a character sees, but how she sees it. The same can be said if we consider the Woman character/performer paradigm: the Woman character sees her dismembered body, the performer experiences the character’s horror, and the audience not only experiences the horror first-hand, but through the experience of both the character and the performer. Moreover, on the other hand, the nun character/performer, in the act of offering, is also experiencing this act of violence both first-hand and second-hand through the gaze of both the audience and Woman. This doubling of points of view stresses the experiential nature of bodily violence, which is enacted through acts of exposition and presentation (the nun’s gesture) and the third person account (the use of tripartition). This is not an act of representation but an embodied act of presentation that makes the audience participatory in this experience thanks to a process of distancing realized through the use of different points of view. This is even stronger and more effective at the very end of the play, where a headless woman enters the stage and teases and interacts with Woman till she turns into a shirt. This striking image announces the dissolution of the Woman character, who at the end of the play disappears totally from stage; only a pile of abandoned clothing is left. Alain Timar’s production of Gao’s play is a good example of the physicality of Gao’s text on stage and the different perspectives that are created, thanks to the presence of the other two performers on stage and their visual and theatrical connection to Woman. With a set

76

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

mainly presenting white rectangular moving panels that are lifted via a system of ropes by ‘La manipulatrice’ Myriam Delclos, the iconography of production is built on the motif of interconnection between all the elements on stage, the performers, the props and indeed the panels through the movements of lifting, of tension and release. The intricate system, which, as Timar on the commentary to the Copat DVD of the production states, was inspired by labour in mines, connects not only the panels but also the performers. The cape worn by Evelyn Istria, playing Woman, is connected to a rope and lifted from her shoulders; meanwhile, the coat worn by the figure of Man/ clown/ghost and old man, played by physical actor Philippe Goudard, is also manipulated by a rope that the actor himself manipulates and lifts and, sometimes, is in the hands of Woman. Man’s constant physical presence as a clown-like figure with a whitened face and wearing red lipstick, supersedes, to some extent, his presence in the script, because we do not see him changing into the different roles. Moreover, in the later stages of the play, we see him engaged in actions that are not described in the script, as he carves Woman’s silhouette out of the paper which makes up the surface of the panels. Similarly, the dancer, Karine Flavigny, seems to be more present on stage than in the script, in her different personas: of Woman’s bodily parts – the amputated leg and arm that we see emerging from a long cape on the floor, on which Woman sits, of Woman with an umbrella, of the bandaged woman, of the nun, and of the headless Woman. We also see her clearly moving on the floor in semi-dance movements, contorting her body. The presence of these performers, stressed in Timar’s production, materializes Woman’s speech because they are physically joined both with each other and with Woman through a game of ropes and lifting; similarly to the description in the script, there are occasional moments when Woman acknowledges them and their actions seem to have a direct impact on her. Moreover, the interconnectivity that is created on stage between the performers



A Comparison with British Playwright Martin Crimp

77

and the elements is what enacts a sense of different perspectives, as we see Woman’s words echoed in the movements around her that, nonetheless, have a life of their own and as such affect Woman. Their menacing presence that the visual interconnectivity internalizes in Woman, physically visualizes Woman’s gradual loss of control and gradually contributes to the splitting of her image and the split of perspectives. The latter is cleverly rendered in two later stages of the production. One is when the two performers and Woman are aligned in full frontal facing the audience: Man and the dancer are mainly hidden from view, each behind a panel and only part of their faces is visible through a tear in the panel, while Woman is in full vision. If we assume the interconnectivity between the three figures, this visual triptych splits Woman’s figure into three; conversely it also splits the narrative into three elements: the one, the narrating voice, we can fully see on stage, and the two, the silent performers, we can only partially see. The second moment is at the very end of the production where the dissolution of Woman is rendered visually by Man designing with quick brushes a silhouette of Woman on the back of three panels. It is worth noting that this happens gradually on stage: Man brushes each panel in turn, following Woman’s passage from one panel to the next, which are then lifted after the design is complete and both Woman and Man pass to the next panel. Visually we see Woman leaving a mark on the panels, yet, behind her, the mark, her shadow, is clearly made by the other performer; it is not the automatic imprint of her own figure, which describes a form of dissolution, a form of fragmentation in the multiplication of perspectives. Woman’s figure is reduced not to one silhouette but to three, made by someone external to her, who, nonetheless, has been connected to her. Timar’s vision crystallizes Woman’s dissolution by presenting the enactment of fragmentation that embodies the splitting of different perspectives. Going back to the overall vision of the play, first of all, as we said earlier on, Gao is describing a journey through subjectivity. Second,

78

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

the monologues, here used through the embodied visual experience of the performers on stage, create a multiplicity of perspectives, which is also part of Lehmann’s definition of postdramatic aesthetics. However, Gao’s play enacts what Bleerer defines as a process of ‘de-naturalization’ of perspectives that destabilizes ‘the safe position of the spectator’ (2004: 37) by ‘exposing its workings’. Bleeker questions Lehmann’s idea that ‘multiplication of frames’ increases perceptibility of the thing in itself ’ (ibid.: 32), that the awareness of different perspectives leads to intensification of the perceptibility, and thus confers the spectator’s ‘direct access to things as they are in themselves’ (ibid). He proposes, instead, that ‘the exaggerated perspective turned seeing into an experience akin to hallucination’ (Bleeker 2004: 38), and turns the spectator into a ‘detached spectator’ rather than an actor (ibid.: 38–9) in the process of embodying the theatrical experience, while at the same time supporting such an illusion of detachment. The hallucinations she refers to blur the certainty of ‘what is seen and the projections of those who are seeing it’, leaving the spectators to decide what is actually presented on stage and what is the projection of ‘their own fantasies, desires, fears and imagination’ (Bleeker 2004: 40). In Gao’s play, Woman’s journey can be interpreted as defining a sequence of hallucinations on stage while supporting the illusion of different perspectives being created through tripartition, the embodied theatrical experiences of pain and violence and the action of the two silent performers. Confusion between reality and real, objective and subjective, enacted through a multiplication of frames, leads us back to Gao’s idea of a hypothetical/suppositional theatre, which, according to Quah, highlights the unreality of the real (Quah 2004: 123). According to Quah, by alienating the audience and reminding the audience of the fictional nature of the actions on stage, the spectators are ‘instilled’ with ‘the suppositional nature of what has been presented’ (ibid.: 127). In other words, the spectators are



A Comparison with British Playwright Martin Crimp

79

made aware that what is presented on stage could be real, part of the real world they are inhabiting, while at the same time being made aware of the unreality on stage (Quah 2004: 129). This discourse of hypotheticality/suppositionality that Quah mainly connects to the relation between actor/character/spectator, in my view and following Bleeker’s argument, does not merely eliminate any theatrical illusion but creates hallucinations that not only refer to a suppositional real but also to a subjective real. The latter in this case does not refer to the character’s subjectivity but to the subjectivity of the spectators who are faced with distinguishing between the theatrical ‘real’ and their own embodiment of this real, a projection of their own subjectivity. The theatre of suppositionality/hypotheticality also questions the spectator’s ability to distinguish between hallucinations, where hallucination is not a synonym of illusion. Hallucinations are framed as an illusion, aware of their own unreality but pointing to a supposed reality. The end of Gao’s play proposes the disappearance of the Woman as a character and, as we see in the production of the play, frames the different hallucinations in the play by creating split perspectives. This calls into question the spectator’s ability to discern between the different perspectives offered and their own embodied experience. Going back to Fuchs’ death of character, one cannot possibly deny that what Gao presents with this play is, to some extent, the death of a character, that of Woman as a dramatic character in its fictional representational function. However, while the use of a monologue that implies a de-dramatization of the role of the character reduces the function of the actors on stage to pure performers, the use of different points of view, and the hallucination that these create, still refer to the idea that a fictional reality is being presented on stage by the force of its disappearance and fragmentation and through questioning the position of the spectator.

80

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

Crimp’s spectralization Looking at the end of Gao’s play, we could argue that Crimp’s starts where Gao’s ends: the female character disappears in Gao’s play while in Crimp’s case it has already disappeared and is absent from the theatrical experience. As mentioned earlier on, Crimp’s play, unlike Gao’s, uses dialogues rather than straight monologies/ monologues. The theatrical function of these dialogues is that of exposition, presentation through the account of the different voices, which defies representation and is achieved through alienation and distancing. Aleks Sierz recommends Crimp’s play as a recipe for a new kind of theatre (2001: 33), where the alienation occurs on stage before the very eyes of the audience: to use Zimmermann’s words, it takes place at the interface between the speaker or ‘mouthpiece’ and what is spoken. On page, Crimp’s play, therefore, does not describe the concrete presence of the body. In this sense, we can refer to Lehmann’s account of playwrights like Jelinek (Lehmann 2006: 18), whose own conception of ‘language surfaces’ (Sprachflächen), a kind of language that replaces dialogues, a two-dimensional sort of language (ibid.), implies an intensification of communication, that, according to Lehmann, has no relation with the fictional. With regard to language, Angel-Perez refers to actors as being reduced to mere ‘énonciateurs’ and Crimp’s theatre as being totally stripped of any physical support where the ‘voice’ is the only physical support used. Again calling into question Derrida, she adds that this kind of theatre exploits what Derrida calls ‘hauntologie’, i.e. the capacity of the voice to ‘spéctraliser’ (to reduce to a spectre), where the voice is the spectre/ghost of the word insomuch as the word is the spectre/ghost of the voice. The effect is ‘experiencing the representation of the absence’ (Angel-Perez 2006: 201), or the theatre of the absence, as mentioned above. Crimp’s piece plays with the absence



A Comparison with British Playwright Martin Crimp

81

of the character; and, as in Gao’s play, alienation becomes the very protagonist of the play. With the absence of a supposedly embodied experience, the scrutiny falls on language and narration, close to Derrida’s semiological idea of language and the ‘supplementary’ concept (Derrida 1990: 281, 1997: 145). The sign is ‘always the supplement of the thing itself ’ (ibid.). This approach to language endows writing with a function in its own right: freed from the tyranny of meaning and signifiers, language becomes a playful tool. It is in this vein that we can understand the over-textual nature of the dialogue, the use of several languages in the same speech and the joining of several voices, which open up the boundaries of language and contribute to the absence of cultural specificity. If we go back to the idea of selfreferentiality, and focus on the role of the spectator, we can argue that Crimp’s play brings attention to its own construction because, in a similar way to Gao’s, it asks the audience to focus only on the process of creating and of deconstructing the identity of the female character, whose social and cultural attributes are only manufactured labels – in the same way as the representation/presentation of the absent character is structured and manufactured through the voices’ account, which I have defined earlier as a guessing game. At first glance, one could argue that the play enacts the death of character, which Liz Tomlin, mentioning Fuchs, defines as being linked to the ‘contemporary poststructuralist understanding of identity as being made up of multiple and provisional selves who create the world that they inhabit’ (2014: 373). While Crimp’s play deploys the typical process of literalization of theatre described by Fuchs, it is worth noting Elisabeth Angel-Perez’s stress on the element of ‘nomadic voices’, which similarly deny any ‘trace of a presence of the self ’, yet do not totally point to ‘the loss of the subject’; consequently, we can still talk about ‘the character’s mindscape’ but only through these voices (Angel-Perez 2014: 362). Rather than

82

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

talking about the character’s mindscape, which would acknowledge the possibility of a dramatic epistemology, I refer to the narrative mindscape of the play and its internal structure, with the possibility of an enclosed form, which I will discuss later. Self-referentiality also points to a kind of parody of the very process of deconstruction and ultimately of the death of character that this play seems to stand for. The parody lies in Crimp’s attempt to take to an extreme the premises that are part of the genetic make-up of postdramatic theatre, the postepic narration, the death of character and the literalization process. In this sense, the fact that the voices talk about a possible character but the character is absent means that the play asks the audience to look for this character and to define her identity; or, when they cannot find it, the spectators can only but follow the playful dynamics of the theatrical experience. In Gao’s play, the use of different perspectives questions the spectator’s position towards what is happening on stage and points to a suppositional reality. In the case of Crimp’s play, spectators are also asked to search for the identity of the absent character, yet the premise is that they will never achieve this goal, which, thus, discards a priori their ability to do so. This is the result of a disembodied theatrical experience, made up of voices, of performers talking about a fragmented character, and the surplus of disconnected information about the absentee (she could be a terrorist, a car, a wife, etc). In Gao’s play, albeit dissected and split, the spectator witnesses a physical presence of a woman, as the narration of past events refers to one character. Paradoxically, by fragmenting the absent character through an act of deconstruction, eliminating the possibility of representing a fully formed constructed fictional entity, Crimp’s play withdraws any reference to a suppositional reality and feeds an illusion of a different kind, an illusion that is dysfunctional and fragmented. In a similar vein, Clements points to the paradox of Anne, who despite the fragmentation and changes is ‘the play’s rooting point’, what Crimp



A Comparison with British Playwright Martin Crimp

83

calls his ‘unifying feature’ (Clements 2014: 334), in which I see the paradox between illusion, unity and fragmentation. Contradicting, to some extent, what I quoted earlier from Zimmermann’s paper, which refers to the missing ‘original’ in the narrative conception of the play, this paradox seems to suggest the possibility of an ‘original’. A similar kind of paradox is found in the 2007 production of the play. It is no coincidence that the latest big production of this play by Katie Mitchell at the National Theatre in 2007, in its multimedia extravaganza, focused on the social parody of the play and became a visual and musical spectacle exploiting the openness of the script. Mitchell, to some extent, captured the parodic essence of the play and took it to the extreme of a visual multimedia experience. In this regard, theatre critic Michael Billington saw a flaw in Mitchell’s production (2007): in its multimedia experience, the use of video, projections, and rock music, which, in his view, represented a dehumanized reality. I would argue such an extreme display of technology, visual and music elements can point to another kind of illusion, positing the spectator in the midst of cacophonic signs on stage. Going back to Lehmann, we can see how the use of technology becomes an alternative to the human presence on stage, of an ontology of humanity (2006: 81) and refers to the effect, ‘the separation and division of the senses’ and the ‘artistic potential of the decomposition of perception’ (ibid.: 83). The effect of the use of technology and media in theatre can transform theatre into ‘scenic poetry’, which implies a process of synaesthesia, through which, by responding to visual and auditory impulses, the spectator ‘searches for the Baudelairean correspondances’ (Lehmann 2006: 85). This process is part of ‘a texture of perception’ that constitutes a unity of senses and reactions (ibid.); it is a unity that arises from the cacophony of fragmented signs, further divided by the use of media and technology on stage. The paradox between fragmentation of impulses and unity of perception presents the basic paradox of Lehmann’s definition, which is also the paradox

84

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

of this play, which as defined above, through the absence of the character on stage, creates further illusions. The multi-layered, multimedia theatrical experience of Katie Mitchell’s production mirrors such paradoxes in both the execution of the play and the preparation for it. As becomes evident from the notes to the 2007 production, the apparent dissonance on stage through the multimedia spectacle contrasts with the pre-production and rehearsal process, in which Mitchell chooses to set the play in 1997 and uses props and a set that resonate with that period (‘everything, including the lights, musical equipment, computers, props, costumes, and hairstyles, were circa 1997’) (Attempts on Her Life background pack 2007: 5). Moreover, she imagined and set characters and back stories for them, effectively creating fictional characters for the actors to refer to, while bearing in mind the range of skills their character should demonstrate during the performance (ibid.: 7). This Stanislavskian approach would give the actors a psychological base for their acting, in contradiction with the postdramatic idea of actors reduced to mere performers on stage, which is what the text seemed to require (Attempts on Her Life background pack 2007: 6). Liz Tomlin describes the pre-production process as having used ‘strategies of rigorously psychological characterisation’ and a ‘Stanislavskian embodiment of continuous consistency’ (2014: 374), which, she contends, might ‘detract from its potential to realize fully the kind of indeterminacy that exists in Crimp’s text’ (ibid.: 377). In regard to the subjectivity, Tomlin even goes as far as to say that such a production refers to a ‘stable subject self – the fictional actor who has been rigorously psychologically constructed within a realist discourse’ (2014: 374). This is only partially true, as we will see from the paradoxical elements present in the production. First, Mitchell decided to delete the first scene in the play, ‘All messages deleted’, a scene in which we hear the messages left on the answer machine of the presumed character, as if to stop the



A Comparison with British Playwright Martin Crimp

85

audience from thinking that Anna actually exists (Attempts on Her Life background pack 2007: 8). This shows her intention to cut loose from the idea of unity, eliminating the possibility of a search, which contradicts her rehearsal strategy of constructing characters as psychological entity. Another contradiction between the script and the production is the presence of a female figure in video projections, and the presence of a woman in a red dress, who brings attention to herself and to some extent defies the principle of absence. In this case I would disagree with Clements’ idea that, despite all these factors, Anne still embodies a floating physical presence (Clements 2014: 335); I would argue that the production adds a physical presence, an embodied physical experience, which is, however, framed by the context of the production where we see the characters working on a film set. In the education pack, Mitchell mentions, also, that all the characters are artists, seen making a film, which is a process of literalizing and to some extent reducing the openness of the text. The frame through which we can see the production risks enclosing the action on stage. The spectators are faced not with a series of hallucinations but a recreation of illusions, which also contradicts Crimp’s intention of using an overload of information, through a writing practice where dialogues are thrown in and words are set free.

Concluding remarks As this comparison has shown, there are both similarities and differences between Gao’s and Crimp’s plays that suggest a similar approach to theatre and connect both writers to a postdramatic tradition as defined by Lehmann. The link with the postdramatic theatre lies in the fact that both plays employ a principle of self-referentiality that envisages a kind of theatre conscious of itself but, above all, conscious of its relationship with the audience, which is in Lehmann’s theatre

86

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

of spectatorship. Moreover, both employ what Lehmann calls a postepic narration, which refers to a type of narrative that has lost its traditional function, that of unfolding dramatic actions and narratives, and, instead, presents theatrical moments connected by an atemporal, non-logical structure. Apart from considering the two plays against Lehmann’s postdramatic backdrop, more revelations about the nature of the theatrical experience of these plays have been brought to the fore by viewing the two plays in the light of Fuchs’ notion of death of character. This notion poignantly resonates with these two plays in that they deal with the metaphorical or symbolic annihilation of the female character. It is within this context that important assumptions can be made about the two plays, because in both plays the death of character is only partial, the character is still questioned, is still challenged, is not totally dead. In particular, in this regard, one can see a major difference between Gao and Crimp. While Crimp’s absence of the character and the ‘spectralisation’ of language seemingly confirm Fuchs’ notion, Gao’s play still deals with subjectivity and challenges the illusion of the character’s psychological subjectivity. It is partially because Gao still prefers to play with perspectives and points of view that split the character, in the same way as a painter would open up a dream and try to dissect it from various angles and perspectives. By doing so, he recreates hallucinations that point out to a fictional reality being presented on stage by the force of the character/performer’s own disappearance and fragmentation and through questioning the position of the spectator. With this first post-exile play, which represents a distinctive voice from his previous plays, Gao shapes theatrical notions connected to postdramatic forms: the concepts of tripartition, the neutral actor, suppositional/hypothetical theatre and, to some extent, Zen Buddhism, which scholars like Zhao believe influenced his theatrical conception. The latter, in particular, is a sign of Gao’s transnationalism,



A Comparison with British Playwright Martin Crimp

87

his nostalgia of cultural and, in this case, religious forms coming from his cultural roots. The comparison serves to show that Gao’s theatre can be considered under the postdramatic umbrella even though, as stated at the beginning of this chapter, Crimp does not sit totally comfortably within it. It is Crimp’s uncomfortable position within postdramatic theatre that makes the comparison all the more interesting, especially if we consider a definition of postdramatic theatre that is fluid and anti-dogmatic. What is important for the analysis of the two plays is that we can assess Gao’s work within the contemporary debate on theatre. Although we have not discussed at length the idea of postdramatic transnationalism in this chapter, I can confidently claim that Between Life and Death marks the start of the formation of a cultural and theatrical discourse that, having surpassed a dramatic peak, postdramatically elaborates a transnational discourse of hybridity, where transnationalism does not merely point to the transcultural and cross-cultural but also to a process of transcendence of cultural identities, which is expressed in the artistic fluidity of Gao’s theatrical experience. While Crimp’s theatrical experience is marked by return to more strictly dramatic plays, in later work, after Attempts, Gao ventures further and further into the postdramatic transnational debate.

3

Dialogue and Rebuttal: The Death of Love in Postdramatic Transnationalism

Regarding Beckett as a transnational figure, in the centenary year of Beckett’s birth in 2006, Gontarski laments that Beckett has been commodified as an author by countries like Japan, where in his view modernism had no resonance (2007: 1). Gontarski fails to see transnational global resonance of Beckett’s oeuvre. For instance, Beckett’s Waiting for Godot played an important part in the cultural counter-discourse of Chinese pioneering theatre experimentalists in the 1980s. Directly inspired by Beckett’s play, it is no coincidence that Gao’s Bus Stop – where characters are waiting for a bus that never comes – had a huge impact on the theatre scene of the time. In addition to Waiting for Godot, this chapter will argue that there are also resonances of Happy Days in Gao’s Dialogue and Rebuttal. Beckett’s Happy Days (1962) ends with Winnie, embedded up to the neck in a mound, staring at Willie, who, ‘dressed to kill’ her, ends up exhausted on the mound. The second half of Gao’s Dialogue and Rebuttal1 (1992) (Duiya yu fanjie, which literally means ‘Dialogue and the rhetorical’ / Dialoguer-Interloquer, ‘Conversing/Disputing’ in French) starts with the two characters, generally referred to as Girl2 and Man (Nüzi and Nanren), looking at their own dead heads on stage, a scene starting the process of annihilation that will be completed by the end of the play. It is the presence of bodiless heads on stage – note that Gao lists the two heads as characters in the script (2001a: 3), even though in the production he directed they are present only as objects on stage – that has prompted me to make a connection

90

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

between Gao’s and Beckett’s plays. Moreover, besides the image of the bodiless heads, which will be discussed later in this chapter, both plays deal with a dysfunctional relationship between a man and a woman, the unbridgeable separation, an existential condition of mutual alienation, and physical and emotional entrapment – all themes and motifs that lead to a sense of destruction of their selves and identity. Besides Beckett’s non-linearity and theatrical absurdity, the echoes of Beckett’s play are in the detail, the use of objects on stage – the egg shell on the ant that Winnie sees is echoed by the Monk using an egg in one of the movement sequences at the start of the play – as well as the uses of auditory elements; for example, the ringing bell that marks Winnie’s exposition is present in the second part of Gao’s play and creates the rhythm of the performance until the very end of the play. Although these connections might seem purely casual, the reference to Beckett’s play will be useful within a discourse on postdramatic theatre.

Beckett and postdramatic theatre Beckett has often been identified with postdramatic theatre and Fuchs’ account of theatre after modernism has made some strong references to Beckett’s work. Lehmann associates Beckett with Heiner Müller’s writing, especially in regard to the notion of traumatic history. In Lehmann’s view, Beckett and Müller discard the theology of history by avoiding using a dramatic form (2006: 39). Jonathan Kalb also makes important connections between Beckett and Müller, and highlights that the Müller–Beckett connection brings to the fore a discourse on trauma and death (2002: 72), which is relevant in a study of Gao’s theatre. Both Beckett and Müller’s theatre are rightly defined as a theatre of ‘after the catastrophe’, a theatre that comes



Dialogue and Rebuttal

91

‘from death’ and stages ‘a landscape beyond death’’ (ibid.: 71). In contrast with the direct reference to historical figures such as Stalin and Mao in Hamletmachine, and more visible historical backdrop in other Müller’s plays, Beckett’s theatre does not strictly represent or refer to historical events but reflects an existential trauma (Weiss 2010) that resonates with the trauma of the Second World War. It is the traumatic element, which defines many of Beckett’s works where death is in the inevitability of the entrapment – the circularity of narratives marked by repetition. In this sense, Happy Days can be seen as describing an apocalyptic scenario, a married couple being entrapped in a purgatory-like dimension. Fuchs also describes Beckett as a forefather of contemporary theatre. As mentioned in the previous chapter, she sees in Beckett, especially in his Krapp’s Last Tape, the pre-history to the concept of literalization/textuality in theatre; Beckett, in this case, is compared to Peter Handke, and in particular his play Kaspar (1996: 76). Fuchs argues that both Beckett’s and Handke’s textuality shows a process of the self determined by language itself (ibid.: 77), where language as writing, in a Derridean sense, exemplifies displacement and absence, disassociation between thought and speech, where the voice is reduced to mere inscription. It is a self without origin, a self without autonomy, which translates, in theatrical terms, into the use of ‘an anonymous linguistic accumulation, a voice of authority with no author’, in contrast to the idea of a ‘character-specific speech’ (Fuchs 1996: 76). This is what we find in Winnie’s repetitions and to some extent in the nonsensical speeches in Gao’s plays, which are more frequent in Gao’s Dialogue and Rebuttal than in Between Life and Death. Fuchs highlights the theatrical implications of Beckett’s theatre on spectatorship and the death of character: In Beckett’s terminal world, the spectator is confronted with the ultimate reduction: a single mind, a gaping cosmos. […] the traditional

92

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays dyad of human and universe, whose infinity of relations we all supposed the stage was created to witness, will have collapsed. New work in theater after Beckett has had to reckon with this problem. Writers and directors working at the edge of theater seem to perceive that they are in a new kind of world in which there is no longer anything ‘out there’, or anyone ‘in here’ to imitate (1996: 170).

The implications of presenting characters on stage escaping their consciousness and presenting the absence on stage is symptomatic of an impossibility to conceive humanity and the universe in its wholeness, i.e. the collapse of a Cartesian conception. She explains that, because of the collapse of an outside world to refer to and to imitate, staging cannot refer to an ‘elsewhere’ outside or ‘a fictive temporal progression’ (Fuchs 1996: 170). Her existential and philosophical account of theatrical approaches to the issues of representation/presentation on stage are all relevant in a discussion of Gao’s play, especially those dealing with death and trauma, not only as a narrative element but in terms of form, the notion of the self, perception and its absence. With regard to Beckett’s use of repetition in Happy Days, Yoon Sook Cha defines this as exemplifying a mourning for a split self (2013: 8), the split between voice and the self, the displacement in a Derridean sense, which in Cha’s words becomes a split between perceiving and being perceived (ibid.: 10). While Fuchs refers to Beckett’s reversal of the Cartesian principle, and defines the paradigm ‘To be is to be perceived’ (1996: 93), where being perceived is what constitutes the state of the self, Cha describes it as an angle of immunity, equivalent to the Freudian notion of the ‘melancholiac’s identification with the lost love object’ and which I would refer to as Lacan’s idea of the self and the Other. According to Lacan, ‘the unconscious is the Other’s discourse’ (1977: 16) and ‘the subject can grasp nothing but the very subjectivity that constitutes an Other as an absolute’ (ibid.: 20). It is the perception of the self being structured by an external image and



Dialogue and Rebuttal

93

the self or ego as a ‘fiction’, ‘frozen as an image of something that does not exist’ (Elliott 2004: 61). Going back to Cha, the angle of immunity is the angle through which consciousness and the self can continue being perceived, in ‘continuity as a discrete and “complete” self ’. It is argued that surpassing this angle means acknowledging the gaze and attempting to flee it. In theatrical terms, according to Cha, this translates into Winnie’s impossibility to be perceived – Willie is an unreliable perceiver and Mr and Mrs Shower (or Cooker), in Winnie’s words, are not interested in ‘perceiving’ her as they leave her be (2013: 11). I would argue that, while Beckett’s play is about the impossibility of escaping the gaze, but above all the impossibility of seeing oneself independently of the other’s gaze, as reflected in Winnie’s entrapment and metaphorical dying due to the absence of this gaze, Gao’s play exemplifies a paradox in the process of perception. This implies a level of fragmentation, or perception depending on different points of views, which would always result in different perceptions of the self. As we will see later in the chapter, in Dialogue and Rebuttal fragmentation is achieved by the presence of the two heads on stage and the splitting of perspectives in the use of tripartition, which also raises issues of spectatorship. These elements – splitting of perspectives, tripartition – were present in Between Life and Death and are further developed in Dialogue and Rebuttal, which, although taking a different direction, also further elaborates a discourse of postdramatic transnationalism. In Dialogue and Rebuttal, it is important to note that the references to East Asian theatrical elements and especially the allusions to Buddhism – the character of Monk, a role that is normally taken on by a dancer, is clearly a Buddhist monk and performs religious chanting – are a bit stronger than in Between Life and Death. These, I would argue, are not only part of Gao’s transculturalism as defined by Sy Ren Quah – Gao as translator between cultures – but are also

94

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

used in a process of self-orientalizing, of Gao positing himself as a Chinese exile in Europe. In agreement with the Conceison’s position of Gao’s Chinese fragmented identity, I would argue that the ‘orientalizing elements’ in this play should be regarded as purely formal theatrical solutions that are part of Gao’s transnational baggage. A discourse of postdramatic transnationalism is to be found in the complexity of this play and the underpinning philosophical approach – connected to ideas of subjectivity and relations between the real on stage and external real, which will be dealt with in the analysis of ‘death’ and the role of language, together with issues of perception.

‘Beyond death’ scenarios In Between Life and Death, death is present in Woman’s monologue referring to perdition, ‘chaos’, wandering into thick clouds etc., which construct a dream-like ambience; here it is the interaction between the two characters that leads to and builds the narrative of the play (Chen 2003: 273) around death, yet the characters themselves never explicitly talk about death. In Happy Days, death needs to be conceived within the dynamic of the play, marked by Winnie’s attempt to catch Willie’s attention and often implicit in the images used in the text. It (death) is in her allusion of being ‘sucked up’ (‘Don’t you ever have that feeling, Willie, of being sucked up? [Pause] Don’t you have to cling on sometimes, Willie?’) (Beckett 1986: 152), in her hopeless repeating that nothing is really happening (‘Yes, something seems to have occurred, something has seemed to occur, and nothing has occurred, nothing at all, you are quite right, Willie. [Pause] The sunshade will be there again tomorrow …’) (ibid.: 154); and in the connection between the bell, the night and the idea of sleep (‘– and yet I do – make ready for the night – feeling it at hand



Dialogue and Rebuttal

95

– the bell for sleep – saying to myself – Winnie – it will not be long now, Willie – until the bell for sleep –’) (Beckett 1986: 157). In Act Two, at the very beginning, apart from a second reference to the bell (‘Ah, well, not long now, Winnie, can’t be long now, until the bell for sleep. [Pause] Then you may close your eyes, you must close your eyes – and keep them closed’) (ibid.: 165), Winnie clearly talks about Willie being actually dead: ‘Oh no doubt you are dead, like the others, no doubt you have died, or gone away and left me, like the others, it doesn’t matter, you are there’ (Beckett 1986: 161). Winnie’s statement expresses a clear contradiction; Willie has died and has left her but still remains there listening to her. Such a contradiction might suggest that Willie is a figment of Winnie’s imagination, or is part of the nonsensical absurd world Winnie belongs to. In this regard, we find an important difference between Gao and Beckett’s play. Beckett’s play is essentially built around the figure of Winnie, while Gao’s is all about the interaction between two characters. Some scholars have read Beckett’s play as unfolding a continuous process of dying (Cohn 1980: 9) that proceeds from the opening scenes where Winnie is surrounded by her objects to the later scenes where we see her trapped up to her neck in the mound. Some argue that the characters do not actually complete this process and are not presented with a final act of absolute death. Proof that Beckett’s play could unfold such a process are the few references of Winnie to her feeling of being ‘sucked up’, her feeling of tension toward lightness, which exemplifies her desire to transcend her situation of being trapped in the ground, in the mould; whereas Willie, who is said to be dead, is free to move in space, and to hide himself in the holes on the mound. The fact that Winnie is still presented as trapped in the mound at the end of the play suggests that she has not managed to reach this dimension of lightness, she has not managed to die completely and finally. In this light, Beckett’s play can be said to present a death-like scenario, almost a purgatorial limbo represented by a lonely mound,

96

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

which physically embodies the impossibility of dying or the process of relentless and inconclusive dying through the encagement of Winnie, who is physically tied to its physical earthy structure, and to some extent Willie, who does not leave Winnie alone. In Gao’s play, in contrast, death is an internal theme of the play and has to be seen in a metaphorical and symbolic sense; the play describes a passage from life towards death, through the relationship between Man and Girl and through their relationship with the Monk as a functional character in the play. The theme of life and death, then, can be extended to the theatrical construction of the play. In this regard, we need to take into account how the two characters view life and death and how they themselves are represented in relation to the idea of life and death. The play starts by presenting the characters in a concrete situation: they are a couple who hardly know each other and have just engaged in a casual sexual encounter. This gives the impression that they are almost realistic characters. For part of the play the dialogue between the two characters is driven by Man’s curiosity about Girl. Girl responds to his curiosity by relating stories about her past, such as her sexual experience in India. She makes a few attempts to leave, yet she continues the conversation. Man’s eager and almost anxious curiosity portrays him as a distant observer exploring life, as though he had never lived it in the first person. In this context, in his eyes Girl symbolically represents life itself. Man is the one who actually leads the conversation as a conscious and rational participant. He is the one who changes the focus from life to death as he starts talking about his dreaming: Man I dream, when I am alone, I often dream. Dreams are more truthful than reality itself and are even closer to the self (Gao 2001a: 273).

This is one of the few statements Man makes in the first half of the play about himself, and it is a key statement that helps us to



Dialogue and Rebuttal

97

understand him as a character and his relationship with life and death. He continues: Man  One day, I dreamt that I was sinking into the ground, my whole body was falling in a deep well, surrounded by extremely high walls on both sides, or possibly I was falling from a cliff, no matter what I just couldn’t go up and escape … (Gao 2001a: 273).

From the above two quotes, we understand that Man tries taking refuge in dreams to be closer to his ‘self ’, yet dreaming does not bring him any happiness. It is interesting to note that the dream image of sinking into the ground mirrors, to some extent, Winnie’s hole into the ground in Beckett’s play; similarly, Man’s failed attempt to climb out in the dream evokes Winnie’s attempt to climb the mound. As in Beckett’s play, dreams are dominated by a sense of imprisonment, which could symbolically be associated with death. His desire to escape into dreams fits with his nihilism and cynicism, which emerges when talking about language, philosophy and people in general: Man  Don’t you think that can make people sick? Everybody is sick of everybody! Everyone is sickening! (Gao 2001a: 279).

The above utterance suggests that Girl disappoints Man, and his disappointment is the implicit cause of the shift in conversation, to something more negative and dark. Man is in a kind of middle condition: he has already been detached from life and to some extent rejects it, but through his encounter with Girl he maintains a relationship with it. His attitude can be explained as a sense of alienation. Sy Ren Quah refers to this idea. In particular with regard to Man, he adds that ‘presented though intense emotions, the meaninglessness of utterance is connected to the insignificance of existence’ (Quah 2004: 155). Quah gives a very negative outlook on the character, who is described as being almost spiritually dead. In comparison

98

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

with Woman in Between Life and Death, Man’s nostalgic tone and his words speak of general disillusionment, rather than a personal disappointment with life. Although they both feel a sense of dissatisfaction with life, Woman is a victim of her past and her connection to death is an individual and not a universal condition, whereas Man is absorbed with his spiritual quest and his connection is therefore more universal. As far as the character of Girl is concerned, it is partly Man’s existential nihilism that drives her to a pessimistic contemplation of life; in the first part of the play, she never actually refers to a desire for death, as did Woman in Between Life and Death. In Girl’s words a strong sense of regret, disappointment and anger towards men starts to emerge together with a general sense of fear of the passing of time and therefore of ageing and of death: Girl  I am not sure why, I am afraid, I always feel a kind of fear, always afraid that […] When I was eighteen I was anxious of being twenty, when I was twenty I was anxious of being twenty and after twenty I could feel death approaching closer and closer (Gao 2001a: 288).

If we compare Woman in Between Life and Death to Girl, we find that fear is the main trait they have in common. In the case of Woman, fear is more a projection of her past, and her fear of death is more associated with the fear of lack of recognition by others, and she is referring to a physical kind of death. Girl, on the other hand, talks of a fear of ageing, and her fear is therefore more projected into the future. As in the case of Woman, who seems overwhelmed by an emotional misery that is at times unwarranted, Girl’s fear is the product of an exaggerated irrationality, considering that she is supposed to still be young. In this sense Woman is more similar to the character of Man, than Girl to Woman,3 as both Man and Woman cherish the idea of an escape from life – in the case of Man through dreams, in the case of Woman through death.



Dialogue and Rebuttal

99

This brings us to another major difference between Man in this play and Woman in the previous play, which will help us to understand the representation of death in this play. In Dialogue and Rebuttal, unlike in Between Life and Death, death is not portrayed as an inevitability after a miserable existence –Woman’s recollection of past events drove her to contemplate death – but as a consequence of the building up of tensions between the two characters. The dynamics between the two characters change gradually from the beginning of the play: Man’s reproaches of women increase, he shows resentment about women’s writing and woman writers. Then, when they talk about love, Girl reiterates her resentment and shows emotional anger towards men, who to some extent fit typical male stereotypes. Chang Hsien-Tang affirms that Girl regards men in general in a very negative light: she thinks that men consider women only as an object of their desires (Chang 1996: 293). The tension arises when talking about ‘lovers’ betrayal’; Man becomes increasingly embittered about Girl, who then says: Girl (Sighs.) You are nothing but awfully lonely that you need someone to comfort you (Gao 2001a: 275).

This conflict further progresses with a game that inspires some implicit sexual and violent innuendo. Man suggests that they should start playing a game, in which Man initially takes control over Girl, but only for a brief moment as Girl insists on stopping the game. Her behaviour provokes Man, who finally comes out with an outburst against women in general: Man (Running and shouting.) If a woman became God, the world would be even more frightful. I am not certain of it but she might manage even better. I am not certain of it, she could be even worse, with the temper of little girls! (Gao 2001a: 281)

His reaction is translated into anger towards her that is taken to the extreme, with Man attempting to kill Girl; he hides a knife in his robe.

100

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

The first part ends with an act of apparent mutual homicide, in which Girl grabs hold of the knife Man was hiding under his cape and stabs Man, who, soon afterwards, approaches Girl from behind as a ghostly figure. We do not actually see Man stabbing Girl but this is suggested by the last image of the first act when both characters fall to the ground. Gao goes further than Beckett: Beckett’s play ends with Willie’s attempt to climb the mound, in what could look like an attempt to kill Winnie, which fails as Willie does not manage to climb the mound. This ending suggests the circularity of the play. In this sense, as mentioned earlier, Beckett’s play is all about the process of dying that does not result in death, or is not a final death. In Gao’s case, the play shows a progression towards death. Beyond this difference between the two plays, however, both of them refer to a sense of the ephemerality of life, which is expressed by Winnie’s allusion to a dimension where nothing changes and nothing moves. In Gao’s play, while the two characters – especially Man – refer to life and inevitability of death, it is the game they play toward the end of Act One that symbolically comes to represent the ephemerality of life, while also augmenting the underlying hate and violence the two characters feel towards each other which brings them to death. Through the game, death assumes a sense of ephemerality itself, as a self-inflicted act of violence derived directly from the interaction of the two characters, both attempting to murder each other. Zhao explains the dynamic of their infliction of violence on each other as a consequence of their attempt to use language: ‘Once they tried to use language, they unleashed fierce irrationality, becoming more and more hostile towards each other, and finally turning homicidal’ (2000: 150). Following Zhao’s explanation, it is the ephemerality of language that captivates and curses the characters by leading them to death. Liu Zaifu describes Gao’s ‘exquisite’ (jingzhi) theatrical language, which, in this play, however, creates a dark portrayal of how ‘sick’



Dialogue and Rebuttal

101

human interactions can be (Liu 2004: 93). Similarly, Sy Ren Quah connects ‘the meaninglessness of utterance’ to ‘the insignificance of existence’ (2004: 156). In a broader sense, on the one hand, the charm of death captivates both Man and Girl, thanks to the game they are playing, where ephemerality leads to more ephemerality and feeds a sense of alienation. On the other, moving on from the game scene, death can also be conceived of as an expression of the hatred between the two and inflicted on one character by the other. It is, therefore, hatred between them and against each other that leads to death, where, according to Zhao, hatred can be understood as a metaphor for the effect of language, which feeds the characters with irrationality (2000: 150). In regard to the impact of the content on the staging of the play, we see that Lehmann’s idea of the theatre of death, or ‘after-catastrophe’, mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, has some relevance for Gao’s play. In the case of the first act, we cannot strictly talk about an ‘after-catastrophe’ scenario or a traumatic experience. The continuous dying of the two characters in Beckett’s play presents an ‘after-catastrophe’ situation, while Gao’s presentation of the lead-up to death is about the creation of a traumatic experience. Moving on to the second act, the characters seem to inhabit a dimension similar to death, which does not unite them but divides them even further. The ambience is even more imbued with a surreal presence of death than in Between Life and Death. The characters have lost any connection to life and are looking at their dead bodies, metonymically represented by their dead heads, as though their souls are talking to their bodies (Gao 2001a: 208). In terms of their relationship and attitude, the two characters are presented talking to themselves without interacting with one other, thus, dealing differently and individually with death. It is a similar sense of isolation that we see Winnie experiencing in Beckett’s play in her failed attempt to communicate to Willie. However, in Gao’s play, the isolation is even

102

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

bleaker as the characters no longer attempt to communicate with each other, pointing to death as the death of communication. Death of communication can be found in the fact that characters stop using the first person pronoun: Girl uses the third person pronoun whereas Man uses the pronoun ‘you’. This differentiates the second part from the first part and describes a clear passage from semi-realistic interaction and dialogue to interconnected monologies that further isolate them. Man enacts his ‘existentialist’ search in even more dramatic terms. He talks about the possibility of escaping entrapment, which seemingly continues the image of the dream he mentions in the first half. The idea that Girl represents life, and Man death, is maintained, as Girl’s speech – trapped in her recollection of the past – is to some extent connected to life, to her dark memories of past encounters. However, Girl can be considered an accomplice in their mutual homicide, as though she had accepted the rules of the game. In this sense the homicide can also be seen as a suicidal act. Trapped in their own monologies, both characters gradually undergo a process of disintegration, which is represented linguistically by the gradual fragmentation of their speech. The end is very similar to the process of disintegration undergone by Woman in Between Life and Death. However, if we assume that the characters are already dead, at the end of the play we are faced with their second death, or rather a more definite death. This disintegration has been read as the final passage to transcendence, as Zhao states, the ‘return to the pre-language’ (2000: 150). Before drawing any conclusions, it is important to look at Monk, and his function in the second act of the play. Unlike in the previous play, where the characters have only a loose religious connotation, Monk seems to have a more definite link to Buddhism. First, in the Chinese text, Gao uses the word heshang, which means ‘Buddhist monk’. Secondly, his chanting is reminiscent of the figure of the Zen Master in The Other Shore. The Eastern element of the play also



Dialogue and Rebuttal

103

translates theatrically: in the director’s notes Gao recommends that the actor playing Monk should have some training in Chinese opera or Japanese Noh theatre (Gao 2001a: 270). Gao also states that the dialogic form of this play was inspired by the gong’an/koan style of question and answer in Chinese Zen Buddhism, which he proposes to use as a form of dramatization and not as a tool to promote Zen Buddhism.4 Considering that he is the only peaceful character in the play, Monk could also be acknowledged as embodying the ideal of Zen Buddhism, advocating detachment from life and emotional peacefulness. Zhao (2000: 150) and Fong (2000: xxv) speak of him as representing the stage beyond language, and having achieved serenity, the dimension of transcendence. In this light, to some extent Man’s and Girl’s second death, or death, can be seen as part of the process of redemption, as in the end their performance of worm-like contortions suggests that they turn into worms, which can be interpreted as reaching the dimension of no-language. This is also visually suggested by Monk’s stopping all physical movements at the end of the play and taking some deep breaths, indicative of a process of relaxation. Man, who, as presented in the first half, is already in a limbo situation between life and death, can been seen surviving his journey through the first stage of death and passing to transcendence, which is the second stage. The characters’ transformation into worms could be interpreted as referring to Huineng’s deconstructive idea5 of no-thought (wunian) – ‘as soon as thought stops, one dies and is reborn elsewhere’ – a notion that dismisses redemption in no-language and fits the dark tone of the play.6 Redemption connected to violence is to some extent depicted as a deceptive and disillusioned ideal. As suggested by Sy Ren Quah, the striving for transcendence is also reminiscent of a sense of alienation that has more Western connotations (Quah 2004: 168); only by linking this play to Zen Buddhism, and by having a knowledge of Zen Buddhism and its principles, can we read the

104

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

event in a positive light. Girl, for instance, is very secular – more than Woman – and has strong Western characteristics. Girl’s story is told from the point of view of a Western woman. Her experience in India is not dissimilar to that of many Western women during their travels in an East Asian country, in this case described as being as menacing as it is exotic. Beyond the meaning of the play, whether we are talking about salvation, or disintegration and alienation, it is important to note that the possibility of reading the play from either a Western or an Eastern perspective is part of the openness of Gao’s play and theatre and his assumed Chineseness. In the presentation of the premiere of this play, in Austria, emphasis was placed on his Chineseness as a way to sell and present his work. This opens up a debate about his assumed Chineseness; in an interview about Gao’s work, the director Alain Timar seems to find an explanation for his theatre in that characteristic. However, we should not forget that the use of characters like Monk can also be easily compared to Beckett’s use of clownish characters who are functional in the context of the play as part of Beckett’s dark irony as well as being a way to materialize his plays into a physical theatrical experience. What has changed from the previous play, though, is the emphasis on the religious element: there are more references in the second half to Buddhist chanting and the use of a Buddhist rosary. The fact that Gao stresses the use of Eastern physicality and references to Buddhism in his plays is an attempt to draw on his cultural roots as part of creating his own persona, of presenting himself as Chinese, an exotic other, which is part of the transnational nature of his work. In this regard, as mentioned earlier, I tend to agree with Conceison’s idea of a fragmented Chineseness that appears and disappears in Gao’s work. In order to avoid making reductive assumptions about the cultural identity of his work, while it is important to acknowledge the stronger cultural reference to his Chineseness in this play, in comparison with



Dialogue and Rebuttal

105

Between Life and Death, it is also vital to acknowledge the openness of this play, which remains embedded in a dark and violent postdramatic and transnational depiction of annihilation and of death. It is important to stress that the absence of Buddhist references would not affect the core of the script’s theatricality. The postdramatic nature of Gao’s play can be explained by the possibility of reading the play and its theatrical execution in the light of Lehmann’s definition of death in theatre, explained through the notion of the ceremonial and exemplified by the notion of an after-death catastrophe and landscape beyond death. This will enable us to consider the role of Monk in the play, by looking at Lehmann’s expanded idea of death, which builds on the notion of ‘ceremonial of death’ as conceived by Polish theatre-practitioner and artist, Tadeusz Kantor. In Kantor’s work, death assumes tragicomic elements (Lehmann 2006: 156), where ‘the dramatic disappears in favour of moving images through repetitive rhythms, tableau-like arrangements and a certain de-realization of the figures, who by means of their jerky movements resemble mannequins’ (ibid.: 71–2). What is interesting in Lehmann’s account of Kantor’s work is the emphasis on the use of objects – ‘the human actors appear under the spell of objects’ (ibid.: 73) – and the sense of repetition that produces this idea of ceremonial death. Repetition, in particular, as mentioned earlier in the chapter, can be linked to historical resonance and can be referred to the idea of trauma. In both Beckett’s and Gao’s plays, here, repetition is part of the theatrical physical execution of action on stage, which implies the use of objects on stage. While, in Beckett’s play, repetition is in both the actions on stage – Winnie’s use of her bag and the objects that surround her – and in the language she uses – repeating herself (for example, she uses the reference to the bell twice in the play) and referring to existence as a process of continuous repetition – in Gao it is mainly exemplified by the presence of the Monk character on stage.

106

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

Some of Monk’s actions on stage are of a repetitive nature, a rhythmic resonance which accompanies the musical score that was added when Gao premiered the play in Austria. Monk’s battering of wooden fish, the balancing of eggs on a stick, the bell hanging over water, are not only a running commentary on the actions. Fong connects this figure with the dialogue of the characters in terms of ‘witnessing and punctuating the drama of futility’, but without being ‘otherworldly, his antics being the follies of his own humanities’ (2000: xxxv). His actions stress specific moments in the play, and at some points the characters observe him in moments of alienated contemplation, what Gao calls ‘indifferent observation’ (Gao 1996: 14) or what Yang Huiyi calls an oblivious search of the self (2004: 187). However, Monk’s presence also serves to focus the attention on the use of objects, the materialisation of the action on stage where the objects, not merely props, secondary to the human presence on stage, embody their own autonomous vitality. It is the objects that seem to guide and determine Monk’s action on stage, thus adding a layer of rituality or ceremonial that marks progression towards death in the first act. From the connection to the ceremonial and death, as conceived by Lehmann, we understand that Monk is not merely a religious figure, but almost a Beckettetian clownish figure, who through the randomness of his actions on stage and his partial interaction with the other two characters embodies a performative presence that both ritualizes and demystifies death. Thus, Monk’s ceremonial could be seen exemplifying the process, as described by Lehmann of Kantor, of ‘annihilation of meaning’, that paradoxically – by being shown and presented on stage through random yet ceremonial acts on stage – reverses its course (Lehmann 2006: 72). Monks battering the wooden fish as a ceremonial act describes a process of annihilation, which is reversed thanks to physicality of his very movements. In the second half, Monk’s ceremonial and connection with the annihilation



Dialogue and Rebuttal

107

becomes clearer as Monk’s presence contrasts with the annihilation as enacted by the two other characters. The analogy of the annihilation and the ceremonial links Gao’s play further to Lehmann’s idea of ‘after-death catastrophe’ and ‘landscape beyond death’, attributed to Beckett, which is found in the cruelty of the relationship between the two characters, Girl and Man’s death, and their consequent isolation from each other as reflected in the theatrical staging, which, at the Austrian premiere, saw the use of a totally empty stage and a simple musical score. However, unlike Beckett’s work, Gao’s Dialogue and Rebuttal is not strictly a post-traumatic experience. While the first half of the play shows the making of the traumatic experience, the second half does not merely present its aftermath or effect. It is a composition of moments and feelings as experienced by the two isolated characters in a process of annihilation that appears final. In philosophical terms, we can find some similarities with Fuchs’ stance, according to which it is impossible for theatre to refer to the ‘real’, outside the theatrical dimension of the stage. This resonates in Man’s quest, which is rooted in the process of the violent fragmentation of language and existence, towards an ontological questioning; he is a character in search of philosophical truth that is denied to him in the same way as Winnie’s attempt to attract Willie’s attention is met by failure and disillusionment. Man’s philosophical existential quest is a very important element that can be strictly associated with the fragmentation of language, which has a major role in this play, as will be seen in the next part of this chapter.

Language, perception and framing Zhao has said that the play’s main focus is on language and that it explores the limits of language as a communication tool and the

108

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

mechanism for creating meaning. This section will therefore look at the self-referential statements and how these question the function of language; the use of second and third person pronouns; the question of framing; the use of non-linguistic devices. Both characters in the play make some self-referential statements about language and narration, as well as questioning language. The dialogue in the first part of the play seems naturalistic, as the two counterparts attempt communication. At the beginning, Girl pushes for conversation and Man is happy to listen while Girl talks about her sexual encounters in India. It is Man who makes the first reference to narration and the use of language, by saying that she needs to be precise when telling a story (Gao 2001a: 255). This is, however, a passing remark. The first part of the play sees Girl wanting to carry on with the narration but also wanting to hear from Man, who is more interested in listening to her stories or at least in avoiding talking about himself, and asks continuous questions. Breaking up her narration, Girl poses continuous questions that are not directly self-referential; however, her questions as to what they should talk about points to a process where it becomes increasingly difficult to find topics to talk about: Girl  Do you want to talk about the smell? Man  To hell with the smell! Girl  You people are really useless. Man  What? Well, let’s talk about the smell then! Girl  I really don’t want to talk about it again (Gao 2001a: 256).

The volume of words between the two characters increases rather than diminishes; it is as though the fragmentation is enacted in reverse. The impression is that the characters cannot stop using language and are destined to continue, as though they were trapped in language. The fragmentation and exhaustion of language is a longer process than in the case of Woman in the previous play because in Dialogue



Dialogue and Rebuttal

109

and Rebuttal there is a strong attachment to language, which in the dialogue assumes a form of power, empowering the characters in the first half and dominating them in the second. In terms of the interaction between the two characters, initially Man gives in to Girl, who, demanding that he continue the conversation, asks Man to define himself using language. In the game, where language is employed to impart commands, it is, then, Man who temporarily imposes his power. However, in the case of both characters there is some restraint, which does not allow them to reveal their feelings openly to each other, as though the language they were using were not their own. Language is not a free tool at their disposal. Girl automatically repeats the sentence ‘What more shall we talk about now?’, while she expresses her intention to leave; her unkindness towards Man seems at times to be an automatic compulsion, and at times a desire to be entertained. Later in the first half of the play, Man speaks more about himself, by making references to language and dreams. He refers to the question of naming as a code, a symbol that is not attached to the human being: ‘A name is only a code, the symbol is not important, the person behind it is. You casually can call me with any name that you are familiar with. I do not really mind’ (Gao 2001a: 262). Later on, talking more clearly about a dream he had, Man talks about the impossibility of retelling a dream because dreams ‘are no stories but narratives’ (ibid.: 273). Man’s definition of his dream echoes the dichotomy between symbol and the essence of the person, i.e. the self, between dream as narration/account and the linear narration of a story. It is Lacan’s symbolic/imaginary distinction where, as mentioned in the previous chapter, the unconscious is still structured like language – a different kind of language, but still a language. In Man’s words, describing dreams not as stories but as narratives, it distinguishes two kinds of language, one that is external to the self, that of stories, and one made of narratives through which dreams can be told, which reiterates a symbolic/imaginary dichotomy.

110

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

In the second part, echoing the image of Man’s dream, of an intimate yet illogical narrative, language is used to describe more intimate thoughts and imaginary narratives. The characters are presented facing their own memories; Girl is re-living some of her encounters, and Man is imagining an escape route towards an external place. Using Lacan’s ideas of language, we could argue that in the first half of the play the use of language represents the phase of the symbolic and in the second half, the phase of the imaginary, where in their death-like dimension the characters have lost any connection with reality. Before examining how the use of language informs the construction of subjectivity and Fuchs’ death of character, we need to look at the use of the third person pronoun, the idea of tripartition, which unlike in Between Life and Death, is not consistent throughout the play. The third person pronoun is briefly used at the beginning of the first part, where Man refers to Woman as ‘she’, and towards the end of the first half. In the second half, yet not from the very start of the second half, Girl uses the third person, whilst Man uses the second person pronoun. The use of different personal pronouns has a distancing effect, similar to the one in the previous play: The second part of the play thus deals with the Man and the Woman in their ‘death’ stage when they are left with an existence in pure consciousness after eliminating their bodies. In their state of ‘self-transcendent observation’ - a state of being that Gao Xingjian advocates and attempts to attain, the selves are freed from their physical bodies of confinement. […] In their dialogue with their cut-off bodies, they come to objectify themselves as ‘you’ and ‘she’ defined by their intellect with ability to speak, to remember and to think (Yip and Tam 2002: 229–30).

The disintegration of language occurs later in the play than is the case in Between Life and Death, when the characters are believed to reach ‘the land of nothingness, where there is no self, no memory, no fantasy, no



Dialogue and Rebuttal

111

dream’ (ibid.). The use of different personal pronouns brings us back to the discussion, mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, regarding the question of perception and the self, where the self, in relation to Beckett’s play, was argued to exist only when being perceived by an external other, a concept that connects to the Lacanian notion of the self through the other, which Gao presents as a paradoxical condition. In Winnie’s case, her failed attempt to capture Willie’s attention is reflected in her condition of isolation, as argued by Cha, and is symptomatic of her incompleteness, a self that is dispersed and abandoned. In the case of Gao’s play, the interaction between the two characters makes the situation more complex. The first part of the play shows the struggle for understanding between the two characters, which leads, in the second part, to both mutual disagreement and mutual annihilation. The disagreement between the two characters points to the impossibility of being perceived by the other, because the perception the other has of the self is bound to be wrong and meets the disagreement of the self, and because the self cannot really be fully perceived either by itself or by the other. The two characters’ mutual disagreement with each other in the first part of the play, which is not filtered by tripartition, shows the impossibility of reaching a self-critical distance that would lead to an awareness of the self. In the second half, Gao does not immediately start switching pronouns; it is a gradual process describing a passage between perspectives, from a univocal perspective to a multi-layered perspective, which is augmented by having the two characters use two different pronouns. The use of the different pronouns reflects their different ways of using language. In the case of Girl, who is more at ease using language to express herself, the use of the third person pronoun creates additional distance from her feelings, whereas Man’s discourse, which is more abstract and self-referential, uses the second person pronoun, which diminishes the distance from and the abstract nature of his

112

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

self-doubting. In this sense, Gao levels their differences and their distance from themselves. Most importantly, going back to the idea of the perception of the self through the other, the use of different pronouns creates a distance that shows the paradox of a process of self-perception, which is deemed to be not only fragmented, but displaced, because unlike Crimp in Attempts on Her Life, Gao does not merely show the absurdity of several perceptions, but points to an illusion of the self. Moreover, in contrast to Between Life and Death, the distance between the actor and character thanks to the use of different pronouns is not far enough to allow the spectator participate in the process of discovering and investigating the different layers of the two characters. It is a stronger form of displacement that brings about the very annihilation of the performers on stage, unlike the previous play. This becomes clearer in the connection between the two characters and the presence of the two heads on stage. The use of the two dead heads, metonymy of their death and mutual mutilation, is not quite Hamletian, not even in Heiner Müller’s sense. The actors/ characters do not directly use and address their own heads. At the very beginning of the second half, they start looking at them but they soon focus on their own bodies, and engage in more and more contorted movements, while talking. The attempt to understand their own selves, through reflecting on their dead selves, by looking at their dead heads, becomes rarer and rarer in a process of perception and self-perception, pointing to the paradox of such a process of selfinterrogation. Thus, self-contemplation becomes a pointless activity: they switch their focus onto their bodies, whose movements enact a gradual process of annihilation that will be completed by the end of the play. In this case, the process described in the play points to the death of subjectivity, or the death of a Cartesian rationality, referring, in Fuchs’ words, to a place of absence and displacement. Another consideration that needs to be taken into account is the question of framing. As a framing device, the image of the door,



Dialogue and Rebuttal

113

mentioned by Man halfway through the second half, is present towards the end of the play, when both characters continuously refer to their attempt to go through a crack in the door. Using Fuchs’ approach, we could argue that there is nothing beyond the crack in the door; we are faced with the absence of a referential world that is no longer there, which leads to the theatrical expression of such impossibility. However, at the very end of the play Monk is described opening the crack with his back to the audience; he sees what the audience sees beyond this crack. Through this added frame of the door, the spectators are made participants, invited to look beyond the world of the play. This has a double effect: first, the spectators are put on the same level as Monk, the performer in the play, thus becoming participants in what is happening on stage, which fulfils Lehmann’s idea of the theatre of the real, the theatrical dimension seen through its own physicality. Secondly, this additional framing implies the ability to see through the crack, which points to a referential world outside that of the stage, which would go against Fuchs’ idea of absence and realistic emptiness. Whether one effect or the other is intended in Gao’s play, it is difficult to say; Gao might not have been totally aware of and that could be understood merely with regard to the playful nature of his theatre, in which he adds different perspectives, and creates lyrical images on stage. The opening of the crack at the end of the play could be read solely as a lyrical evocative image of the character looking at a place far in the distance, inviting the spectators to do the same. The last element that might clarify the position of this play is another form of framing: namely, the physicality and embodiment achieved through the figure of Monk, the objects used on stage, and also the bodies and movements of the performers playing Girl and Man. Going back to the idea of ceremonial, connected to Kantor, of Monk’s actions as demystifying the annihilation of meaning, we could read Monk’s action as demystifying the process of death that Girl and Man are going through. This would explain the function

114

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

of Monk’s actions only if these are interconnected with the other two characters, which would manifest the process of embodiment of Girl’s and Man’s condition through the physical elements on stage. This does not really happen, unlike in Between Life and Death, because Monk’s actions and movements work in contrast with what is happening to the main characters and should be be taken for what they are, playing a vital role in their own right – or using Lehmann’s words, in non-hierarchical composition on stage. In this light we can interpret the objects used, including the heads, as part of this composition: physical objects in their own right, beyond their function as it relates to the characters/performers. This is particularly evident towards the end of the play, when we see Monk casually sweeping the floor and encountering the two isolated heads. We can talk, then, about a landscape composition, which Fuchs refers to in connection to the theatre of Gertrude Stein, Robert Wilson and Richard Foreman. A landscape composition, as a postBeckettian theatrical experience, is about the absence of an ‘unseen outside’ and of ‘fictive temporal progression’ on stage (Fuchs 1996: 93). Useful in the context of this play is Jane Palatini Bowers’ definition of landscape theatre, which sees Stein’s work as a langscape, a linguistic composition, compared with the genre of art-the landscape painting (2002: 18): Stein used words in her lang-scapes as a painter might place objects in the field of a painting, as though they were related to each other spatially, that is, visually on the page and sonorously in the air. Her language assumes a materiality equal in presence to the other elements of the performance event (ibid.: 20).

Bowers’ analogy of theatrical composition as a painting can be related to Lehmann’s idea of ‘scenic poetry’ and of synesthesia (Bowers 2002: 84) – mentioned in Chapter 2 in regard to Crimp’s play – which refers to a constellation of images presented on stage for the spectators to discern. Part of his idea of the theatre of perceptibility,



Dialogue and Rebuttal

115

this notion exemplifies the impossibility of grasping signification from a labyrinth of theatrical signs (ibid.: 90). The painting analogy is also a reminder of Gao’s own practice as a painter, and the connection through Huang Zaoling to the concept of xieyi, as a painting and theatrical technique, which Coulter defines as Gao’s attachment, in both his theatre and his paintings, to the ‘real’ filtered through the subjectivity of the artist/painter (2014: 57–8). Such a connection, however, reveals that this play cannot be explained through the idea of a scenic/landscape theatre. Huang’s xieyi is redefined in Gao’s idea of jiadingxing: where a suppositional, hypothetical reality is expressed through the performers/role/ spectator relationship and, as mentioned in the previous chapter, still points to a fictional reality being presented on stage – the creation of hallucination – by the force of the character’s/performer’s own disappearance and fragmentation. The bodies of the performers still materialize this process of annihilation through their movements and do not merely represent a landscape as a poetic composition. In fact, it is worth noting that, in the second half, the actors in the roles of Girl and Man are engaged in a series of movements that are both independent and dependent of what they are talking about. For instance, even when their soliloquies isolate them and disconnect them, in some instances they try to connect to one another through their actions, thus describing a dynamic of closeness and detachment that is not expressed in their speech. The key to reading this play is, in fact, the process of annihilation, which involves both the characters and the actions on stage, and which Monk fails to totally demystify through his actions, because his actions are by far too disconnected from the other characters. As a result of this, unlike in Between Life and Death, the emphasis is not on embodiment and the creation of perspectives but on the process: in the passage in the first half, the characters use first person pronouns and are shown disagreeing with one another, and in the

116

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

second half, where they start using different personal pronouns, and their actions point to the materialization of a process of annihilation through movements. While Between Life and Death uses long monologies and invites the spectator’s participation through the splitting of different perspectives created only by the force of Woman’s monologue in its connection with the silent characters, this play, in its dialogical format, in its framing and presentation, with performers/characters disconnected from one another, finds its centre in the process – a hallucination that has its own progressive continuity, almost dramatic linearity. One should not forget that, although disconnected, Monk’s actions, rather than demystifying death, might enhance it, through a sense of ceremonial which can be considered progressive; towards the end scene of the Monk stops all his activities and looks through a crack – a scene that represents an end in itself. One can recognize that the tension at stake in this play is between the dramatic linearity (the journey of the two characters, with Monk’s actions considered as progressing towards the end) and the theatrical/non-linearity (the endless repetition of Monk’s actions, and the disconnected monologies of the two characters). However, such tension is resolved into absence and annihilation, into the ultimate form of escape of Man and Girl into nothingness. This marks the major difference between Gao’s and Beckett’s play: the narrative of entrapment that Willie and Winnie cannot escape, and the dramatic– theatrical tension present in Beckett’s play, suggested by a circularity, and a sense that actions can be repeated ad infinitum, is not solved. In Gao’s play, Girl’s and Man’s physical and mental entrapment is shown the possibility of escape through annihilation. Moreover, beyond the crack that Monk opens, we do not find only a totally empty absent ‘real’ but also the possibility of a postdramatic – beyond dramatic, beyond death – transnational ‘real’, the transcendence of a ‘staged death’ projected towards another reality, the painter’s vision of the world.

4

Individualism and Freedom in Nocturnal Wanderer

In Janelle Reinelt’s and Gerald Hewitt’s recent book on David Edgar, the political British playwright par excellence, the political practice of theatre is identified as inviting the spectators to ‘pay close attention to a number of relations between the performers and spectators, and among all the humans participating in the event’ (Reinelt and Hewitt 2011: 9). Reinelt and Hewitt also make references to both Joe Kelleher’s definition of politics as associated with power relations and Stefan Collini’s statement that politics is unavoidable in theatre (ibid.: 10). The focus on the relationship between performers and spectators resonates well with a postdramatic idea of a theatre of spectatorship, even though the works of writers like the political activists Peter Handke and Heiner Müller, which deal with political issues, politics and the political, have sat uncomfortably with postdramatic theatre – especially Lehmann’s definition of it, as discussed later in the chapter. Despite being in voluntary exile from China, where his plays have been banned for their allegedly political stance, Gao has been known to stay away from political engagement, also perceived as a rejection of expressing any ideology in literature (Lackner and Chardonnens 2014: 5), attested to in the author’s famous ‘without isms’ essay. Gao’s anti-ideological stance is a reaction against the use of Chinese modern literature to promote political ideology (ibid.) and that goes some way to explaining the censorship of his work in his native country. Gao’s writing often deals with the notion of

118

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

the individual’s freedom and shows a concern for the relationship between the individual and the collective, which, in itself, manifests a political stance, in questioning power relations between the self and society. In Nocturnal Wanderer (1993), the play analysed in this chapter, which continues Gao’s journey in the realm of the postdramatic and transnationalism, the ideas of freedom and the relationship between the self and the collective are important elements – suggesting that there is an underlining indirect political meaning in the play. In terms of transnationalism, Gao is even more conscious of his transcultural position than he was in the play of Chapter 3, and especially of how the play could be perceived in either the West or China. He appears to give stage instructions on how the play should be staged in both places. In my opinion, this shows an intrinsic ambiguity, symptomatic of the author’s unsure cultural position, of having to justify, as well as further self-orientalize his own cultural practice. In this sense Gao assumes that only a Chinese audience will understand Chinese references and vice versa. In doing this, he himself reduces the West and East to distinct monolithic paradigms, which contradicts the idea of literature, as expressed in his Nobel Prize lecture (2000), as both universal and beyond cultural boundaries.

The idea of freedom The idea of freedom is inherent in Gao’s body of work. In his Nobel Prize speech, Gao’s definition of ‘cold literature’ makes reference to the kind of literature ‘that will escape for its own survival, it is a literature that does let itself be strangled by society but seeks for survival in the spiritual’ (Gao 2008: 7–8). The motif of escape is equated very often with Gao’s elaboration on freedom in his work, and the spiritual is part of Gao’s philosophical quest as a writer.



Individualism and Freedom in Nocturnal Wanderer

119

A recent edited essay collection, Polyphony Embodied (2014), presents the views of prominent Gao scholars on the question of fate and freedom in the author’s work. By most of the scholars writing in this collection, Gao is considered to address the question of freedom ‘as an ultimate quest for humans’ (Lackner and Chardonnens 2014a: 4). Gao’s own paper, included in the edited volume, emphasizes the need for freedom and its importance as preceding the ability to make choices in life: Freedom is thus the challenge of man’s awareness to his existence. It is only when individuated life seeks self-affirmation and to affirm the meaning of life that there is this struggle, and that there is an awareness of the need and indispensability of freedom (Gao 2014: 13).

While his idea of freedom derives from the existential quest for meaning in life, Gao does not regard philosophy as part of such a search. He adds: The conflict between the dilemmas of survival and the free will is the perennial topic of literature: how the individual transcends his environment and is not controlled by it. The tragedy and comedy and even the absurdity of the struggle, can only be dealt with aesthetically (ibid.: 13).

As such, the individual’s freedom is always in a constant struggle with the environment that surrounds him/her. Gao sees literature as the best way to deal with such a conflict because, unlike philosophy, literature can make manifest the subjective nature of the individual’s truth, ‘the truth of human life, a truth associated with the subjective individual’s own vibrant feelings’ (Gao 2014: 14). Gao, in fact, does not believe in one absolute truth, but rather in the existence of different subjective truths of individuals, which can only be brought to life through literature and the arts. As we have seen in the plays analysed in previous chapters, the author’s focus is predominantly on that of subjectivity and the self.

120

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

Free will primarily derives from an understanding of the self, and, when literature transcends social criticism and proceeds to scrutinize the chaos of the human self and tries to sort it out, understanding begins. This sort of understanding can gravitate towards ethics and religion, but when it gravitates towards aesthetics it leads to literary and art creation (Gao 2014: 14). It is in the emphasis that Gao places on ‘literary and art creation’ that we see him rejecting an association with both political and ideological engagement. Another important theme recurrent in the essays in this collection is the strong reference to East Asian cultural discourses that are used to justify Gao’s stance towards the concept of freedom. In the book’s introduction, Gao’s equation of escape and freedom are associated with Zhuangzi’s Daoism and Buddhism, both of which exemplify the ideal of returning to nature and freedom and also total independence from the ‘guidance from the outside’ (Gao 2014: 7). Gao, in his own essay, also makes strong reference to his cultural heritage, especially to Buddhism, and compares it to Freud’s idea of the subconscious, as a way to understand the self. Issues related to political engagement and the idea of freedom are also traceable in Lehmann’s and Fuchs’ theatrical conception of theatre. Apart from the debate of political and postdramatic theatre,, which inspired Postdramatic Theatre and the Political edited volume of essays (published in 2013 and edited, by, among others, Karen Jürs-Munby, translator of the English version of Lehmann’s book), it is important to consider Lehmann’s definition of freedom. Referencing both celebrated American performance artist Chris Burden, and French artist Orlan (née Mireille Suzanne Francette Porte), who became famous for her 1990s project The Reincarnation of Saint-Orlan, in which she uses plastic surgery to transform her face into elements of famous paintings, Lehmann makes a clear allusion to free will. He writes of how Orlan’s attempt to voluntarily dispose of her body, a ‘self-willed’ individual against a predestined



Individualism and Freedom in Nocturnal Wanderer

121

reality, of her physical appearance, wants to her absolute freedom to choose ‘herself ’. However, despite the courage of her act, due to the responsibility that such a choice implies, Orlan’s performances reveal that her ‘will’ ‘has basically already abdicated’ (Lehmann 2006: 140). Lehmann acknowledges two important aspects, here, related to freedom and choice: one is the contrast between free will and social constructs – Orlan’s choice of transformation carries the burden of responsibility; the other is the inevitability of social constructs – the imitation of an ideal of beauty limiting our choices (‘the “self-will” of the personal body stylizations informed by art becomes a mutilation to attain “beauty”’ (ibid.)) that reduces the self to pure image. A more positive view of freedom can be found in the relation between the spectators and a kind of theatre that has left behind the dramatic (Lehmann 2006: 88). Freedom, albeit limited, is in the possibility the spectators have to make their own choices – in deciphering the chaos of what is presented to them. This means that the sense of responsibility, as mentioned in relation to Orlan’s project, comes with the possibility of choice and derives from the free will, handed over from the theatre-makers to the spectators. This is also the case in participatory theatrical events in which the spectator can directly influence the actions and the outcomes of the theatrical event or promenade, or in site-specific theatre in which the spectator is given the freedom to choose what to see or what not to see. The sense of responsibility that comes with this spectator-related freedom is a recurrent theme in Lehmann’s account, particularly when he discusses violence on stage presented as part of theatrical experience. At this point we witness a displacement that all questions of morality and behavioural norms undergo through theatre aesthetics, in which there is a deliberate suspension of the clear line between reality (where, for instance, the observation of violence leads to

122

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

feelings of responsibility and the need to intervene) and ‘spectatorial event’ (Lehmann 2006: 103). In viewing violence, where all morality is ‘displaced’ and the boundaries between reality and fictional are blurred, the spectator is asked to make a decision on how to participate in the theatrical experience. This is especially the case when forms of extreme violence and bodily mutilation are represented, as occurred in Chris Burden’s 1971 performance-art piece, Shoot, during which he allowed himself to be shot in his left arm by an assistant. This idea of freedom links well with Lehmann’s ‘politics of perception’, which includes the principle of spectatorial responsibility. According to Lehmann’s definition, the politics of perception is a response to the world of media that fictionalizes and ‘dramatize[s] all political conflicts’ (2006: 186). Lehmann points out that the media have ‘occulted’ the viewers’ own perception to the extent that they do not realize that, through sharing the language of the media, they are also active participants in the process of the communication of information and current affairs; this also makes them ‘receivers’ and thus also ‘responsible for the message’ communicated (ibid.). In Lehmann’s opinion, the only way theatre can respond, to counteract the effect of the media, is through ‘a politics of perception, or aesthetic of responsibility (or response-ability)’ based on ‘mutual implication of actors and spectators in the theatrical production of images’ (Lehmann 2006: 185–6). In a similar tone to Gao’s definition of freedom, albeit providing a different approach, it is in Lehmann’s aesthetics of art that freedom can take shape and a political stance emerge. While Gao’s freedom manifests itself as a subjective truth in the presentation of the self ’s conflict with its own environment, Lehmann’s concept elaborates the relation between theatre and spectatorship, accounting for the subjective response of the subjective spectator and the responsibility spectators share with theatre-makers in the process of creating meaning and in the communication of messages.



Individualism and Freedom in Nocturnal Wanderer

123

Brandon Woolf defines another aspect that makes Lehmann’s approach closer to that of Gao’. Woolf traces a political stance to Lehmann’s ‘aesthetics of resistance’, in what he refers to as ‘double diagnosis’, the paradoxical relation between theatre and the ‘real’ (Wolf 2013: 46). Predominantly, Woolf refers to Lehmann’s stance as expressed in the epilogue of Lehmann’s Postdramatic Theatre, which defines the ambiguity of the theatre of the ‘real’, with its ‘undecidability’ between fiction and real (ibid.) and its resistance of the real. Such paradox, I would argue, can also be found in his concept of selfreferentiality that stresses the aesthetic and extra-aesthetic and the aforementioned blurring of boundaries between reality and fiction in the presentation of violence, which still admits to the function of a fictional dimension – the ‘fictive cosmos’ much stressed by Fuchs. Similarly to Gao, the political has to be found in an aesthetic solution, because as Lehmann himself states, ‘theatre is not a place and a means to distribute an ideology’ (Lehmann 2013: 108). Making theatre as an activity, its indeterminacy (Carroll, Jürs-Munby, Giles 2013: 9), the choice of presentation over representation (ibid.: 11) and ‘the semiotic freedom’ in the audience–stage relation (ibid.: 20) are, however, all political actions of resistance against a dramatic imposed by a society that fictionalizes politics and passes it for truth. Fuchs’ criticism of Lehmann lies predominantly in the lack of ideological depth in his account, and of his focus on an aesthetic discourse. With a reference to Walter Benjamin, Jerome Carroll, Steve Giles and Karen Jürs-Munby, in Postdramatic Theatre and the Political, instead, make a connection between Lehmann and Brecht in regard to the political. They point to what Woolf states in the first chapter of the edited volume, to the ‘functional transformation’ (Brecht’s Umfunktionierung) – the ability to transform the ‘forms and instruments of production’, which Woolf argues is part of Lehmann’s account and his interest in how new aesthetic forms after 1960s change how politics is understood in theatre (Woolf 2013: 37).

124

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

Moving on to Fuchs, even though there are no clear references to the idea of freedom, Fuchs’ approach to the self and subjective, linked to the death of character, is useful in the reading of Gao’s Nocturnal Wanderer, in which freedom in the theatrical journey of the play is connected to how the self and subjectivity are dealt with. Thus, in examining Gao’s idea of freedom in connection with subjectivity, this chapter will first look at the idea of freedom as developed in Nocturnal Wanderer, and then at the manifestation of subjectivity through language and the narrative dynamics of the play, and how these two are connected.

Freedom This section will look at the idea of freedom and the moral dialectical relationship between good and evil, the function and the role of the characters in that matter and the meaning of the journey through a dream dimension. Nocturnal Wanderer (Yeyoushen, ‘Night owl’, in French Le somnambule, ‘Sleepwalker’), written in 1993, is one of the most complex of Gao’s plays. The Chinese scholar Chen Jide (2003: 277) asserts that in this play Gao’s writing becomes more complex and less accessible. Divided into three acts, with a total of twelve characters, the play follows the nocturnal wanderings of the central character, Traveller/Sleepwalker (referred to as ‘Sleepwalker’ hereafter), who traverses through his dreams and meets several other minor characters. The idea of freedom is implied by the characters’ behaviour and in their words. Sleepwalker directly talks about freedom and uses the image of a purposeless walk. Sleepwalker  You can walk sturdily but there is no need to hurry your pace or to look around. With no hesitation you can walk this or that direction, on the pavement or in the middle of the street. You can do whatever you like. You are free of all burdens and all restrictions. (He



Individualism and Freedom in Nocturnal Wanderer

125

walks backwards at random on his toes.) In the end you can be idle, free from all worries. In fact, all worries are man-made; people search for worries. They have this and that worry (Gao 2001a: 330).

He talks of emotional freedom and a state of mind that contradicts with human nature and our inclination to create problems for ourselves. Here the very generic word ‘fannao’ (worry, torment) comes to signify that problems are almost a prerequisite for humankind, in order to give life purpose. Later in this first soliloquy, Sleepwalker defines himself as a man without troubles, in fact the only man ‘being idle’ (wusuoshishi) in a city (Gao 2001a: 328). After the chorus – ‘voice of narration’ – had criticized the city for being a chaotic place during the day and an empty and peaceful place at night, Sleepwalker states: Sleepwalker (In the middle of the road.) Everybody wants to control you, everybody wants to play God. (He stops.) You only want to walk aimlessly. […] It’s the so-called ‘purpose.’ You follow no purpose, no direction (Gao 2001a: 332).

He confirms that in his view freedom is about total autonomy from outside world influences. It is the other, external to the self/ as opposed to self, that playing God, wants to take control over an individual’s own life. When he first faces Prostitute, Sleepwalker expresses that the condition of being alive, an idle condition of just ‘living’, is his ideal condition. In his meeting with Ruffian, Sleepwalker tries to stay true to his intent by stating that he only wants some peace and quiet. In order to maintain his ideal state, he attempts to retreat into solitude and silence: Sleepwalker  All by yourself; you speak to yourself. What are your thoughts wandering to? It isn’t important. What’s important is that you own your thoughts. You will be able to think deeply, while the rest of people do not value thinking. […] It does not matter to you; it is

126

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

not other people’s business. You’re a human being, or maybe a worm, a butterfly, or an ant. Happiness is in the contemplation of your own thoughts (Gao 2001a: 340).

Thus, Sleepwalker retreats into his own thoughts, his own subjectivity. Freedom in this sense is connected with the idea of happiness, which is also associated with the ideas of isolation and self-contemplation, whereby ‘thinking’ is stated to be an important activity. Sleepwalker’s behaviour changes during the play. The above quotation already illustrates some changes from his previous statements; earlier on, freedom was only described as a purposeless and idle existence, but now ‘thinking’ activity comes into the equation as being an important part of freedom. In this sense, Sleepwalker has already compromised his freedom by implicitly admitting that walking is not enough. In his soliloquy, he places himself in a dialectical position, admitting the existence of an outside world and revealing his interest in it – as supported by Sy Ren Quah: However, his utterance betrays the intrinsic nature of his existence. He considers himself to have ‘absolutely no problems at all’, while paradoxically he cannot control from wanting himself to announce his freedom to others. He is therefore not fully divorced from the external world, because he still expects others to provide confirmation of his own existence (2004: 153).

Furthermore, his intent is soon challenged by his encounter with Thug, who ironically takes control over Sleepwalker’s actions by commanding him to move and dance and so on. Thug  Keep exactly like that! Show yourself to me! […] That’s right. At least you know what’s poking in your back (Gao 2001a: 340).

Sleepwalker’s encounter with Prostitute is fatal: his sense of freedom ends as he discovers his need to be with a woman. Sleepwalker That’s for sure a dream. (Whispering.) A nightmare! (Loudly.) You say that you would not mind a woman’s company. In



Individualism and Freedom in Nocturnal Wanderer

127

case someone tries to shoot you, she could be your witness (Gao 2001a: 346).

Apart from the sexual attraction he feels for Prostitute, his need to be with her is dictated by the fear that his encounters with Ruffian and Thug have infused him with. Hence, it appears that external influences affect Sleepwalker to the extent that his freedom is totally compromised. Moreover, if we consider that the events involving the protagonist are part of his own dream, it is actually his own unconscious that is dictating these events and, therefore, is controlling him. Later on, violence becomes an important component of Sleepwalker’s behaviour. In the context of the discourse on the idea of freedom, while Zhao reads violence as Sleepwalker’s ‘way to substantiate his dream walking experience’ (2000: 155), I consider the desire for freedom to be driving the character’s journey. In this sense, Sleepwalker’s outburst of violence can be read as a reaction to the realization of his having failed to keep to his ideal of freedom. Sy Ren Quah explains that Sleepwalker’s violent reaction does not occur when his subjectivity is under threat from the outside world, but when his sense of freedom is controlled and threatened by his very unconscious, and comes into conflict with his conscious choice of being in control of his own freedom (2002: 153). The apparent murder of Prostitute further links the concept of freedom to a moral issue, the dichotomy between good and evil. It is worth noting that Gao mentions good and evil, God and Devil, as part of the chaotic self, part of the process of the awakening of the self (2001a: 14). Sleepwalker, by his alleged murder of Prostitute, reveals his evil side, although it is not very clear whether it is Sleepwalker or Thug who actually carries out the killing: Thug fires the shot, but Sleepwalker pushes her in front of the gun. After Prostitute’s death, Sleepwalker is forced to defend himself against Thug’s accusation (Gao 2001a: 360). In the end, he accepts

128

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

the deal of carrying the suitcase for Thug. The suitcase as an object is present in several parts of the play and stands as a symbol with a multiplicity of meanings. In this case it stands for the power relation between the two characters, of Thug imposing his will onto Sleepwalker: Sleepwalker (After some thoughts.)  You say first that some explanations are needed. There is no service without a price. These days, it seems a practice of doing business that is universally accepted (Gao 2001a: 362).

The ‘practice of doing business’ (zuo maimai pubiande guiju) brings us back to a sense of reality devoid of freedom, but dominated by the rules that are necessary and widespread. It is within this context that Sleepwalker performs Thug’s order once again, and this time he kills Ruffian: Sleepwalker Thanks God you’ve gotten rid of that pig. You didn’t mean to kill anyone, but the circumstances forced you into it. A cornered beast would do anything, when compelled from urgency resorting to primary instincts (Gao 2001a: 367).

He is now more in control of his actions, although he has no real motivation for them. This suggests that he is actually driven by an understanding of freedom that motivates the arbitrariness and meaningless of actions. If freedom is conceived as a lack of responsibility and nothingness, Sleepwalker’s act of murder could be interpreted as the ultimate act of freedom. However, Sleepwalker, in the same soliloquy, talks of the world as dominated by evil: Sleepwalker  Of course you are wandering: the world is full of evil, you’re surrounded by evil, but you don’t feel totally unease about it, you even experience a certain vague feeling of pleasure when you were at it (Gao 2001a: 368).

In this sense, his behaviour conforms to a society dominated by evil and individualism: people live at the expense of others; and consequently his acts of violence are dictated by the society



Individualism and Freedom in Nocturnal Wanderer

129

around him and are not a free choice. In Act III, the sense of pleasure Sleepwalker feels in the killing disappears. He is, instead, overwhelmed by a sense of imprisonment, created by the evil around him and also linked to an increasing fear of death and frustrated desire. Desire acquires a negative connotation as it represents a form of temptation to sin. Although there is a total absence of religious figures in this play, unlike others by the writer, on the one hand, Western Christian concepts of good and evil and of guilt and sin resonate in the play, and on the other, according to scholars such as Zhao and the scholars who wrote for the edited volume on freedom, there are elements that resonate with the idea of Zen enlightenment. It is important to note that, in the direction notes, Gao comments that when the play is performed in Chinese the character might be endowed with Chinese cultural traits. For instance, Tramp may model himself after the image of Ji Gong, the Living Buddha in Chinese folklore, and not the image of God in Western culture (Gao 2001a: 380). Gao seems to write for two different groups of audiences, a Western and a Chinese one. This differentiation between the two cultural religious representations, as seen in the play discussed in Chapter 3, is both part of the openness of this play and part of the transnational nature of his work. Before coming to any further conclusions, though, we need to look at the other characters and their functions in the play. As we see from the opening scene, presenting a group of travellers in a train carriage, Old Man and Tramp are one character in the same way that Traveller is also Sleepwalker. Old Man/Tramp is a contradictory figure. On the one hand, as a wise and rational character, he advises Sleepwalker against the use of violence, and is represented almost as a father figure when he talks to Prostitute; the other, his indulgence of drinking wine diminishes his morality, portraying him as a Dionysian figure.

130

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

Tramp also hides a secret: he collects old lottery tickets – and, in a reversal, the performer playing Tramp (and doubling up as Old Man at the beginning of the play, was one of the characters that had lost or misplaced their train tickets. The apparent meaningless of Tramp’s activity fits the model of freedom as suggested at the beginning of the play by Sleepwalker. In this sense, Tramp’s attitude towards life fits more the ideal of freedom than does Sleepwalker’s. Gao suggests in his stage direction notes that Tramp should be God in a Western production and Ji Gong, the living Buddha, in a production for a Chinese audience. Returning to a Western context, as far as the God-like attributes given to Tramp are concerned, we should point out that the Dionysian attributes of Tramp do not fit a Christian iconography, but rather a pagan one linked to Nietzsche’s categories of the Apollonian and the Dionysian, whose opposition to each other is apparent (Nietzsche 2006: 42). The choice of Nietzsche’s idea as a term of reference is not accidental: Nietzsche’s combining of opposites explains the duality of the Tramp figure and also, by association, explains the figure of Ji Gong. From a Chinese perspective, the figure of Ji Gong in turn explains the contradictions in Tramp’s representation. Ji Gong is the ‘religious’ title generally given to Daoji, also known as ‘Crazy Ji’ (Ji Diani), a Buddhist monk from the late twelfth to early thirteenth century, who lived near the city of Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province, then capital of the Southern Song Dynasty (1127–1279). The nickname given to him by his contemporaries refers to the unorthodox conduct of the monk, who often broke Buddhist regulations and lived a goliardic life within the temple. However, local folklore also says that he went to Yanling Mountain to raise funds to reconstruct Jingci Temple, which had been damaged in a fire. After his death, Ji Gong became the subject of a large body of popular fiction and part of a religious cult that, by the twentieth century, had expanded from Beijing to modern-day



Individualism and Freedom in Nocturnal Wanderer

131

Malaysia (Shahar 1998: xiii). According to Mehir Shahar, seventeenth-century Wang Mengji’s fictional Ji Gong quanzhuan – Complete biography of Ji Gong stresses the pedagogical function of Ji Gong in inspiring devotees to the enlightenment (ibid.: 107). The cult of this figure grew further at the beginning of the twentieth century, when religious conservative ideologies and political separatist movements adopted Ji Gong both to attract devotees through a more human and secular figure and also to warn against the drawbacks of material secularity (ibid.: 219). Within this context, Tramp, as a religious figure at a similar level to the Monk in Dialogue and Rebuttal, embodies an interesting duality that is extended to a more active function than Monk’s, through his dialogical interaction with the characters on stage. At the end of the play, he even becomes a victim of Sleepwalker, who, enraged by Tramp’s scornful laughs, strangles him. At the other end of the spectrum, Thug and Ruffian can definitely be considered negative characters, functioning to interfere with Sleepwalker’s various activities. As mentioned earlier on, Thug commands the protagonist’s movements and encourages him to perform a dubious task, the removal of a mysterious suitcase. Ruffian, instead, is seen treating both Prostitute and Sleepwalker badly. From a moral and ethical perspective, Thug and Ruffian represent the evil side of society, and their function restricts Sleepwalker’s sense of freedom. In the notes to the play, Gao suggests that in a Chinese production of the play they should be presented respectively as the leader of an underworld gang and an assassin from traditional Chinese stories; thus they are picaresque figures coming from popular ‘oral’ tradition (Olson 2005: 2). The character of Prostitute does not have a Chinese equivalent, however. Prostitute is an enigmatic figure who has a close relationship with Sleepwalker; their bond is very similar to that of Man and Girl in Dialogue and Rebuttal. As previously discussed in this chapter, it is clear that the function and representation of those secondary characters embodying specific

132

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

religious connotations, with the possible exception of Old Man/ Tramp, add cultural specificity to the play. The reason for that seems to lie in Gao’s apparent intention to write for two different audiences – a Western one and an Eastern one – which in itself is very important. First, while illustrating Gao’s increased awareness of his own position, living between two cultures, this also both highlights and contradicts the notion of universal representation. The latter is included in the writer’s definition of ‘cold literature’, a type of literature that works across boundaries and does not fit within any ideology or cultural boundaries. However, and most significantly, as I stated in Chapter 3 with reference to the figure of Monk, the use of Chinese/East Asian iconography does not really change the meaning and the effect of the theatrical representation. For example, in Nocturnal Wanderer, whether the figure of Tramp embodies Western or Chinese tropes does not essentially impact on the nature of his character: the god-like (or rather Jesus-like)/Dionysian/Ji Gong attributes point to an earthly, enigmatic figure who can be attributed with spiritual qualities. One can even go so far as to argue that, in theatrical terms, Tramp is essentially a clownish, picaresque figure who brings humour and lightens the tense dynamics of the play. Returning to the idea of freedom, beyond the specific cultural references in the play it can be interpreted simply as part of the individual’s struggle between good and evil, and sin and death, in the search to escape one’s own destiny. This is a similar to the Woman in Between Life and Death and Man in Dialogue and Rebuttal. In those two plays, morality is described more in vague, semi-mystical terms; here, it is set up within a context and ambience that is totally imbedded in surrealism and a dream-like situation, which alludes more clearly to a manifestation of the main character’s unconscious. Most importantly, this play, as connected to the idea of awakening of the self, confirms that freedom can only exist subjectively. It is through the unconscious, dream state that the protagonist has to deal



Individualism and Freedom in Nocturnal Wanderer

133

with his different fears and preoccupations in order to achieve an awakening of the self. However, as Liu Zaifu argues that Gao presents acts of freedom that are momentary and elusive (2014: 74), it is the presence of violence, as manifested in Sleepwalker’s encounter with the other characters, that compromises his freedom. The relationship between the characters is key to the reading of this play. It sets up the individual in connection to the ‘other’ collective, which can be interpreted as obstacles to the self awakening of the character. In this regard, we can refer to Foucault’s idea of freedom, the struggle for the freedom of the self from discipline. Foucault believed that freedom from the ‘disciplines’ of society, from the ‘government of civilization’ (Foucault 1991a: 32–51) is only possible when the individual elaborates his/her ‘own life as a personal work of art’ (Foucault 1990: 49). Similarly, Sy Ren Quah defines freedom as absolute nothingness and purposelessness and links Gao’s idea of freedom back to Daoism, as well as Sartre’s philosophical ideas of existentialism: A key concept of French Existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, nothingness, […] refers to an emptiness that ‘provides both the space for being and the vacuum force to draw it into endless successions of existences.’ […] ‘Nothingness’ also reminds one of the Daoist thinkers. […] the ideal state of existence, as manifested by Zhuangzi, is expressed in three ideal models: ‘the superior man has no self, the heavenly man has no deeds, the sagacious man has no name’. One will only achieve the ideal when one has released oneself from both external and internal circumscription […]. Ultimately; however, one has to break out of the yoke of inner consciousness, which is the most difficult task. Without these constraints, one is able to interact freely with Nature (Quah 2004: 157–8).

The above concepts represent the ideal to which Sleepwalker attempts to conform, but inevitably fails. Using Zhuangzi’s words, Sleepwalker cannot help but be trapped by his own subjectivity and conditioned by the outside world. At the very end, while his only hope is to return

134

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

to the routine of everyday life, a masked man, possibly representing his alter ego, blocks his way. The message is a negative and pessimistic one. The protagonist – the everyman – cannot find redemption. Sartre’s idea of freedom promotes a Cartesian concept of philosophical freedom (Eysteinsson and Liska 2007: 154) based on the relationship between consciousness, being and nothingness (Earnshaw 2006: 87–8), while Foucault’s is the result of a detailed exploration of the agents and the external forces within society affecting the individual. Gao’s representation of this play accounts more for the complexity of the latter than the utopianism of the former. Furthermore, a Foucault reading of the play highlights the aesthetic element, the role of art and literature that is inherent to Gao’s conception of freedom. Foucault’s escape from discipline is to live ‘one’s own life as a personal work of art’ (Foucault 1990: 49). In his early works (Foucault 1970, 1972, 1973) Foucault studied the subject of the individual as an effect of power/knowledge networks. With Discipline and Punish (1975), The History of Sexuality – Vol. I (1976), Nealon (2008: 9) notes an u-turn towards the revival for ‘the individual’s potential for subversive agency’, the individual’s potential to subvert disciplines. In this sense, part of Foucault’s idea of freedom combines what Colin Hearfield calls the ‘self-disciplinary regime of aesthetic pleasure’ (Hearfield 2004: 97) and what McNay calls ‘the ethics of the self ’ (McNay 1994: 133), which is the subject’s potential for self-reflexivity. Gao’s depiction of the subject is an extreme dramatisation of the imprisonment of the subject within the boundaries of ‘discipline’, which is solved aesthetically through the literalization and fictionalization of the character’s journey. In addition to this, there are two possible readings of this play. Gao shows that, despite being capable of self-reflexivity, the subject cannot find his true self as the imprisonment occurs from within his own unconscious. Once Sleepwalker gives in to the external world,



Individualism and Freedom in Nocturnal Wanderer

135

his emotions and his instincts, he condemns himself to insanity, expressed symbolically by the presence of the alter ego preventing him from exiting his dream. The concept of insanity and madness can be read using Foucault’s ‘archaeological’ (Simons 2004: 187) and historical exploration of madness outside the psychoanalytical discourse on the unconscious, where madness becomes part of a phenomenon of social repression, created by modernity, marked by the birth of the rational bourgeois individual (Foucault 1999). In other words, madness as a construct has been created ‘to ring-fence reason or sanity and to create a clear distinction between madness and sanity’ (Mills 1999: 98) in the need for ‘disciplining’, and for medical society to create categories and exercise its power and governability. Sleepwalker’s insanity and violence can be read as a reaction to the overwhelming sense of morality, intended as a set of ‘disciplines’ in the Foucaultian sense – the ‘madman’, like the delinquent, is the one who lives outside the ‘disciplines’ (Simons 2004: 188). It also represents, though, the meaninglessness of the idea of freedom, as represented by Tramp, who lives outside social convention. In this light, Sleepwalker, who at first pursues his sexual desires and follows Tramp’s example in using violence as a reaction to morality, compromises his freedom even further and then reacts against the freedom represented by Tramp, as he would blame freedom itself for having enslaved him. Considering Gao’s depiction as a parody, one can assume that Gao wanted to communicate the message that freedom is elusive – to use Liu’s words – and unattainable, since the concept of absolute freedom, as also described by Foucault, is, in itself, absurd. A second reading would be based on the dialectical construction of the play, exemplifying Lehmann’s aesthetics of resistance, which determined the indeterminacy of the events. We should not forget that this play does not unfold in a linear narrative: it is the presentation of events occurring to Sleepwalker. While the dramatic can be found in the events that lead up to Prostitute’s murder, the

136

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

actions on stage – Sleepwalker’s alleged murder of Prostitute and his interaction with Ruffian, Thug and the others – manifest a lack of intrinsic cause and effect and are almost arbitrary acts, unguided by an over-standing narrative structure. In many ways the play can be seen as unfolding a chain of events, of actions that are made up by the actors as they interact with one another. In a postdramatic sense, the apparent arbitrariness of the events on stage translates into the unfolding of ‘real’ events taking place on stage, thus exemplifying Lehmann’s theatre of the ‘real’. In terms of spectatorship, this means that the spectators are aware of the fictional nature of what is presented to them, but they are called by the indeterminacy of the actions to make a moral judgement, especially when it comes to the acts of violence presented on stage. Despite their being suggested and fictionalized, unlike the aforementioned performance art installations, they still call on the audience to take a position. The question, in this second reading of the play, which is posed by the play itself, is whether the search for freedom justifies violence, or whether freedom can exist without violence? If we set the equation freedom and violence within a political context, one could argue that Gao is reminding us of the violence used in manifestations of political activism, acts of terrorism and the like. We should not forget that Gao’s political engagement is far from neutral; and in his play Escape (Yeren) (1989), he, Gao, takes a stance on the events in 1989 Tiananmen Square. In Nocturnal Wanderer, however, the political questions are solved aesthetically in the dream-like framework of the play, which is is subjective: it does not stand for an absolute truth and within the politics of perception the play demands that the spectator take a moral stance.



Individualism and Freedom in Nocturnal Wanderer

137

Language and subjectivity Freedom accounts for a subjective experience, part of the individual’s self, which in the world of the play is exemplified through the relationship between subjectivity and language, intended as the narrative tool in the building up of the play, as a theatrical device and as an explored concept in its own right. Referring back to Fuchs’ elaboration of subjectivity as an inscription, part of the process of literalization in contemporary theatre, the questions that will be asked are whether this play describes the death of character and if this has political implications. First of all, we will examine the concept of subjectivity in general by taking into account some approaches to this play. Subjectivity can be found in the play unfolding the character’s imagination, desires and the ‘unconscious’, the presentation of the main character’s dream. In this play, Gao uses the metaphoric use of the door to express a dream as the gateway to the unconscious, an image that is already present in Dialogue and Rebuttal. The characters are often looking, staring or leaning at the door, which is usually open and at times just about to close. In connection with the representation of subjectivity in this play, Gilbert Fong identifies three levels of consciousness: the first is the real situation itself, the second is the dimension of the dream and the third is the one created and made up by the thinking subject himself (Fong 1999: xxxvii) – who to some extent is still connected to reality (his self-reflections are also concerned with reality itself) and operates in a dream dimension, and whose ‘mental processes, “images of heart” xinxiang’ are what controls his consciousness. We are able to identify this third level of reality as being made up of the character’s imagination and desires, which in the context of the play produces a completely new dimension populated by characters such as Tramp and Prostitute, who are the transfiguration of the characters on the train.

138

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

Following Fong, the lack of consciousness or xinxiang takes over the protagonist and his dream in a sequence of irrational events occurring during the dream. In this regard, Zhao explains Gao’s choosing to use the dream as the context of the play by mentioning Lacan’s idea of the unconscious intended as being beyond the subject’s control, speaking to the subject while asleep (Zhao 2000: 155). As mentioned in Chapter 2, Lacan’s theory of the relationship between subjectivity and language suggests an intrinsic relationship between language and subjectivity; the language itself creates subjectivity because the unconscious itself is structured like a language (Weedon 2004: 12). From the reflections on subjectivity, language, as the main tool used to communicate and express subjectivity (ibid.), is revealed to play an important role in the play where, as in the previous plays, few self-referential statements about language, though not as many as before, are presented: Prostitute  She asks what enough means. Sleepwalker  You say enough is enough, enough is a word. Prostitute  She asks, (She wipes her eyebrow.) what is a word? Sleepwalker  A word is a word. Basically there is no meaning; you could say that they are countless meanings. It all depends on how you explain it. […] Speaking plausibly is nothing more than repeating nonsense. Prostitute  She asks, (She closes her left eye.) what about you, are you not talking words yourself? (Gao 2001a: 386)

In the first two acts, this is only the main self-referential discussion about language, in which Sleepwalker becomes the master of knowledge. His explanation brings to light a different understanding of language, which shows that the author is moving on from his position, as communicated in his previous plays in which language is referred to as a playful tool, presented as a flow of meaningless utterances.



Individualism and Freedom in Nocturnal Wanderer

139

For example, in Dialogue and Rebuttal, Gao’s characters are trapped by language until the final disintegration, the characters’ disappearance. In Nocturnal Wanderer, however, as the quotation on page 138 illustrates, words still have meaning, as they help define the existence of the characters as individuals. The end of the play suggests that silence, defined as the absence of utterances, is the equivalent of death, of no existence at all. This contrasts with the Zen Buddhist belief that prescribes no language as a means to salvation, but is closer to Foucault’s idea of language, which defines it as being part of the power/knowledge paradigm within a control system. To this end, the last exchange in the dialogue between Sleepwalker and Prostitute highlights that where language ends so does one’s individuality: Prostitute  She asks, how about you? (She closes her right eye.) Are you also a word? Sleepwalker  Maybe, maybe not. Prostitute (She pours some lotion on her hand.)  Maybe what? (She closes both eyes.) Maybe not what? Sleepwalker  There is nothing! Prostitute  It’s over. (She drops the cotton ball, which she used to wipe off her make-up.) Sleepwalker  What’s over? Prostitute  Over is over (Gao 2001a: 387).

After this last exchange, Prostitute takes a man’s head, resembling Sleepwalker, out of the suitcase and leaves it rolling on the floor. The image of a suitcase reappears and here represents, again, control, of owning Sleepwalker’s subjectivity. It is worth noting that Gao again uses the image of the bodiless head – as he does in Dialogue and Rebuttal. Albeit that it is only present for a small fraction of this play, a bodiless head is used by Prostitute to end their discussion, thus destroying Sleepwalker’s subjectivity. This is shown in Sleepwalker’s monologue at the beginning of the third act.

140

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

In between the time when they [secrets] are unopened and opened, the feeling of mystery is the pounding of your being. The mystery is not in the boxes but in the mind (Gao 2001a: 369–70).

Sleepwalker talks about the mind, the unconscious and its secrets where again subjectivity, his own thoughts, take over. Later on, Sleepwalker reflects on the dream dimension through which he has been walking: You know that now you’re sleepwalking; you can’t even distinguish between dream and reality. You don’t even dare disturb your dream; is it because such breaking from your dreams would lead to the death of yourself? (Gao 2001a: 372).

Sleepwalker’s confusion about dream and reality mirrors the confusion between living either in a dream or in the reality as expressed in Gao’s Dialogue and Rebuttal. The dream dimension makes him alive – here ‘alive’ has a metaphorical meaning that is, keeping contact with his subjectivity. In this light, we can understand that the image of the head rolling on stage might signify an end to Sleepwalker’s subjectivity, which, however, is only apparent. After Prostitute disappears – yet not till she removed the head from the suitcase and let it roll on the floor – Sleepwalker continues talking about his journey through subjectivity. By doing so, it remains intact and the figure of Prostitute and her behaviour as a fallen woman can be understood to be a product of his imagination, if we regard what takes place on stage part of Sleepwalker’s dream. Similarly and more so than Dialogue and Rebuttal, framing reveals much more about the dynamics of the play in terms of spectatorship. This time it is not the door but the book playing an important part in the levels of framing. We can account for three levels of framing which are different from Fong’s levels of framing: the first level is linked to the signification attached to the book as used on stage and considers the book as both an object and narrative device; the second is determined by the use of ‘tripartition’ and the actors’ neutrality,



Individualism and Freedom in Nocturnal Wanderer

141

returning to the object of the book; and the third level refers to a meta-dramatic framing of play-within-the-play. The first level is created by the use of the book as both an object and a narrative device, alluding to the protagonist’s journey through his dream – Traveller reading a book at the beginning of the play and the image of the empty carriage at the end of the play where there is only a book lying on the empty seat. It is worth noting that Zhao associates the act of reading the book with the action of viewing the play (Zhao 2000: 155). Zhao’s definition of the ‘death of the subject’s unconsciousness’ (ibid.) instead refers to the negative outcome of the violence presented on stage and also identifies the character of Sleepwalker as a text to be read. This would illustrate Fuchs’ idea of subjectivity as inscription in the process of literalization, as discussed earlier in this chapter. I would go further, and argue that the function of the book at the beginning of the play parallels the act of Monk at the end of Dialogue and Rebuttal, in that they both align the spectators to the world of the characters as active agents. This frame not only creates a distance but also places the spectator into a position of participation. This first level of framing directs us to a second level of framing, that of ‘tripartition’ and the actors’ neutrality. As in Dialogue and Rebuttal, Sleepwalker uses the second person pronoun ‘you’. Gao’s intention regarding this and the actor’s neutrality is expressed in his stage direction notes. In Gao’s words, the latter enables the actor to both experience the character’s inner feelings and to develop an awareness of being a performer on stage. Feng Yiwang states how Gao, particularly in Nocturnal Wanderer, encourages actors to achieve their full potential (Feng 2001: 129). In Dialogue and Rebuttal, as a dialogic form between Man and Girl, the actor’s neutrality is achieved through the use of the pronouns ‘you’ by Man and ‘she’ by Girl. Sy Ren Quah suggests that the use of ‘you’, here, has a different effect, by isolating further the character

142

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

from the rest of the narrative and other characters (Quah 2002: 156). While Quah discusses the further state of isolation of the main character, which stands out in comparison with the other characters/ actors, I would argue that the use of the second person pronoun ‘you’, together with the image of Traveller reading the book, leads the spectators to focus on Sleepwalker’s words – and thus projects them onto the intimacy of the character’s fantasy. Moreover, a voice of narration introduces the audience to the journey of the protagonist and anticipates the tone of his monologues and of his confession. The use of ‘you’ in this play creates a sense of intimacy between the character and the audience, and also, in terms of subjectivity, between the protagonist, intended as ‘everyman’, and the outside world. Whereas Man, in Dialogue and Rebuttal, seems to talk to himself and is trapped within a destructive subjectivity, Sleepwalker, in this play, engages in a communication with the external world and ultimately with the audience. As a result, the spectators are given the impression of connecting to an intimate declaration about the character’s feelings, as if it were a confession directed straight at them: Prostitute  That’s it, let’s go straight to your place! (Whispering.) How much? It’s up to you. Sleepwalker  Surely it’s a dream. (Whispering.) A bad dream! (Loudly.) You say you’re willing to have a woman with you because there’d be a witness in case you’re shot dead by a sniper’s bullet. You say you’re a lovely girl. It makes your heart ache (Gao 2001a: 365).

The above passage is a good illustration of how Sleepwalker engages in conversation with both the audience and with Prostitute simply by changing the tone of his voice from a whisper to a loud tone. In terms of narration, the effect of Sleepwalker’s and Prostitute’s interaction is both of distance and intimacy. Distance is created by Prostitute’s speech, and intimacy by Sleepwalker’s words. Prostitute, unlike Sleepwalker, employs the third person pronoun only in her last appearance on stage: this brings us to the realization that, in that



Individualism and Freedom in Nocturnal Wanderer

143

moment, Prostitute is either dead, as we enter her own subjectivity, or that her thoughts are part of the Sleepwalker’s imagination. The ‘she’ pronoun is used in Sleepwalker’s mind, as he would be looking at himself through Prostitute’s eyes in an objective way. It is worth noting that, unlike in Dialogue and Rebuttal, Prostitute and Sleepwalker are involved in actual dialogical interactions that involve the use of different pronouns; and while we, the audience, are left with the impression that the centre of the dialogue is veered towards reducing Prostitute’s status to that of a supporting character, we do not have here the total distancing effect that we have had in Gao’s previous plays. Instead, there is a sense of direct communication between actors and spectators that crosses the boundaries of the fictional frame. At one level, Gao creates a performance that allows the unconscious of the characters to speak to the audience, in a type of communication that is beyond rationality and which demonstrates the overwhelming victory of subjectivity in the process of communication. By using Lacan’s idea of semiotic language and the unconscious, Nocturnal Wanderer can be interpreted as illustrating the dominance of semiotic language onto the symbolic rational ‘subject’. However, at another level, that is the first framing, the element of the book at the beginning of the play literalizes the events presented on stage and the character of Sleepwalker. The book approaches the spectators, who are empowered and can objectify the events on the stage, in an active participation in the process of creating meaning. Similarly, it also reduces the characters to mere inscriptions, and the actors to the level of énonciateurs, in a similar way to Crimp’s play. The image of the book, which resonates well with Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape analysed in Fuchs’ book, suggests that the subjects in the play are displaced entities reduced to language, speech that further and further empties them. Other ideas can be added by examining the last scene of the play. Here, Sleepwalker, alluding to his intention to return home, meets

144

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

a masked man, whose presence may possibly function as the final confrontation with his own alter ego. This action takes place just before the very end of the play, when the audience sees the Traveller’s empty seat and the image of the book left behind. This scene can be interpreted in several ways: as the end of Traveller’s train journey, the end of Traveller’s reading, which in metaphorical terms could signal the end of Sleepwalker/Traveller’s journey through his unconscious, as well as the end of the book’s narration. The poignant image of Sleepwalker being stopped by this hallucinatory character evokes a sense of entrapment. Furthermore, considering the opening scene of the play in a train carriage, the characters, presented reading the book, could be seen as extra-aesthetic characters, acting as frame, and viewers, spectators in their own play. Then, considering the end of the play where the carriage is empty, one can read that these characters left the stage and were free to join the reality beyond the stage. Sleepwalker, instead, is reduced to inscription of the text, as he cannot leave the frame of the stage, the fictional world of the play. Unlike the characters in Gao’s other plays, who find a sort of freedom through self-mutilation or disintegration, Sleepwalker is not allowed to leave. As an inscription emptied of its subjectivity, Sleepwalker is trapped within the boundaries of the fictional world and forced to stay. If we reconsider both the beginning of the play – the scene in which the actors appear in their first roles as the other characters, Traveller as Sleepwalker, Young Woman as Prostitute, and so on – and the end, a third level of framing appears, a meta-dramatic framing of play-within-the-play. Connected more closely with Fuchs’ approach, Nocturnal Wanderer can be read through her understanding of contemporary theatre (discussed in Chapter 3) manifesting itself in the lack of an outside world to imitate. Beyond the psychoanalytical function of the alter ego that stops the self, the symbolic that stops the semiotic, the masked man functions as hallucination – an embodied hallucination, elusive and immaterial with no identity.



Individualism and Freedom in Nocturnal Wanderer

145

While in Dialogue and Rebuttal the Monk seems to belong to a world outside that of the stage, the presence of Masked Man in Nocturnal Wanderer materializes the impossibility of the exit to a world outside the stage. In this sense, the final disappearance of all characters can be interpreted as meaning that there is nothing beyond the fictional dimension of the book. We are left with the materiality of the book as object in the last scene of the play, the last presence on stage. One can even argue that the play unfolds the process of the dying of the character, reduced to the inscription of its own fictional nature, through presenting a gradual process of dismantling of the self. This occurs, to some extent, in the earlier plays, but the complexity of dynamics described through the presence of different characters on stage is different in this play. This echoes The Other Shore, the play banned in mainland China for its alleged political meaning. In its depiction of the individual and the collective, this play presents one character in an antagonistic relationship with the collective, represented by the other characters as a group threatening Sleepwalker’s individuality. In comparison with Between life and Death, Gao shows instead the different facets of subjectivity through the character’s interaction, other parts of his unconscious and conscious, as well as through the image of the book. The complexity of this play in its construction and deconstruction of the self can be defined as a sort of poststructural work of subjectivity. The political, here, is lost in the aesthetic of the play, in the exploration of subjectivity within its structure and the additional framing elements. Freedom and escape motivate Sleepwalker, but are lost in the impossibility of a coherent closure thanks to the openness of the script that offers many possible understandings and interpretations. Echoing Lehmann’s vision, it is up to the spectator to decipher and put together his/her own meanings, because Gao shows us only the process of this quest for freedom through the artistic work, but does not give away any absolute truth. Unlike Müller’s Hamletmachine

146

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

and many of Handke’s plays, which include stronger historical and political allusions, Nocturnal Wanderer, in particular, shows us a political that has passed over the dramatic to the realm of the postdramatic – where concrete political messages are eluded and merely suggested, only at a deeper philosophical and aesthetic level, which, as we will see in the play examined in the next chapter, will be given a more concrete and social subtext. Conversely, transnationalism, in its potential to transcend cultural references, is to some extent diminished by Gao’s conscious decision to make this play adaptable to two audiences, which is part of the latent paradox of it. Gao, who, in exile, became more conscious of being a translator between the West and East, thus adds an artificiality to the play that paradoxically makes it less transcultural than earlier works, because the suggested cultural tropes are more fixed and less non-transcending.

5

Transnational Postdramatic Realism in Weekend Quartet

Weekend Quartet (Zhuomo sichongzou; Quatre quatuors pour un week-end), Gao’s 1995 play that features four characters, focuses on a meeting between friends: middle-aged painter Laobei and his partner, writer An, who invite their friend Da, also a middleaged writer, and his new younger girlfriend, Xixi, to their house in the country. The play consists largely of a series of dialogues and monologues between and by members of the group. Unlike the other plays by Gao analysed in this book, the characters are named and are defined by a social status and occupation. The play, however, does not have a plot as such; instead it portrays the two couples exchanging their respective partners (Laobei flirts with Xixi, Da’s new girlfriend, and An talks either to herself or to Da) and acting in a random and playful manner with one another. In many ways it is reminiscent of Gao’s pre-exile plays, such as Bus Stop, in which the characters engage in dialogue and self-confession and are depicted in a semi-realistic situation as they wait at a bus stop. This raises the question of realism and naturalism in postdramatic theatre, on whether a form of naturalism can exist in postdramatic theatre. Lehmann refers to a return to naturalism in postdramatic theatre which he equates with Baudrillard’s hyperrealism: Because of this ‘charging’ of banal and trivial reality it would be misleading to see in this only a new Naturalism [sic]. Rather, the term hypernaturalism [sic] is preferable, as it makes reference to the concept of ‘hyperrealism’ that Baudrillard used to designate a non-referential,

148

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

media produced, heightened resemblance of things to themselves, not the adequacy of images to the real. In the hypernaturalist scene modelled on TV scenes of everyday life a phantastic vision can break forth without commentary or interpretation. Trivial, utopian images of desire of great intensity emerge (Lehmann 2006: 117).

According to this view, the trivial references that Lehmann sees in Warner Schwab’s plays1 (116) refer to a kind of naturalism in theatre that is not a mimesis of the real. It is a naturalism–realism without reference to the ‘real’. Ulrike Garde and Med Mumford (2013: 148) describe it as a ‘hunger for the real’ and define the ‘Reality Theatre’ as deriving from an intention to explore the implications of the culture of the artificial, of spectacle, which was generated by media technologies, and gave much importance to virtual worlds and identities. Their definition coincides with Lehmann’s association of theatre with the ‘hypernaturalist scene’ that is modelled on TV scenes of everyday life (Lehmann 2006: 117). The idea of theatre as spectacle, also based on the idea of hyperreality, is also implied in Fuchs’ reference to Baudrillard’s theory of production, which she defines as continuing Debord’s theory of spectacle: On one side of Baudrillard’s ‘mirror of production’ is the ‘real’ of labour use and use value; mirrored back is an aestheticized economy of exchange dominated by a code of self-referential signifiers. Baudrillard sees these two worlds not merely as sides of contemporary reality, but as stages in an implied history of culture, moving (as in Debord) from real to irreal, the ontologically grounded to the emptily spectacular (Fuchs 1996: 151).

Embedded within her Marxist discourse of production and value, Fuchs highlights Baudrillard’s critique of late capitalism and its empty world of simulation. She moves on to connect Baudrillard’s critique with a discourse on theatre, emphasizing a definition of trans-theatrical language, deriving from the latter’s view of the world as intensely



Transnational Postdramatic Realism in Weekend Quartet

149

theatrical. She defines the scenodrama of contemporary culture not as imitation of reality but functioning as simulation of reality that is disguised before its own disappearance (ibid.). This resonates well with, and exemplifies, Fuchs’ definition of a postmodern condition that has led to the idea that there is no external world for theatre to imitate. She refers to a vision of the world and reality in which theatre becomes not just a metaphor ‘but a structural element in the series of world cultural narratives’. The analogy of theatre and the vision of the world as ‘grounding principle in a period of conflict dissolving truths’ (Fuchs 1996: 157) suggests that the theatrical and theatre inform theoretical ontological discourses, which further define, according to Fuchs, a postmodern condition in which reality is an artificial construct acting out performative processes. The focus on spectacle and hyperreality and the theatrical discourse as forming an ontological discourse can be traced in Weekend Quartet, which can be interpreted as a spectacle of reality, describing a passage from the real to the surreal, and combining the notion of landscape and theatre. The latter is in itself different from the definition of landscape given in Chapter 4, and serves to further elaborate both the function of subjectivity and of the characters on stage. Fuchs’ approach to landscape and theatre is based on the kind of theatre that lacks ‘linear special structure’, dismisses the individual character and yet is concerned with the ‘total state and condition’. It is a theatre that also draws ‘important moments of imagery from natural landscape’ and even hints at the ‘thematic of the pastoral’ (Fuchs 1996: 97). Following on from the latter, Gao’s play is full of references to the outside landscape and nature, and this also serves to describe the passage from the real to the surreal, and the hyperreality of the play. This will be the first aspect analysed in this chapter. The second section of the chapter expands on the idea of freedom, already introduced in Chapter 4. The intention is to define Gao’s ontological position as manifested in Weekend Quartet in connection

150

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

with theatrical analogy. What emerges is a far clearer social critique, which expresses a stronger political stance than Nocturnal Wanderer, the play discussed in Chapter 4, while Liu Zaifu asserts that Gao abandons his Chinese roots (Liu 2004: 32) by creating characters and situations that are universal. This chapter presents an analysis of Weekend Quartet that shows a dynamic evolution of the play: we will start with the passage from real to surreal and back to real; two sections will deal with the notion of freedom that links this play to the political discourse that was already present in Nocturnal Wanderer, and its passage to spectacle; and the last section will deal directly with the spectacle and how this has developed from the function of subjectivity in the play. The title Weekend Quartet makes reference to the structural link between the different scenes: the four parts that make up the play, and the four characters who act in them, form the ‘quartet’; and the musical element, which is an underlying motif to the play, will be analysed throughout. In an early essay on Bus Stop Gao stresses the importance of musicality in theatre (Gao 1983: 99), and it seems to reappear in this play as well as in the plays analysed in the last chapter. In this play, the structure of a musical composition, that of the quartet, is reproduced by the four protagonists’ interaction and dialogue, in which changes in mood are more important than changes in plot. This is underlined by the characters’ speeches, which, at times, use the devices of repetition and rhyming patterns and create a certain musical ambience.

Passage real/surreal/real The gradual transition from the real to the surreal is connected to the physical elements of the play, the location and setting as conveyed by the characters’ words. It is important to see how the physical aspects,



Transnational Postdramatic Realism in Weekend Quartet

151

such as the atmospheric agents – the weather and countryside, the landscape, as described by the characters’ words – provide the process whereby the ‘real’ turns into the ‘surreal’. When compared to Gao’s other plays, one notes that Weekend Quartet has hardly any stage directions and the physical elements of the settings are conveyed in the characters’ speech. The opening line of the play already refers to the weather through the writer Laobei’s words: The afternoon, you’re both in the garden, the sunshine is very good, and mixes with the dim light of the setting sun, so she says […] (Gao 2001b: 5).

At the beginning of the play, the weather is described as sunny and suggests an idyllic picture of the garden – which defines the situation of the characters Laobei and An, as owners of the location and, also, to some extent, defines their social status. It is, in fact, the first place that the guests admire. Later in the play, Laobei says: This is the Garden of Eden on earth; God (Lord on high) isn’t the only one who can own a garden (ibid.: 11).

Laobei’s statement could be interpreted in several ways. The first is that it emphasizes the hosts’ privileged status in terms of their social status: they live in the country, near the woods, which makes them special and stresses their status as individuals as opposed to being members of a ‘crowd’ living in the city, defined by Da, later on in the play as an undistinguished mass trapped in its small accommodation and prisoner of its troubled existence. This brings us to the second aspect, the spiritual nuance of Laobei’s definition of their situation as ‘godlike’. The countryside, or the act of living in the countryside unaffected by the trouble and materialism of the city, already places the character closer to God or to transcendence. However, the use of ‘godlike’ may also simply be pure hyperbole, used to stress the characters’ personal wealth. The literal meaning of the statement

152

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

may be Laobei expressing amusement and pride at having friends around and being able to present them with such a gorgeous view and location. This interpretation is a materialistic one, in which belongings and property create privileged people, an aspect that will be discussed in more detail later on in the chapter. At the beginning of the play, An, also, expresses her gaiety at the thought of the gorgeous weekend that awaits them all. The characters’ apparent happiness at the opening of the play forms an ironic contrast with the dramatic turns that the play takes. The serenity of the opening gradually breaks down once the characters start to interact with each other. Gao’s message is quite clear: material comfort does not bring happiness or spiritual appeasement. The characters’ internal conflicts, as mapped out by references to the weather and the location, are a constant theme throughout the play. In this sense, in so far as the weather reflects the mood of the characters, its role is to create the play’s atmosphere. This is maintained throughout Quartet One, during which the characters often repeat that the weather is gorgeous, while establishing a new physical relationship between themselves and the surrounding environment. The characters explore the inside of Laobei and An’s house, which also serves to become a reflection of the quartet’s mood and more importantly their thoughts, dreams and desires. The physicality of the environment, conveyed by way of their dialogues and soliloquies once inside in the house, is reduced to images of light and darkness, and the only tangible material element is the image of the door, a recurrent image in both of the plays analysed in Chapters 3 and 4. In comparison with Dialogue and Rebuttal and, to some extent, Nocturnal Wanderer, the image of the door in Weekend Quartet has a far more realistic physical element to it and forms an integral part of the exchanges between the four characters. The door is referred to both as a physical partition between the rooms of the house and as part of the dreamlike ambience that the characters create. In its first appearance, it is used to help Laobei and Xixi isolate



Transnational Postdramatic Realism in Weekend Quartet

153

themselves from the group, after Laobei has invited her to see his painting in his studio, first going through a door: Laobei  A door … Xixi  What did you say? Laobei  It’s just opened … Xixi  What’s opened? Laobei  You say that it is a door … (Gao 2001b: 34)

The door becomes a symbolic element representing the access to Laobei’s studio. In a game of words, possibly while Laobei and Xixi are entering the studio, Laobei talks about the painting once possibly the imaginary door has opened. Xixi  I see … Laobei  Total darkness, you can’t distinguish much. Xixi  Shall we turn all the lights on? Laobei  No need, it is an illusion, an image … Xixi  Are you talking to me? Laobei  You say you were thinking aloud. Xixi Understood. Laobei  You don’t need to show that you can understand, just try hard to see clearly (Gao 2001b: 35).

In the context of the above scene, it is possible that Laobei and Xixi may not be referring to the painting at all. Laobei could be talking to himself about the scene that both characters are performing, until Xixi interrupts him and asks him about the unfinished painting. Laobei  At a dim candlelight you cannot even distinguish the back of a woman. You quietly approach her; you wait for her to turn around. […] You put your hand on her shoulder and she turns around towards you. Oh, no, it is a shrunken old man’s face. The candle falls onto the ground. You once again sink into darkness and you consider picking up the candlestick. But you only manage to feel the broken pieces of an oil lamp. You think that it is all so real, or is it a dream? (Gao 2001b: 36–7).

154

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

Given the ambiguity of the scene, whether the door is seen as the subject of the painting, as part of this scene about total darkness or of Laobei’s reference to approaching a woman by candlelight, the image of the door helps to create the fictional dreamlike dimension to the scene, using the self-referential function of representation within representation that will be discussed later. The close connection between the weather and the characters’ mood is indicated by the fact that the weather changes amplify the escalation of the characters’ interaction and their conflict-ridden relationship. The first change in the weather occurs in Quartet Two, which depicts the day after the guests’ arrival at the house. This change is again conveyed through the characters’ words. Xixi and An are looking at a cloud, which looks like ‘an overgrown camellia’ (Gao 2001b: 48). As the cloud forewarns of rain, its connotation is shown as a negative one through An’s words: it is a menacing presence announcing unpleasant events such as pollution and, of course, rain. The speed of the spreading cloud is clearly a negative reference to the unpredictable changes and developing turmoil between, and within, the group (Gao 2001b: 50). The change also corresponds to the characters’ interaction, drifting into a semi-realistic ambience. Xixi cuts her hand washing a teapot; this disturbs the peace of the idyllic weekend in the same way that the rain serves largely to stress the individual internal conflicts of each character. All the characters are affected, and there is a drastic change in their moods as they seem to fall victim to their own hallucinations. It is important to note thast their use of reference to physical elements, expanding beyond the rain, determines the extent of their internal conflict, as will be described later on. In Quartet Three, the characters seem to gradually succumb more and more to their internal monologues. Like Laobei, in Quartet Two, An talks about a dream, using the image of a shadow, a kind of ghost that is looking at a tree on fire in the wilderness. In An’s



Transnational Postdramatic Realism in Weekend Quartet

155

speech, the dramatic element of a lonely tree comes to represent her inner struggle in relation to the countryside. Earlier in the play, An describes the snow-covered countryside as lonely and remote. It is not very clear why An sees the countryside in such a negative light, however. At the beginning of the play, it seems to be her choice to live in the countryside so that she can write, but her dream informs us of An’s unhappiness and discomfort: this is strictly linked to Xixi, who is seen as a threat. An refers to Xixi’s youth and beauty and yet, when she talks about herself, she uses negative images such as the living dead, a ghost and her own reflection, which is seen as alien even to herself. Natural forces seem to participate in her internal drama, as seen in the references to the image of a ghostlike, shadowy figure (Gao 2001b: 63). Up to this point, the surreal element of the play as depicted by the representation of the countryside is conveyed by the characters’ projection of their moods onto their description of their surroundings. In Quartet Three, Da’s monologue plunges the play into a true reflection of the surreal. This is achieved by highlighting through his narrative the natural elements of the countryside. Discussing this play, Liu Zaifu defines Gao’s theatre as the ‘status theatre’ (zhuangtai xi), meaning a theatre of the ‘spiritual status’: In particular, Gao can change characters’ internal status into vivid images, whereby the so-called status is a kind of spiritual status, something that cannot be easily caught but actually exists. […] Gao manages to bring this invisible status into drama. The status can be hardly described in words but Gao manages to do so by experimenting with words (Liu 2004: 33–4).

To some extent, this status can be traced back to Da’s words, through which the surreal element is, however, far more complex than that to which Liu Zaifu refers. Da’s monologue refers to a dream that can be interpreted as an actual journey of the mind between materiality and spirituality, in

156

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

which the dichotomy between city–materiality and countryside– spirituality is reaffirmed. He talks of a city surrounded by mountains that appear as desolate as the city. In his depiction of the dream, he experiences a sense of drifting, as he wanders over the mountains. He can see the city transparently for what it is, and the buildings that make it. He first sees a temple, followed by the bell tower, pavilions, mansions and so on (Gao 2001b: 77). He describes a kind of epiphany marked by emotion, as he experiences a sense of pleasure, while streaming through the clouds. Unlike Gao’s reference to clouds, made in Between Life and Death by Woman, who loses herself in nothingness, the clouds, here, assume a positive meaning: a kind of renewed sense of freedom for the character. This sense of freedom and pleasure is threatened by the fear he feels while still experiencing an attraction to the city, which is described as a place of desolation. Gao uses the opposition between outside and inside, with the former meaning positive and latter meaning negative. The internal dimension is first referred to as a place of desire, then of trouble and anxiety, with the inhabitants of the city trapped within their dwellings and cursed by fear. If we link the two images, desire becomes a parallel to reality and anxiety, which is also linked to a sense of materiality. Later on in the play, he describes the mountain turning into a big elephant on which Da has to find his balance. This image is reminiscent of the Buddhist monk seeking balance in Gao’s Between Life and Death ­–­if we assert that the mountain, here, represents transcendence, Da is describing a yearning for freedom, which unlike in Nocturnal Wanderer is materialized in this play by references to natural imagery, like the mountain, the clouds and rain. Here, it is important to note that freedom and pleasure in drifting are linked to a sense of emotional materiality, confirmed by the image of Da failing to keep his balance (Gao 2001b: 78). Da is the only character who, in this monologue, makes clear reference to a kind of surreal connection to freedom in its shifting between materiality and



Transnational Postdramatic Realism in Weekend Quartet

157

immateriality. For example, by contrast, when Xixi looks at the sky, unlike Da, she speaks of it in practical terms, denying the need to see clearly at all: Xixi  The sky is murky and grey and the clouds are spinning around high above. She knows that if she stands at the edge of the road hitchhiking, a car will stop; a man will have smiling face and will open the car door. Life is so simple; you see through it, and let it run its course (Gao 2001b: 82).

Her words indicate that she is the most pragmatic and the most cynical of the four characters and the only one who seems to be indifferent to the changes in weather taking place throughout the play. If we look at the physical elements in the play, changes in the weather are also used to represent increased dramatic tension and a sense of disaster. The latter can be shown through An, who sees her house completely flooded with water and expresses a sense of utter defeat. The house, that is the building, stands for her security, which has been threatened by external agents, in this case the weather and the location itself – the countryside (Gao 2001b: 87). This reaffirms An’s conflicted relationship with the countryside and the expression of her own fears and instability. In Quartet Four, the spectator is given a break from this increased tension when all the characters play a game. Gao introduces the door metaphor again here, although this time it serves to form part of a collective experience and the characters’ playful interaction. Afterwards, Laobei refers to the brightness of the snow (Gao 2001b: 105–8), which covers everything and disorientes him – there is a sense of indifference as reality intrudes and he loses his sense of direction. Thus the countryside once again becomes a menacing place, as in Da’s depiction of it. This is sustained through the use of images such as crows and other birds, and the ultimate depiction of Laobei on a cube of ice, sinking into the cold water. Laobei’s fears are material concerns about growing old and seeking fame and success.

158

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

He is portrayed as being far more materialistic than his friend Da. The image of the snow, which Gao uses in other plays, such as Between Life and Death, forms part of a metaphorical representation of materialistic concerns. In the end, the weather serves to bring the characters to a precarious personal reality, where the surreal is a projection of their personal experiences – with the exception of Xixi. With regard to the idea of a possible spiritual transcendence, the weather and the setting of the stage create an ambience different from that of Gao’s earlier play. Despite the poetic connotations attributed to them, the atmospheric agents create a concrete link to a physical tangible reality. Moreover, as discussed above, the weather and the physical settings mirror the characters’ internal conflicts, which are rooted in material and personal concerns. Da is possibly the exception to this because his concerns appear to be of a more philosophical nature. The character’s yearning for a different immaterial dimension is one of admiration and longing for an unreachable ideal of which he is not totally aware. If one connects Da’s monologue to his presence in the rest of the play, his yearning can also be viewed as being devoid of existential meaning, his behaviour becoming a matter of aesthetics that define him as a character. The passage from the real to the surreal does not lead to total disappearance and disintegration within a surreal ambience, but is brought to a semi-realistic dimension. The last reference in the play to the external environment is the image of An, as reported by Da, observing the sky, following a confrontation with Xixi and also Laobei’s invitation to Xixi to stay at the house for two more days. The turbulence of the weather, which had reflected the dark mood of the characters, has gone and there is a return to an apparent peace and calmness as reflected in the gorgeous sunshine, which Laobei picks up on with some irony. An is annoyed with Laobei for inviting Xixi to stay longer. The end scene describes the characters reunited and discussing writing a play about suicide called ‘Tarkovski’s



Transnational Postdramatic Realism in Weekend Quartet

159

father’s name is Tarkovski’,2 while breaking into a musical dance sequence. The members of the group all interact with one another, playfully making up how the plot should develop in strings of one-line sentences that are both nonsensical and bizarre. The dark irony lies in the fact that the suicide storyline contrasts with the imagery of the sun shining and with the playfulness of the musical sequence. Like Fuchs’ definition of theatre and landscape, references to an external environment and to the weather are based on a ‘phenomenological landscape–perception’ (1996: 107); the emphasis is on perception, in which the references are emotionally charged. The lack of temporal dimension landscape, as reflective of mood of the characters, creates the narrative structure of the play, beginning with references to a peaceful sunny day and later returning to a peaceful sunny day, which is imbued with ironic connotation. The pastoral is the contrast between city and countryside, where a nostalgia for an idyllic natural setting is expressed in the middle of the play, while a darker vision gradually emerges as seen through An’s feeling that the countryside and nature are oppressive and not at all idyllic. Unlike Fuchs’ theatrical examples, which totally leave behind the dramatic, Gao’s play still hangs onto the dramatic tensions arising from the different characters – An and her antagonism to Xixi and Laobei, and Laobei trying to capture Xixi’s diffidence. However, this is only a hint to the dramatic; as we look at structure of the play and the rhythms created by the musical context and the dialogue patterns, there is an attention to the theatrical musical element sealed by the playfulness at the end of the play as seen through the musical dance. According to Annie Curien, Gao’s intention here is to show the abandonment of logic and the temporal in favour of the musical element (Curien 2006: 179–80). She describes this play as being about aesthetic experimentation (ibid.: 180), and this corresponds with Gao’s idea of language as an instantaneous experience, as argued in the author’s essay ‘Reason for Literature’ (Gao 2008:

160

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

605). However, there are also several personal political concerns with which Gao imbues his work (1993: 117), that make this play not merely about experimentation. These will be discussed in the following section.

Freedom and the ontological discourse As in Noctural Wanderer, there are some references to freedom in this play that indicate an underpinning political discourse that deals with philosophical ontology in Gao’s writing. It is important to note that this is the first time that Gao has made such a direct reference to social status in his post-exile plays, analysed in this study. Linking Laobei’s statement (already mentioned: see p. 151), in which he expresses amusement and pride in his own property, to the development of the play, Gao might be levelling criticism at materialism and individualism, thereby suggesting a political–social critique. One should not forget that Gao has relentlessly argued against the commodification of art, against materialism and the unethical values of market-based capitalism, in itself a political stance. A sense of freedom, here, is contrasted with a material comfort that does not bring happiness or spiritual appeasement to the characters. By looking at the imagery, especially that expressed by Laobei, it can be seen that freedom is not associated with a relation between the individual and collective, but is found in seeking refuge in a pastoral and idyllic vision of nature. There is a yearning and desire to find this place of solace, but the changes in the way the landscape is described from light to darker imagery and vice versa, and Da’s clear reference to a kind of freedom shifting between materiality and immateriality, transforms this yearning seemingly into melancholy. In Chinese philosophy, as well as in literature, melancholy is an inevitable part of life, as described in such work as Zhuangzi’s ‘Daozhi’; it was also



Transnational Postdramatic Realism in Weekend Quartet

161

an aesthetic dogma during the Tang Dynasty (ad 618–907) (Qian 1985: 108). Melancholy here implies desire and longing rooted within materiality, which is considered one of the evils in Buddhism (Tachibana 1992: 73).3 This sense of longing and desire is present in other plays, but has been interpreted as being overcome through the attainment of ‘enlightenment’ by the gradual dissolution of language, which does not take place in Gao’s play. The characters remain rooted in their materiality, as seen for example in Laobei, who is concerned with fame and ageing. This could open up a political critique based on the fact that Gao is addressing in this play a discourse on materiality and individualism. In Nocturnal Wanderer, Gao depicts Sleepwalker’s pursuit of freedom as impossible. Here, freedom is achievable, but is meaningless, as it emerges from Da’s nihilist mood in the play, in which he refers to freedom as a heavy burden that adds to his misery: You wander between one word and another, between one phrase and another without end. The language could rattle like steel fetters, being a burden on you; now it is as frivolous as this slut here. What does freedom of language mean to you? (Gao 2001b: 62–3).

Here, freedom is meant in the sense of intellectual freedom – freedom to express one’s own thoughts and to travel from one country to another, outside national boundaries (Fong 2003b).4 In Nocturnal Wanderer, by contrast, freedom is an existential condition that is resolved aesthetically in the unfolding of actions of the play. However, Gao is not totally contradicting the message of Nocturnal Wanderer. While, to some extent Da, like the other characters in Weekend Quartet, is trapped in his subjectivity, which makes the personal freedom he refers to meaningless. Da is aware of his existential crisis, unlike the characters in Nocturnal Wanderer. More importantly, in this play, freedom manifests an existential crisis that strongly alludes to Gao’s own condition – as a transnational writer in a negative sense, as a writer in exile.

162

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

Freedom, therefore, is conceived of as a condition of living outside national and intellectual boundaries, and as such it is seen as causing the character to lose his sense of identity. This conflicts with Gao’s belief in freedom as being essential for a writer to flourish, as explained by Gilbert Fong, referencing Gao’s own exile (Fong 2006: 217). In this play, Da is depicted as living in limbo between spaces, a place of discomfort, which is symbolically depicted by his dream about keeping his balance on an elephant. The political stance of this elaboration of freedom is in the personal condition expressed through the allusion to a writer in between cultures, which is the clearest in Gao’s plays. Transnationalism in Weekend Quartet resonates with these sentiments – typical of writers in exile – though the references to this condition are only marginally lost within the spectacle of the play.

From freedom to spectacle As at the beginning of Nocturnal Wanderer, in Weekend Quartet, freedom, which is intended as meaningless, is not only an expression of a philosophical condition, but is also a matter of aesthetics and thus introduces the idea of art and reality as illusion. This is seen in Da’s expression of living a meaningless existence, with language becoming a meaningless tool, which, in turn, can be linked to Laobei’s statement about art, itself seen as an illusion: Laobei  Men cannot surpass God. Man longs for immortality, so he racks his brain to fabricate this and that illusion, and art is a hallucination that man has fabricated for himself. […] art is another illusion created by men. Da  So you have turned to painting women. Are you not concerned that also these are illusions too? (Gao 2001b: 56–7)

This conversation suggests that an artist or writer cannot take the place of God, and this corresponds to the humility Gao ascribes to



Transnational Postdramatic Realism in Weekend Quartet

163

the artist. Moreover, the motif of art as illusion, like reality, which will be reconsidered in Death Collector in the next chapter, can be related to the image of the door in Laobei’s dialogue with Xixi (see p. 153), where the image of the door links to the image of the painting and Xixi asks Laobei if she, herself, is an illusion. Da’s concerns over the meaninglessness of language and Xixi’s talking about illusion, art and reality imply, self-referentially, an alignment of reality with art, and reality with illusion. Reality and illusion, reflected in the passage of the play – from the real to the surreal, and the ‘landscape’ references, of freedom – can be summarized by the notion of simulacra and spectacle, as connected to Baudrillard’s idea of the hyperreal that were also referred to by Fuchs. The ‘hyperreal’ is defined by Baudrillard as ‘the real for its own sake’, a ‘fetishism’ of the lost object of representation, ‘the ecstasy of denegation and its own virtual extermination’ (Baudrillard 1993: 57). Hyperreality is created by an excess of reinvention of the real, of emulation of the real by the media, which, in turn, reduces reality to ‘simulacra’, mere fragments of its origin: Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory – precession of simulacra – it is the map that engenders the territory (ibid.: 58).

Even though Baudrillard believes that leading a life of illusion would be unbearable and that there is a need to consider the world in its materiality (Gane 1990: 73), he does concur that there is no return to a realist vision of reality and language from one of illusion, and he recognizes that hyperreality totally overwhelms the real and leads to illusion. In the equation reality–art, art as illusion – as manifested both through Gao’s references to landscape and also as connected to the

164

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

idea of freedom – implies a social critique in the play that alludes to Fuchs’ referencing of Baudrillard’s idea of production and value, explained by Baudrillard symbolic exchange’,5 from which his vision of hyperreality, reality and representation also derives. The ‘symbolic exchange’ refers to economic interaction, advocating a collectivism that would erase the value–creative action and, therefore, the displaced representation of this value (Baudrillard 1993: 204). The word ‘value’ is intended here not just in an economic context but also as an ‘excess of meaning’, an excess of signifiers. The reversibility of the symbolic implies that signs are received and sent back, which creates a cyclical chain erasing the possibility of value. The implication of this concept is that it is the disempowerment of the forces of representation and the ‘dominant discourses’ – to use Foucault’s words – which, in turn, create illusion and vacuity. It is important to point out that Baudrillard’s approach has an historical resonance, similar to that of Foucault, in which he describes the development of societies over time. His ideas are a response to a process of overwhelming capitalism, dominated by technological and mass media. In his critique of modernity and, especially, postmodernity, Baudrillard draws upon the romance of the non-rational to undermine ‘the smugness of modern planners who seemingly believe in the infallibility to reason’ (Lee 1999: 76), which leads him to favour a premodern, primitive era. In terms of freedom, Baudrillard reiterates the notion of illusion, suspicious of contemporary freedom as an illusion of holding destiny in our hands (Voela 2012: 225). Freedom and will are associated with ‘the right to pursue the satisfaction of one’s desires’ and are based on the false assumption that we can control the world around us (ibid.: 225–6). In Gao’s Weekend Quartet, in terms of the notion of freedom, the characters, especially Da, that are portrayed as yearning and desiring for something more, are veiled in a melancholy that is ironically



Transnational Postdramatic Realism in Weekend Quartet

165

associated with their apparent freedom, as determined by their social status and their occupations. However, the discontent – the meaningless of their existence – can be read as having originated in an apparent and illusory possibility of freedom. Here, an apparent material appeasement seems to lead to an unbearable vacuum in the four characters’ lives, which, in turn, reflects Baudrillard’s notion of a reality as simulacra. This translates into the spectacle of an empty reality – and will become clearer in the next section of this chapter, which examines the play’s dynamics – which move away from a presentation of a fragmented subjectivity towards a notion of spectacle.

From subjectivity to spectacle The idea of ‘spectacle’, based on the process of visuality, can be traced back to Guy Debord’s philosophical and Marxist book of critical theory The Society of the Spectacle (La Société du spectacle; 1967). This should not be confused with the ‘spectacularity’ of the filmic experience that defines a Weltanschauung (worldview) of an alienation of late capitalism, as manifested in spectacular phenomena in the cinema (Thomas Y. Levin, 2004: 324). The spectacle or rather ‘the society of spectacle’ refers to a media and consumer society dominated by the production and consumption of images, commodities and staged events (Douglas Kellner 2005: 2). While Debord still talks in terms of alienation and distance and bases his notions on the dichotomy between the empowered and disempowered (Lane 2008: 97), for Baudrillard, when associated with the notion of hyperreal, spectacle no longer implies the distance between image and reality. The latter is part of Debord’s conception (ibid.: 98): both the images and the medium through which images are produced (Toffoletti 2011: 92) are disguised in the process of commodification

166

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

and consumption. Both Debord and Baudrillard, use ‘spectacle’ in connection with cinema and mass media. In particular, as attested by Fuchs’ reference to his ideas, already mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, Baudrillard’s notion of spectacle includes the performative theatrical element. Discussing simulations, Baudrillard refers to dramaturgy of life (1983: 72) part of the process of simulation that disguises further reality. Theatre, however, can also assist in the rediscovery of the ‘aesthetic force of the world’ by ‘expanding the epistemological horizon of everyday life’ and by eliminating the boundaries that separate subject and object (Gary Genosko 2002: 148), where the emphasis is on dichotomy between subject–object. It is worth noting that Baudrillard believed that a theatre of cruelty and violence that is essentially anti-naturalistic and follows a set of ceremonial rules can break these boundaries. He confided his work to the East, in the Peking Opera, because of its non-representational signs, that are non-casually arranged and connected, and the violence of its ‘brush of weapons’. He saw in Peking opera the opportunity to create a gap, ‘a space held open by ceremony itself, a guard against the promiscuity of direct and free contacts’ (Baudrillard 1983: 148–9). Baudrillard’s notion of spectacle, in my opinion, contains this vision of a theatrical reality, where theatre can play an important part in the process of simulation of reality as well as the possibility through theatre, a ceremonial theatre, a violent kind of theatre, that is not merely a mimesis of the real but with its own strict rules and stylization process can take control over the object for the duration of the performance. Heightened by its own visuality, spectacle, in the theatrical context, comes to signify a reification of the object, of the real which is, at the same time, part of a process of manipulation of the object. This does not represent a solution to a process of simulation and does not defeat hyperreality; yet, unlike television and cinema, theatre can create a distance, between image and reality,



Transnational Postdramatic Realism in Weekend Quartet

167

a critical point of view that shows the mechanism beyond such a process of simulation. The spectators, no longer passive receivers of simulated reality, become aware of the strangeness of reality through the theatrical spectacle. The dichotomy between subject–object, central to Baudrillard’s vision, can be seen in Weekend Quartet, in the passage from subjectivity to spectacle, a journey that goes from subjectivity to theatrical presentation. This play is not about the reenactment of violence and cannot be immediately connected to Peking opera, and yet it unfolds according to the stylization of the real and structural dynamics that make it anti-naturalist in its apparent realism. The exploration of subjectivity is embedded within the connection between landscape, perception and characters’ psychological inner conflict. Just as the characters have realist connotations, their roles give us an insight into their inner self; self-referentiality and language contribute to the making of the spectacle. Gao chooses to portray characters – An and Da – who, like him, are writers. The play sees An engaged in an intellectual search for a story to write, and An and her passion for writing are mentioned at the beginning of the play. The hierarchal difference, and tensions, between the characters are created by the definition of writer characters and non-writer characters: Da and An are ‘deeper’ insofar as they are engaged in self-reflection and are the most self-absorbed intellectual characters in the play, while Laobei’s and especially Xixi’s insights are much more superficial and marginal. Although Laobei is an artist, this role appears to be undiminished by his materialistic interest in the world. This difference in interaction between the two couples acts to depict An and Da as essentially the narrators of the play, who observe the events happening and are engaged in their internal monologues on stage. This device helps to create a parallel story from that of Laobei and Xixi and suggests a first level of framing.

168

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

The characters’ roles apart, we can also determine from the characters’ internal monologues how subjectivity is depicted in Gao’s play. Da and An are both engaged in an internal rather than an external struggle: An’s is derived from both her resentment towards and fear of Xixi and also her search for a story to write. Da, in turn, is trying to come to terms with his identity and past. Laobei, instead, is lost in material concerns; and Xixi’s expressions of feelings are concise, and for the most part rooted in reality – she speaks about her father and her history rather than losing herself in her dreams. The dream element is ever-present in the play. All the characters discuss their dreams except for Xixi. While this does not necessarily make her the most superficial of the four characters, she is definitely the one about whom we know least in terms of internal conflict. The masking of her subjectivity is an important aspect of her character and it makes her the only really stable character: despite expressing concerns about being an object of men’s desire, she seems to accept this situation. In terms of language, Xixi is the one who uses it least: while the others could arguably be said to employ an excess of language, she, in contrast, employs it only in order to communicate directly with other characters. Meanwhile, the other characters become almost caricatures of themselves, totally absorbed in their thoughts. If we consider Lacan’s writings, where language is always a place of subjectivity and the conscious mixes with the unconscious and the symbolic is never totally unaffected by ‘imaginary’ language (Elliott 2004: 37), in Dialogue and Rebuttal – and to some extent Nocturnal Wanderer – the characters’ excess of language can also be seen as an excess of subjectivity. Framed within the narrative pattern of their monologues, they attempt to rationalize their unconscious, their dreams and their thoughts, though facing internal struggles, coming to terms with their subjectivity. As they fail to find peace, they appear



Transnational Postdramatic Realism in Weekend Quartet

169

subordinate to their frustrations – especially the writers, who are more in touch with both their emotional and linguistic selves. It is the depiction of a relentless desire for an undetermined cause that is part of the characters’ frustration. Whereas, in the plays previously discussed, language and its disintegration lead to a deconstruction of subjectivity, the fragmentation of language no longer represents a solution; neither silence nor linguistic fragmentation presents a way to escape the curse of unhappiness. Moreover, by presenting Xixi as the only character who remains unaffected, Gao seems to be giving a message that is the opposite of that of his earlier plays. Xixi in general uses language to interact with the other characters, to react to them or respond to them, and hardly ever in the metalinguistic (Schiffrin 1987: 303),6 self-referential sense of the other protagonists. The apparent significance of Gao’s contrasting Xixi against the other characters can be interpreted as Gao’s anchoring the play to a realist dimension. However, by looking in more detail at the actual dynamics of the play, and again referencing Baudrillard, we can regard the language here and the use of different framing as illustrating the application of his idea of simulacra as related to the subject–object relation. When Baudrillard (1990a: 111) states, ‘Only the subject desires; only the object seduces,’ he is talking about a subject that is always submitted to the object, the latter standing for ‘all of us and to our social and political order’ (ibid.: 202): The self, in this relationship, is a subject gazing on and interacting with a world of objects (including other selves or subjects), thus knowing itself through his interactions with and differences from these objects. […] The entire apparatus of the subject-object relationship, so Baudrillard argues, has been threatened, if not actually rendered a wistful remembrance of inheritances past, by the battery of technologies and technocities that help create contemporary conditions. […] The subject–object relation exists only in form of a simulation of what it might once have been (Bishop 2009: 39).

170

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

Although he does not refer openly to the contrast between technology and technocities, Gao’s play reflects this process of subjugation of the subject to the object, to the real within a process of infinite simulation that creates simulacra. The contrast of Xixi to Da, An and Laobei, the references to the external physical reality to an outside dimension – as indicated by the changes in the weather – and the materiality embedded in Laobei’s comments, all serve to limit the process of a loose subjectivity of the three main characters. Similarly, the fact that, unlike in other Gao’s plays, the characters are given names, serves to entrap the situations presented within an objective real, which is, however, in itself delusional. Focusing briefly on a discourse on subjectivity, I agree with Angie Voela when she argues that there is a common ground between Lacan and Baudrillard in regard to subjectivity. Without going too much into her arguments, we need to consider Baudrillard’s previously mentioned statement (see p. 169), ‘Only the subject desires; only the object seduces.’ The notion of desire is part of Lacan’s theory and approach: desire, which as Voela argues ‘emanates from the separation from the primordial Mother and the loss of bodily enjoyment (jouissance)’ (Voela 2012: 222), is all about the subject trespassing into the field of ‘the Other’ in order to be satisfied. However, this desire is never fully satisfied. Similarly, Baudrillard’s desiring subject, the desire for truth beyond reality, which will be explained in greater depth later in this chapter, always fails to fulfill its desire for truth and can only know itself from the outside (ibid.: 221). I would define this as initiating a process of simulation and creation of simulacra. Now, it is the word ‘seduction’ that describes how Lacan and Baudrillard diverge. As part of the psychoanalyst–patient relation ship, seduction enables the patient to speak about his or her own truth (Voela 2012: 206). Seduction appealing to narcissism, the link of the subject to the specular image of its own body (ibid.: 77), manifests the subjective truth of the patient; while for Baudrillard, seduction functions as



Transnational Postdramatic Realism in Weekend Quartet

171

further hiding and displacing truth. In the process of seduction, discourse is at its most superficial, substituting truth with the charm and illusion of appearances (Baudrillard 1990b: 53). In this idea of seduction, its signs emerge victorious over truth and defy interpretation (ibid.). Despite the divergence, Lacan and Baudrillard are not far apart. Lacan’s specular image of the self and his conception of the truth is by no means absolute – it is still displaced by the desire of self to find its Other – and cannot be disjointed by the implication of using a language that is affected by the forces of the imaginary and symbolic. For Lacan, the real cannot be considered as ‘telling the whole truth’ about itself, because language fails ‘to reflect the multifaceted character of the real’ and, most importantly, language has ‘so ruptured the real that there is no whole to be described’ (Hurst 2008: 209). This resonates with Baudrillard’s idea of seduction that functions as further hiding and displacing truth. In view of these considerations of desire and seduction, the notion of simulacrum is determined by the relation of the subject–object where the continuously desiring subject (desire for truth versus desire for the Other) is opposed, eluded (seduced) and deceived by the object and the real always feeds on its own appearance, on its own specular image. Both truth and the Other are, therefore, displaced within the process of simulation. Returning to Gao’s play, paralleling Baudrillard’s emphasis on the project of objectification in contrast to Lacan’s subjectivity, this play, unlike the other plays, performs a project of objectification of the subject through a process of simulation of the real, which is part of a theatrical spectacle. Baudrillard’s idea of simulation is exemplified by the use of framing, the metaphor of the door that can be described as creating a ‘mirror effect’. At one level the image of the door can be interpreted as access to the unconscious. As mentioned above, the door is an ambiguous element; it could symbolize the entrance to a dreamlike dimension and Laobei’s subjectivity, his dreams that

172

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

he shares with Xixi, where Xixi may or may not be a figment of his imagination, part of his illusion. It creates the opposition outside/ inside, with the door being the way to access this inside, which here signifies the reality of prohibited desires, intimacy. The door becomes an access point to the darker, hidden side of the mind. Light becomes an accomplice of the unconscious in creating illusions, in the same way that art is created by characters speaking of their own desires. Apart from defining the dreamlike dimension, the door serves to define the relationship between the characters, to create boundaries between the play’s reality – the four people spending the weekend in a countryside home – and the subjectivity of the character of Laobei. Laobei shares his desire for Xixi when she walks through the door with him and becomes the object of his dream. An’s speech interrupts their dialogue as she talks about Laobei and Xixi going through the door and inappropriately leaving the door slightly open. Her reference to the door adds a different perspective to the scene: it is an outside perspective that informs us of the pair walking through the door, which objectifies the illusion, the dreamlike dimension, and adds a semi-realistic connotation despite still being the projection of another character’s subjectivity. In other words, An’s statement projects her own unconscious – her resentment – which is a response to Laobei’s action of walking through the door with Xixi. In a metaphorical sense, the door can be described as an access point to the characters’ intimacy. The door serves to define the interaction of the characters’ subjectivities with one another and the spaces surrounding them. This function of the door is confirmed by its use later on in Quartet Four, when all the characters play a game and the door becomes part of their game: all the characters’ unconsciousness and subjectivities are interacting together. The door can also be interpreted metaphorically as creating and framing a virtual reality, to use Baudrillard’s terms, which will explain the spectators’ point of view and can be drawn from Baudrillard’s



Transnational Postdramatic Realism in Weekend Quartet

173

ideas on photography, where the door can be compared to the function of a camera lens. The lens is seen as a filter between reality and the subject, where ‘the photographic object is simply the trace left behind by the disappearance of everything else’ (Baudrillard 1997: 28). In terms of the representation and fictionality of reality, Baudrillard adds: The photograph is not an image in real time; it is not a virtual image, or a numerical image, etc. It is analogical and it retains the moment of the negative, the suspense of the negative, this slight displacement which allows the image to exist in its own right, in other words, as something different to the real object; in other words an illusion – in other words, as the moment in which the world of the object vanishes into the image, which synthetic images cannot do because they do not longer exist as images. (Baudrillard 1997: 29).

Baudrillard talks of ‘reciprocal murder’, a process whereby a ‘transfusion’ between the object and the subject takes place: In this act of reciprocal disappearance, we also find a transfusion between object and subject. It is not always a successful transfusion. To succeed, one condition must be met. The Other – the object – must survive this disappearance to create a ‘poetic situation of transfer’ or a ‘transfer of poetic situation.’ In such a fatal reciprocity, one perhaps finds the beginning of a solution to the problem of society’s so-called ‘lack of communicability.’ (Baudrillard 2001a: 40).

In linguistic terms, Baudrillard argues that photography, especially the kind that defies interpretation or the formation of further signification, recreates original objectivity by reducing the distance between the subjective and the objective. Referring back to the play in the context of Baudrillard’s outlook, in a metaphorical sense, Gao is using the door as a camera lens gazing at the characters as objects in action, immortalizing them and framing them. In terms of spectatorship, within this process Gao also directly guides spectators to focus their attention closely, to observe

174

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

the characters’ subjectivity further objectifying them. The framing used through language works as a close-up of the characters’ subjectivity. It is worth noting that Baudrillard himself compares language to photography: Just as photography connotes the effacing, the death of what it represents – which lends it its intensity – so what lends writing, fictional or theoretical, its intensity is the void, the nothingness running beneath the surface, the illusion of meaning, the ironic dimension of language, correlative with that of the facts themselves, which are never anything but what they are [ne sont jamais que ce qu’ils sont]. That is to say, they are never more than what they are and they are, literally, never only what they are [jamais que ce qu’ils sont] (Baudrillard 2001b: 269).

Baudrillard sees how language participates in a process where reality is destroyed and displaced by illusions. In The Perfect Crime, illusions are described, pointing out to the irreconcilable duality between thought and reality, object and subject (1996: 269). Language, in this sense, is about making the illusion of that object shine forth – making it ‘an impenetrable enigma’, altering it, seducing it, making it ‘disappear for itself ’ (Baudrillard 1996: 271). In addition to an idea of simulacrum that ‘conceals not the truth but the fact that there isn’t any’, what he calls ‘the continuity of nothing’ (ibid.: 272), Baudrillard’s function of language that always tends to create meanings, creates further illusions, marking the victory of the object through the assertion of vital illusion (‘the object is what escapes the subject – more we cannot say, since our position is still that of the subject and of rational discourse’ (Baudrillard 2000: 80–1)). The object that escapes the subject, is an object that cannot be totally comprehended and carries ‘an inaccessible secret’, a vital illusion that has, through creation of simulacra and language, been concealed in the excess of reality. Baudrillard predicts that the cycle meaning-illusion can be stopped by using the enigmatic that points out the process of creating



Transnational Postdramatic Realism in Weekend Quartet

175

illusions: by not passing thoughts, ideas and the object for real, and by stressing its inadequacy, its meaningless void. This is what Gao does by adding a framing that points out the subjective nature of what is presented on stage, through the enigmatic nature of the language that indicates its own artificiality, and ultimately by making the spectator aware that what they are seeing is an hallucination, an illusion. In this play, unlike the other plays, theatrical hallucinations are not part of the modus of disappearance, but are showing the actions through the glass ball that maintains an apparent reality, and to some extent, also, an excess of reality. The victory of the object over the subject is here contained and manipulated through the theatrical structure, creating awareness of this victory and to some extent neutralizing it. Another element that stresses this sense of awareness is the use of the third- and second-person pronouns, which creates a sense of the observer being observed by observing him- or herself. Similarly, the actors demystify the characters on stage by creating a further layer projecting an external perspective, which depersonalizes the characters and further highlights the play’s fictionality. As argued earlier in this chapter, the characters’ speeches also have the function of narrating and describing the environment of the play itself, which creates a sense of narration. With reference to Baudrillard’s idea of the camera lens, there is a sense of a narrative construction whereby the spectators can recognize the controlling matrix that orchestrates the subjectivity of the characters. We could argue that Gao is approaching reality to reflect on the possibility of representation by consciously recreating a fictional reality that is conscious of its own construction. This is unlike the previous play analysed in this book, where fragmentation, the random game of hallucinations, had made the plays’ own framings elusive and incoherent, defying any structural closures. For example, as Nocturnal Wanderer illustrates, the elusive framing of the book has led to three different interpretations and the end of the play defies a conclusive resolution to the dynamics of the play. In this

176

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

case, by recreating a spectacle that feeds on the conscious of virtuality, artificiality of its own construction, a closure is suggested at the end. If we refer again to hallucination, it is a kind of hallucination that is ‘filmed’, gazed from specific perspectives, a recreated virtuality. The cohesion and closure are also result of the musical element that dictates the structure of the play, the element of quartet, which seems to follow a logic of construction: the search for writing material shared by both Da and An is an underlying motif that directs the deployment of the play, as is the ‘quartet’ of the title, which forms the framework of the play. The four characters are like notes linked through a common thread within the structure of the composition. A precise pattern is followed within each scene, or quartet: people speak in one enclosed dialogue after another and we rarely see all four characters talking together. As mentioned earlier, this adds an interesting aspect to the play, which follows the pattern of a musical composition. Since music is an abstract artistic form par excellence, this play should emulate its abstract nature. Despite the semi-realist connotations, the play does not lose the abstract quality deriving from its musical structure; instead, there is coherence and cohesion following a pattern that enables the narration to flow better and create a sense of expectation. The end of the play, which sees the characters engaged in a playful game of narrating and inventing the story metadramattically, creates another framing that encloses even further the process of simulation. This play adds a new meaning to the word ‘spectacle’, as used by both Baudrillard and Debord. The spectacle is the product of theatrical experience that reifies the victory of the object – of the hyperreal – only to frame it, dissect it, stylize and seduce it, but above all to celebrate it as a theatrical event in its superficial realness. Unlike Baudrillard, and closer to Debord, the distance is reinstated thanks to the emphasis on the framing, the medium, the gap that Baudrillard himself discusses in regard to Peking Opera and which makes passive consumption of the event impossible.



Transnational Postdramatic Realism in Weekend Quartet

177

Postdramatic transnationalism and realism In conclusion, after reflecting on Gao’s conception of theatre, we can argue that this play is closer to a conception of suppositional/ hypothetical theatre, in which, as suggested by Todd Coulter, and previously by Sy Ren Quah, the emphasis is, also, on the importance of the real as connected to the suppositional. However, realness does not translate into a theatrical realism or naturalism in this play even though a strong sense of closure is suggested in it. In fact, if we compare Gao’s play to the like of Handke, Jelinek and Schwab – and to Crimp’s Attempts – we realize that there is an attachment to a dramatic that is not present in other writers’ plays. The reason I mention Handke and Jelinek is because they have both mastered using multiple voices7 in their plays. Peter Handke’s Self-accusation and Offending the Audience8 are written as blocks of soliloquies but have been staged using different voices. In my view more similar to Gao’s Weekend Quartet, Elfriede Jelinek’s Sportstücke contains ‘the confrontation between chorus and individuals’ (Primavesi 2003: 67). Coulter suggests that it is in the staging of the play that the multi-vocality comes across more strongly – the directors and actors should ‘strive to make the production musical in nature’ so as to enable ‘multiple voiced to speak at once’ (2014: 105). The multi-vocality is already present in the text multi-vocal patterns, through the rotating of several soliloquies (An and Da) and the insertion of dialogues. Unlike other postdramatic work, however, the voices are not freed from the characters’ psychological presence. This makes this play less postdramatic than other plays analysed thus far, and some attachment to the dramatic is revealed by the sense of closure at the end of the play, as the play ends where it started, in the celebration of the gorgeous weather, although veiled by the underlying irony of the game. The key to this play is the notion of spectacle that results from reflecting on a series of passages, between different elements of the

178

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

play from the real to the surreal and back again, constructed around the motif of weather/landscape, which is also part of an underlying social critique, as exemplified through the idea of freedom. Then, the element of subjectivity, that is manifested by the dichotomy subject–object, forms the backbone of the spectacle created on stage. As mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, within the context of realism and postdramatic theatre, where in many plays a hunger for reality is manifested, in regard to this play we can identify a realness that can be understood as reproducing a sense of hyperreality, and more simply about a consolidating of two theatrical approaches. The psychological differentiation of the characters, typically dramatic, rejects Fuchs’ idea of death, while keeping through musicalization – that is typically postdramatic9 – the different framings and the use of tripartition, the experimental option open that is not dramatic, but mainly theatrical. Gao succeeds in combining the dramatic with the theatrical and postdramatic and makes it possible to consider a realism that is postdramatic in terms of both forms and outlook. This echoes Fuchs’ view, expressed in the essay ‘Postdramatic Theatre and the Persistence of the “Fictive Cosmos” ’, mentioned at the beginning of this study, that suggests the possibility of a fictive cosmos surviving in the postdramatic, and, above all, the possibility of both the dramatic and postdramatic coexisting. Considering the transnational element of this play, the idea of freedom helps us focus on an underlying political stance that is the condition of the exile, which seems to derive from the personal situation of the Gao in exile. The condition of the exile informs the notion of a pointless freedom, a freedom that does not lead to happiness, perhaps suggesting that the condition of the exile is always of constant un-fulfilment. In this sense, when comparing the play to Nocturnal Wanderer, in which the first scene in the train carriage and passport control alludes to difficult transnational mobility, Weekend



Transnational Postdramatic Realism in Weekend Quartet

179

Quartet shows the aftermath once freedom of movement between countries is no longer an issue and freedom remains meaningless, nevertheless. Going beyond these assumptions, the political stance that interests us is that which conveys the futility of a materiality and a reality dominated by this reality. Moreover, while agreeing with Coulter’s emphasis on the play’s Frenchness, I would have to add that we should not forget that Gao’s idea of universal literature and theatre is about the transcendence of cultural and national boundaries. The French and Chinese versions differ, but not significantly, and the situations presented are easily translatable in either place. Beyond the cultural connotation of this play, and considering the whole package of postdramatic transnationalism, Weekend Quartet shows how Gao is comfortable in manipulating theatrical approaches, transcending both theatrical artistic boundaries and national ones. The complexity of Gao’s cultural position will become more relevant when looking at the later plays, concluding the cycle, Death Collector, Snow in August and Ballade Nocturne.

6

Latest Postdramatic Attempts at Transnationalism

As discussed in Chapter 5, we have seen how Gao is comfortable with manipulating theatrical approaches, transcending both theatrical, artistic and national boundaries. In the plays that conclude the cycle, and my book, such flexibility and creativity help Gao to reach new horizons and new depths. This chapter will look at some of the theatrical works that see Gao explore these theatrical and cultural boundaries further, while allowing him also to elaborate on themes that have been recurrent in his earlier plays (self-referentiality, death, freedom and art as illusion). While this chapter focuses in most detail on the play Death Collector, because stylistically and from a narrative point of view it is closer to Gao’s earlier post-exile plays, it also looks at two other works, Snow in August and Ballade Nocturne. Both fall outside accepted genres and artistic categorizations while the use of the musical element that was present in Weekend Quartet is revisited. I have chosen to analyse the three works together because all three see the writer stretch the relationship between dramatic and theatrical, and mark Gao’s passage into a form of Total Theatre that transcends textual predominance.

Death Collector The play Death Collector (2000) deals with the issues of death, old age and art. It continues, through an exploration of subjectivity, the

182

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

exploration of themes and concepts that were first introduced in Weekend Quarter, such as the idea of art as an illusion attached to freedom and death. The play presents two anonymous characters, Parleur A and Parleur B; the latter character appears to be the alter ego and the shadow of Parleur A. While Parleur A is presented as being very old, Parleur B is extremely old. Therefore, if we consider Parleur A and Parleur B to be one character, Gao chooses to present him in a particular period of his life, his old age, which is an important element of the play, as we will see. While travelling to a railway station, Parleur A becomes trapped in a museum. He becomes engaged in an internal philosophical quest, addressing questions about existence, old age and art. The dynamics of the play develop as the contrast between the two characters on stage become clear – Parleur A tries to hang onto life despite its meaninglessness and Parleur B expresses absolute negativity and tries to persuade Parleur A to accept and surrender to death. As the title, Death Collector, suggests, this play is a quest for death and it ends with Parleur A hanging himself. In theatrical terms, the play develops through the interchange of the two characters’ monologies, which occasionally turn into brief dialogic exchanges. In this sense, Gao goes back to a more systematic use of monologies, as he does in Between Life and Death and Dialogue and Rebuttal.

Freedom and the return to death The journey that the play describes is the path towards ‘intentional’ death, whereby death comes to represent a solution to a miserable life. Whereas plays such as Between Life and Death and Dialogue and Rebuttal follow a journey from life to death, this play deals with death rejecting life as a possibility, and there is, in fact, a suggestion that death might embody freedom.



Latest Postdramatic Attempts at Transnationalism

183

The motif of death in its form of theatrical expression does raise questions about the link between this play and Fuchs’ theatrical ontology of death. If freedom, here, is equated with death, we need to focus on the journey and what death means in relation to freedom. A comparison with the other Gao’s plays for context is also helpful. The narrative journey of this play appears to describe a reflection on life, the existence of God and art, as well as being a reflection on old age. These themes are connected by the sense of there being a denial of the past, a denial of experience through memory. Parleur B compares ‘delving back into the past’ to drinking poison (Gao 2004: 33). This negative attitude derives from his acknowledgement that time erases moments of joy in life and that life itself is an ever-changing flux of events. Memory, the recalling of past events, becomes painful as it takes one back to those moments forever lost. Moreover, if we extend this idea of the past to the museum where the characters are trapped, the past is represented metaphorically as being a part of the museum, an imprisonment of the past, with the past, thus, becoming part of a negative set of values. Gao uses the state of being trapped in the museum as an analogy for the existential condition: an old man is lost in his solitude and identifies with the museum, which is emblematic of the collection of the past, as forgotten and meaningless as he is. The past keeps the museum and the man alive and makes both immortal, but both are also trapped in art as its own place of worship, which, in turn, makes immortality hollow and meaningless. The comparison of the old man with Da in Weekend Quartet is poignant in that it shows how both characters in this play suffer from the effects of living a meaningless existence, something we also see in Weekend Quartet. However, the vision that Gao presents in Death Collector is far darker than that represented in his earlier play. While the condition that Da talks about in Weekend Quartet is a consequence of the freedom given to him by a society that allows intellectuals to speak freely and to travel across national boundaries, in Death

184

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

Collector, Parleur A does not just talk about a meaningless existence: the word he actually uses is ‘misérable’. The misery of life derives from an insatiable human nature, a wish to satisfy one’s own desires before those of other people, which in itself could lead to mutual self-destruction (Gao 2004: 32). Parleur B explains that Parleur A is trapped in the museum as a consequence of a failed meeting with someone (ibid.: 39). Instead of keeping the meeting, he finds himself at the museum. Parleur B’s explanation implies a missed opportunity, the missed possibility of a meeting. His condition suggests that any action in life, even ambition itself, leads to failure, because opportunities are always out of reach. Consequently, Parleur B’s statement shows that the significance of the trip itself becomes meaningless; and that as time passes by, memory and actions are lost in obliteration as a result of it. Freedom, here, is equated with, and opposed to, the idea of entrapment, as indicated by the setting of the play – the two characters trapped in the museum – and by the protagonists’ existential condition – the possibility that their ambitions and desires are destined to fail. The museum, the location of the play, a public place, could be seen to suggest imprisonment within societal institutionalized structures, which would link back to Foucault’s idea of disciplines (See Chapter 4, pp. 133–5). However, if freedom indicates a possible political ideological stance in Gao’s previous two plays (Nocturnal Wanderer and Weekend Quartet), here it assumes a strict existentialist dimension. Freedom is also connected to the meaninglessness of life. However, while in Weekend Quartet it was associated with the condition of exile – the freedom of exile is destined to be without meaning – here, meaninglessness is equated with living without a purpose, which is seen as an antidote to the continuous struggle to reach out to ambitions and dreams. It can be intended in the sense of peace, appeasement – (vie sans soucis) (Gao 2004: 40), the end to the



Latest Postdramatic Attempts at Transnationalism

185

never-ending search to realize ambitions, to satisfy desires – a state which could also be interpreted as death (Gao 2004: 42). This vision of death as a solution to misery brings us back to the discussion on appeasement of desire, or no-desire, which resonates with Buddhist enlightenment teaching, where appeasement would signify a positive ideal dimension. However, the tone of the play suggests that there is a realization that life is coming to an end and that no religious or spiritual belief can bring consolation. The two characters actually state that ‘God is dead’ (Gao 2004: 45); thus, in the face of an imminent end, with no prospect of salvation, memory and the past lose their worth, too. In the sense of a religious dimension, the play manifests distrust in either Western or Buddhist faiths, when both characters briefly refer to Bodhisattva and Jesus. The characters express a complete denial of salvation, with no possibility of transcendence. Within this vision, death becomes nothingness and imposes nothingness on men. The realization of such a conviction, its nihilism, is far from being a fait accompli in the play, as it is part of the representation developing through the dynamics of the play, the interaction between the two characters. In the dialogic shaping of the play, through the use of monologies, Parleur A and Parleur B take two different stances. Parleur A advocates a carpe diem vision of life: Without regrets or remorse, get rid of anything that could make you depressed or weak! Live the moment, pursue whatever you want and whatever you can! (Gao 2004: 34).

This vision seems to embody ancient Greek philosophical ideas, specifically the Epicurean,1 which advocated a vision of life that obliterates any concerns about death: God presents no fears, death no cause for alarm; it is ease to procure what is good; it is easy also to endure what is evil.2

Thus, Parleur A is referring to death as a kind of consolation, as such demystifying his immediate destiny and the nihilism that fatalism

186

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

conveys. Parleur B, conversely, talks sarcastically and with negativity about life, humanity and simply ‘being alive’: What is left is only a sense of propriety. The same sense of propriety that brought you back to life. This is the way that your body makes you aware of its own frailty and vulnerability. Then, you feel more alive, closer to your very human essence; don’t mention your personality or your identity, even if you are not sure you possess one. It is the way you feel more yourself, isn’t it? (Gao 2004: 36)

Parleur B criticizes his counterpart’s carpe diem outlook, stating that the very fact of being alive leads to an awareness of our own vulnerability and mortality. Later, he talks about ‘suicide’. It is interesting to note how the character makes a distinction between two verbs, ‘suicide’ and ‘murder’, in order to describe the act of inflicting one’s own death. He says: You don’t commit suicide; you kill yourself. The difference is that suicide results in abandoning oneself to total despair, whereas one’s own murder is an act of clairvoyance, it is to hold death in your own hands and analyze it with clarity (Gao 2004: 42).

Two verbs in the French (se suicider and se tuer) are used for the act of suicide: ‘Commit suicide’ (se suicider), as the official term for the act of suicide is less visceral but is more euphemistic than the verb ‘to kill oneself ’ (se tuer). In Parleur B’s speech the explanation that follows, however, explains that ‘committing suicide’ referred to by the verb se suicider is an act made out of despair, whereas se tuer, used in this sense to mean killing oneself, is a conscious realization of life, is a way of facing up to death. This pre-empts the end of the play, in which Parleur A is described as killing himself; Parleur B has persuaded him to do so after encouraging him to face up to death. This play seems to be at odds with Gao’s own attachment to Zen, as seen in the contradiction between Parleur A’s ‘live for the moment’ philosophy and his ultimate decision to choose death, described



Latest Postdramatic Attempts at Transnationalism

187

almost as an act of daring. Therefore, death is confirmed as a ‘choice’, albeit an existential one. Death, here, is almost a reflection of a Western atheist approach to faith and life, where death is the ultimate end. The echo of Nietzsche’s idea can be traced back to the concept of God’s death in Parleur A’s words about suicide. According to Nietzsche, the concept of God’s death (Nietzsche 2006: 256) implies empowerment, leading to humankind’s taking back control and regaining power from the God religion has so much abused: ‘[W]e must become gods ourselves’ (ibid.: 260) It is worth noting that Nietzsche embraces the Buddhist principle of nirvana,3 the ideal of Übermensch4 (the Nietzschean superman) after declaring God’s death. Gao, instead, expresses the impossibility of humankind regaining that power. The link between Gao and Nietzsche is, however, a problematic one: in the opening lines of his 2000 Nobel Prize speech, Gao clearly addresses harsh criticism towards Nietzsche’s ideology, and in particular his idea of Übermensch/superman. It is important to note that Gao blames humankind for trying to replace God (Gao 2008: 3); he also criticizes writers who try to be God by taking on the role of creators (ibid.: 10). This is illustrated in this play, in particular, where Gao refers to the artist as the person who has killed God (Gao 2004: 45). So, while in his Nobel Prize speech he criticizes the figure of the writer/artist, in Death Collector, written in the same year, Gao presents a situation whereby the artist has indeed killed God and shows the consequences of this act through the nihilism of the characters. This might show a contradiction between his professed antagonism to Nietzsche and what he writes in Death Collector, where the echoes of Nietzsche’s ideas are very apparent in the words of the characters when they talk about God’s death. Mabel Lee, prominent scholar and translator of Gao’s fiction and essays, focuses on Gao’s antagonism towards Nietzsche, stating that Gao admired parts of Nietzsche’s writings, but he saw in Nietzsche’s

188

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

Superman and the ‘bloating of the self ’, the danger for the individual to lose his/her capacity ‘to critically assess the self ’, which might result in the individual losing control of the self (Lee 2002: 27). Elsewhere, Mabel Lee, however, stresses the inevitable influences of Nietzsche’s ideas on Gao’s writing, because the foundations of China’s modern literature ‘had internalized elements from Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra’ (Lee 2003: 612). She goes so far as to argue that Gao’s conception of literature coincides with Nietzsche’s, in that, like Nietzsche, Gao expresses a need for one to preserve one’s own autonomy of the self, and a need to continuously question one’s own existence (ibid.). While Lee associates Gao’s vision of literature with Nietzsche, it is in Gao’s philosophical idea of death that one can see the connection between Gao and the German philosopher found in this play. Here, Gao takes on the darker elements of Nietzsche’s philosophy, as we will see in the following section of the chapter regarding death as the ultimate tragic act. However, for now, in connection with Nietzsche’s ideas, one could also interpret Death Collector as presenting the condition of the artist – that is, the artist who has set him- or herself up to replace God is eventually trapped in a meaningless existence. What is clear is that the idea of freedom, as expressed in the condition of the artist, has turned much darker than in Weekend Quartet, because it is associated with other occasions of misery. As in so many examples of his work, however, Gao, here, does not offer a conclusive vision or message. I would argue that the philosophical underpinning of the play finds wider resonance in the postdramatic condition, with Fuchs’ vision of reality and the death of the dramatic. This will be more clear when we focus on the dynamics of the play – the use of monologies and the notion of a split subjectivity – where self-‘referentiality’ also exemplifies the condition of the artist, the process of the artistic creation, where we can again find a resonance with Nietzsche’s ideas.



Latest Postdramatic Attempts at Transnationalism

189

Self-referentiality and split of subjectivity An important theme in Death Collector is self-referentiality, whereby the character, split in Parleur A or Parleur B, reflects on art, and part of the character’s quest is to define the parallel between art– creation and God. Within this parallel, it is, in particular, Parleur A who reflects on his role as a performer, considering himself to be a creator. which relates to the question of subjectivity, and also defines the relation between the performers on stage and the spectators. This is one of the three elements that I will look at in this section. While self-referentiality highlights the role of the artist and the function of creation, the second element under consideration, subjectivity, describes the dynamics between the two characters and is determined by the use of monologies and tripartition and the relation between the performers and the spectators. With regard to the theatrical creation, Gao seems to master a use of dialogical monologies that sees the fictional dramatis persona split into two and performed by two actors. The third element, split personality and split subjectivity, is analysed in this section as a theatrical device, which is then perfected in Ballade Nocturne, analysed at the end of this chapter. Self-referentiality, as explained at the beginning of this book, is used to reinforce the idea of a theatre of the real as a reflection of the condition of art and of the artist. In the first moments of the play, bitter criticism seems to be levelled at the revolution of art and the new artistic trends that have rejected the past to create something new, and have made art an object of consumerism. The museum assumes a negative connotation: it is not a place of worship of art and culture but rather a place for the consumption of artistic objects. Parleur A imagines himself as an object of consumerism, like any other piece of art in the museum. He refers to a type of art that is soon forgotten inasmuch as it is soon consumed, which explains why

190

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

the characters regard the museum’s displaying this type of art as a desolate place of forgetfulness. The second most important connotation given to art by Parleur B is the idea of the artist as a ‘demiurge’. The artist has murdered God and has taken his place as a demiurge or creator of the world (Gao 2004: 19). There is some resonance with the eighteenth century Romantic idea of art, which reinterpreted Plato’s idea of the demiurge, as a ‘divine craftsman’, a ‘poet’ endowed with a ‘divine grace in execution and composition which was beyond the normal rules of art’ (Milnes 2003: 27). The idea of artist as demiurge is soon contradicted by Parleur A’s following statement about suicide, which, instead, resonates with Nietzsche’s nihilism/anti-Romanticism: Parleur A  It is you who takes control of death. Before death takes you by surprise, you make arrangements for such nonsense; you stage it as if it was a performance, or rather a farce. Suicide is above all tragic; your own murder ought to be funny and amusing (Gao 2004: 42).

Parleur A’s reference to suicide corresponds with Nietzsche’s vision in Thus Spoke Zarathustra: life is described as creating a ‘tragic’ show, and its greatness is in its tragic drama. Here, death, the most tragic of life’s events, is also the greatest moment to put on a show for an audience. The artist, in his extreme attempt to stage the greatest of all moments, is destined to die. The link between death and art is better explained by the artist’s issues as they relate to creativity and the use of language, which is considered repetitive and devoid of meaning. The vacuity of the artist’s demiurgic activity, the meaninglessness, is part of the destiny of the artist as creator. It is the vision of the artist, who is compelled to write, to recreate this meaninglessness. It is a vision of the artist without a centre, who can only exploit the meaninglessness of utterances and language. The only value that remains is that of death, as it offers the possibility of creating the greatest moment of drama of all.



Latest Postdramatic Attempts at Transnationalism

191

This play seems to describe the demise of the artist as a creator, something expressed also in the Parleur A’s fear of being be reduced to an observed object and, being dissected. This is explored through Gao’s equating the idea of ageing with the state of being trapped in the museum. Apprehension about old age can also be seen in the play Weekend Quartet, where it is the main concern of the character Laobei. In Death Collector, the concerns are akin to Laobei’s fear of being forgotten and growing old. The idea of becoming part of the museum collection is also not a better prospect: Parleur A  You will end up like a fly stuck on a glass; you will become a dried-out exemplar and your skeleton will complete their collection (Gao 2004: 15).

He continues that he will be the first human exemplar to be exhibited in a museum, which will attract media attention and fame, while his body is analysed and dissected (ibid.: 16–7). From the intended irony in Gao’s words, one can understand that fame and immortality are unimportant to Parleur A; in this, he is different to the character of Laobei. The image of the former’s body becoming an objet d’art implies a level of alienation of the character from himself. The artist feels little connection with his art, as art has a life of its own. Gao deals with a representation of art and the artist that has a resonance with the Barthesian idea of the death of the author. The writer can only imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never original. His only power is to mix writings, to counter the ones with the others, in such a way as never to rest on any one of them. […] Succeeding the Author, the scriptor no longer bears within him passions, humors, feelings, impressions, but rather this immense dictionary from which he draws a writing that can know no halt (Barthes 1977: 146–7).

By referring to Barthes’ idea of writing as a combination of other texts by other writers, one could argue that, through the character

192

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

Parleur A, Gao conveys the powerlessness of the author/artist to own and hang on to his body of work. The act of writing, in the analogy of creating art, is, thus, described as depersonalized, independent of its own authorship. This calls to mind Fuchs’ reference to the idea of inscription, which is present in other Gao’s plays, in which the actors/ characters are reduced to inscriptions (Fuchs 1996: 91) in the theatrical process, in the concrete happening of the actions on stage. This leads us to a discourse on subjectivity and the role of characters and to question how subjectivity is rendered where writing is depersonalized and the character dissected. In terms of subjectivity, the two characters are two sides of one person. We are made aware of Parleur A’s backgrounds and reasoning, thus Parleur B’s function in the play is to counter debate and provide opposition to Parleur A on his way towards death. Hence, this can be interpreted as Parleur A talking to his alter ego to the extent that we can state that this play is the enactment of a split personality. I would argue that Gao, in particular, uses the idea of split personality as advanced by Freud and, later, by Lacan, who expands Freud’s concept of the split self. Lacan divides the self into four aspects, ‘permutations and doublings’ of the conscious and the unconscious, ‘each complexly compounded by the influence of two oppositionary categories’ – the ‘I am’ of existence, which is separate from the ‘I am’ of meaning, the ‘Imaginary’ and the ‘Symbolic’ (Felman 2004: 45). In theatrical terms, the interaction of the two characters seems to be part of a structured installation, which suggests that identity is the product of multifaceted elements. The use of two performers/characters suggests that the author aims to focus the attention on the ‘permutations and doublings’ of the conscious and the unconscious, or to represent two sides of the unconscious. The play develops through the intermixing of the two performers’/ characters’ monologies, where the dialogue between the two characters is not always clearly enacted on stage even though they seem to be



Latest Postdramatic Attempts at Transnationalism

193

talking to each other. As in Weekend Quartet, the internal monologue of the characters opens a window into their internal thoughts in such a way that, thanks to a more systematic use of monologies, subjectivity is further, at first sight, deconstructed and investigated here. This systematic approach is much more clearly set up in Ballade Nocturne, however. As in Dialogue and Rebuttal, especially in the second part of that play, in Death Collector, the two characters’ interaction is limited by the fact that they both use monologies to express thoughts and feelings. Moreover, while Girl and Man in Dialogue and Rebuttal are two distinctive characters, of different genders, expressing two distinctive points of view, each with a different set of issues, in Death Collector, conversely, Gao splits one character into two and thus the internal monologue is also divided into two, leading one character to effectively be holding a discussion with his alter ego about his own existence. If we compare this with the character of Woman in Between Life and Death, we can raise the question as to whether having two performers present two opposing sides of one character adds a different dimension and perspective to the play, and whether this further contributes to the fragmentation of subjectivity. It is important to notice that the use of ‘I’ and ‘you’ is still employed in Death Collector, with the effect of creating several voices on stage. We can still talk about three layers, or ‘tripartition’, with the ‘I’ and ‘you’ re-enacting the neutrality of the actor. However, the actors’ neutrality seems to gradually disappear as the internal monologies and interactions intensify. Moreover, despite having two actors representing one character, this more explicit emphasis on the division of perspectives contradictorily flattens the presentation of the two different perspectives of one dramatis persona, thanks to the mirror effect created by the two strings of monologies and the interaction between the two voices. Reinforcing the flattening effect of this play is a reading of subjectivity through Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, whereby Parleur A and Parleur B could be considered two sides of the same coin

194

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

representing the Dionysian spirit. In the Apollonian/Dionysian dichotomy, already discussed in Chapter 4 in relation to the Ji Gong figure, the latter predominates in the artistic, but always implies pain and the ‘tragic’: The metaphysical delight in the tragic is a translation of the instinctively unconscious Dionysian wisdom into the language of the scene: the hero, the highest manifestation of the will, is disavowed for our pleasure, because he is only phenomenon […] We are really for brief moments Primordial Being itself, and feel its indomitable desire for being and joy in existence; the struggle, the pain, the destruction of phenomena, now appear to us as something necessary, considering the surplus of innumerable forms of existence which throng and push one another into life […] We are pierced by the maddening sting of these pains at the very moment when we have become, as it were, one of the immeasurable primordial joy in existence, and when we anticipate, in Dionysian ecstasy, the indestructibility and eternity of this joy (Nietzsche 2006: 76).

Nietzsche’s Dionysian artistic spirit describes the tragic, suffering and pain as part of the process that leads to the experience of an eternal primordial joy. Such a primordial dimension describes a wholeness that can be only ‘glimpsed at’ and imagined, where the Dionysian can only appear ‘in an imaginary form’ (Porter 2000: 51­–2). While the ‘Apollonian’ is the celebration of the hero and celebration of the individual, the ‘Dionysian’, part of this process of becoming, of changing5 describes the ‘annihilation of the individual’ or what has been defined as ‘individual artist’s dissolution into nature’ (Cox 2006: 501). In the desire for death and tragedy, this play articulates this process of ‘becoming’, through describing the dissolution of individuality, by splitting the dramatis persona into two, in a search for a unity, a wholeness that cannot be found in logic and rationality, but only through the ecstasy of the Dionysian, the irrational that celebrates death, pain and dissolution. With regard to the dissolution of the self and of the individual, it is not coincidence that Fuchs regards Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy as



Latest Postdramatic Attempts at Transnationalism

195

being influential on theories of a ‘discontinuous subject’ (1996: 29) and, above all, on the death of character. She refers to Nietzsche’s ‘revulsion against all that smacks of the individual’ and his definition of the character as embodying the ‘fatal flaw’ of the ‘death leap into the bourgeois drama’ (ibid.: 28), which brings us back to Szondi’s ‘crisis of the dramatic’, discussed at the beginning of the book (see Introduction pp. 12–13/Chapter 1, p. 27). This is associated with the writing of such playwrights as Ibsen, Chekhov and Strindberg at the beginning of nineteen century, through the emergence of narrative practices in which the dramatic present is subjugated to the past, and past events motivate the present. In a similar vein to Szondi, Fuchs points out that the focus of Nietzsche’s criticism against ‘post-mythic drama’ is on the representation of the character (1996: 28), because the character as a dramatic persona in its apparent psychological linearity represents ‘the demonic force of rationalistic individuation’ (ibid.), where the term ‘individuation’ (or the principium individationis) stands for the Apollonian restraint and logic. We understand from this that Nietzsche’s idea of character and subjectivity as expressed by the character is far removed from the dramatis personae of psychological drama. It is the idea of the subject and of the individual that is part of the Apollonian/Dionysian process – what Fuchs calls a ‘metaphysical dramaturgy’ – that first creates and then destroys tragedy (1996: 28). In this case, the Apollonian creates appearances, images and illusions, while the Dionysian continuously creates and destroys these illusions (Cox 2006: 500). In practical terms, Nietzsche privileges the use of chorus because the chorus functions as one entity and helps the audience feel transformed into satyrs, Dionysius’ mythical followers (Jaggard 2004: 280). Through the chorus, the audience can feel the presence of Dionysius, the tragic hero, who presents to the audience the horror of individuation while experiencing, through the chorus, primal unity (ibid.: 281). The theatrical modality of the chorus can be easily found in the

196

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

use of monologies in Death Collector, where the dramatis personae disappear in the indistinctive narrative of different voices merged into one. Having established the link between postdramatic and contemporary theatre and Nietzsche, in the context of Death Collector Nietzsche’s discourse helps us understand how subjectivity is deconstructed in the play through a chorus-like effect created by the monologies of the two characters. While the connection with Nietzsche is in the philosophical equation, death of god – art – tragic, the split subjectivity of the characters enacts a search for unity, a primordial or a Dionysian unity that can only be reached through death and the tragic. This would explain the need for a tragic, irrational ending to this play, i.e. Parleur A’s death. It is in this emblematic ending – where we are left with Parleur B alone on the stage, facing the audience – that it is possible to read the scene as a celebration of the death of character as a psychological entity, as an artificial unity. What is left is a shadow of the self, represented by Parleur B, whose self, nevertheless, has always been discontinued and split. Following Nietzsche’s words, the annihilation of Parleur A’s and B’s individuality, as enacted by two performers, whose voices gradually become more univocal, transforming into an indefinite chorus and into further irrationality, builds up to the metaphysical unity that is reached in the moment of creation and destruction. This is also a moment for the spectator to experience the sublime ecstasy of a tragic ending. In relation to the spectator, in fact, the tragic ending clearly points to a death that, this time, is not suggested or alluded to through a principle of suppositionality (jiadingxing), as in Gao’s other post-exile plays, but is represented literally. While in Gao’s other plays, disappearance is based on allusion or a set of hallucinations – also thanks to the lack of multiple perspectives and the setting up of flattened perspectives – the ending of this play is more concretely final. This narrows the parameters for the spectators



Latest Postdramatic Attempts at Transnationalism

197

to choose and discern what is happening, and also, paradoxically, creates a narrative closure that reinstates the construction of a fictive cosmos. In this sense, one could argue that Death Collector embraces several strands – openness and closure, choral multivocality and metaphysical unity, postdramatic theatricality and dramatic fictionality. This is confirmation of that which Fuchs advocates in her chapter, ‘Postdramatic Theatre and the Persistence of the “Fictive Cosmos”’, which are the reappearance of the dramatic, of the ‘fictive cosmos’ (2011: 30–1) and also the possibility of the ‘fictive cosmos’ coexisting within a postdramatic theatrical. This is part of the fluidity of Gao’s theatrical journey, embracing different styles, different theatrical approaches and, in this case, also resisting total abstraction and reviving some sort of dramatic closure. As we will see in Snow in August, and Ballade Nocturne, the next two theatrical works, Gao embraces more openly a kind of theatre that transcends language and textuality by incorporating, increasingly, musical, dance and physical theatre elements into his work, thus elaborating a kind of Total Theatre.

Music and Total Theatre Another element that is very important to Nietzsche is music – ‘it is only on the basis of the spirit of music that we can understand the joy experienced in the annihilation of the individual’ (Quitt 2012: 85). In this regard, Nietzsche’s philosophy of hearing, one that privileges the perception of hearing, has been associated with the work of Peter Brook, Robert Wilson and Heiner Goebbels, all of whom exploit the audiences’ hearing abilities in creating their theatrical work (Quitt 2012: 86). Lehmann himself highlights how important the process of musicalization is (2006: 91–3) in exploiting the auditory elements of the theatrical experience, the voice of the

198

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

actors. While theatre-makers like Goebbels and Wilson privilege the musical element, this does not mean that the textual element is totally forgotten: Musicalization takes theatre beyond the text as a primary guarantor of structure, narrative and sense, and beyond the spoken word as the dominant materiality, but it cannot easily be set against text in a simple ‘sense or sensuality’ dualism. Musicality, I will argue, interacts in several diverse ways with the traditionally dominant elements of theatre: the character and its utterances. Musicalization can reassess and recontextualize the text, enhance our understanding of it, affirm and contradict it, simplify or obstruct our understanding and – one of many possibilities – replace it (Roesner 2008: 46).

Such a definition, the emphasis on the interaction between music and text, is what we find in the last two plays under examination. However, more importantly, the process of musicalization, as traceable in these works, implies the enactment of a theatrical approach of Total Theatre that defies genres and easy categorizations. Both Snow in August (Bayuexue/La Neige en août), presented as an ‘épopée lyrique en deux actes’ (a lyric epic in two acts) (1997) and Ballade Nocturne, written ten years later in 2007, presented as ‘un spectacle de danse’ (a dance show) or ‘dance drama’ (wuju) (Conceison 2009: 301), are a hybrid theatrical form, partly opera, partly dance and partly drama. This raises questions on what kind of genre Gao is reinventing. In this regard, thanks to the use of different modes of expression in these two works (dance, opera, physical theatre), I would argue that both works are a good example of Total Theatre, what Gao himself calls ‘Le théâtre holistique’, a theory based on the idea that man is an indivisible whole (Xu 2005: 18).



Latest Postdramatic Attempts at Transnationalism

199

Total Theatre The concept of Total Theatre is key to reading these last Gao’s plays. Antonin Artaud is one of the original promoters of Total Theatre and someone whom Gao admires very much. In a process of intercultural exchange, like Brecht and Brook, among others, Artaud looked to the East to bring about formal and theoretical changes to theatrical practices. In Balinese theatre, Artaud found what he believed to be an ideal form of theatre in that it emphasizes physical non-verbal expression. This gave Artaud the opportunity to define a ‘holistic assimilation of individual performers’ and the possibility of the spiritual with nature (Innes 2003: 61). This translates into an understanding of theatre that privileges the use of the theatrical language of light, colour, movement, gesture and space and signals a return to ‘popular, primal theatre sensed and experienced directly by the mind, without language’s distortion and pitfalls in speech and words’ (Artaud 1958: 70). Artaud’s theatre as a ‘pure’ form of theatre or ‘Total Theatre’ has a powerful impact on the audience, which is so completely absorbed by the performance that it can neither perceive it intellectually nor rationally. Artaud’s ideas are echoed in Lehmann’s definition of postdramatic theatre that emphasizes a ‘multifarious theatre landscape beyond forms focused on drama’ (Lehmann 2006: 57). In Gao’s case, Total Theatre is part of his Chinese theatrical heritage connected to the idea and practice of wanquan de xiju (complete drama) which revives Chinese traditional dramatic practices. These make use of a wide theatrical linguistic spectrum, chang nian zuo da (singing, reciting, playing and acrobatics) (Łabędzka 2008: 20). Chen Jide’s definition of wanquan de xiju makes reference to the cross-cultural nature of Chinese modern theatre, which combines both Western elements and Chinese traditional drama. This has resulted in a type of theatre that is neither like opera nor like ballet,

200

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

but instead uses a wide range of theatrical devices, such as costumes and props, as well as actors’ vocal capabilities, to attract and sustain the audience’s attention. Chen uses an additional term, zonghexing (synthesization), to describe the theatrical experience and its features, which encompass different artistic forms, such as literature, music, dance and architecture (Chen 2003: 255). Izabella Łabędzka goes further back to show this, citing one of Gao’s pre-exile plays, Wild Man – one of his only works to focus specifically on social issues and one in which Gao draws on folklore elements from the ethnic minorities of south China, including the Singer’s chants, a Hebei wedding song, the ritualistic Taoist dances of Jiangxi, and the masks originating from shamanistic theatre of the Guizhou province (2008: 190). Lin Zhaohua’s production of the play required the actors to create the setting through their use of movement, dance and mime on stage (ibid.: 197). Most importantly, Łabędzka asserts that Gao, influenced by Artaud, shows ability and intention to synthesize various literary genres and styles of expression with different types of artistic expressions, such as the circus, magic, martial arts, dance and musical opera (ibid.: 207). In the plays analysed thus far in this book, we have seen how, in particular through the presence of non-speaking performers and music, Gao, as a playwright–director, has given particular attention to the theatrical extra-textual implications of theatrical writing. This can also be seen in the works after Death Collector, signalling a return to the predominance of monologies within an interactive dialogical structure. Snow in August and Ballade Nocturne both explore more radically different types of artistic theatrical expressions.



Latest Postdramatic Attempts at Transnationalism

201

Snow in August Written in 1997, Snow in August tells the story of the sixth patriarch, Huineng, master of Zen theatre. It was first staged in Taipei in December 2002 and, later, in 2005, at France’s Opéra de Marseille. The Chinese composer Xu Shuyua wrote the music for it. As in similar works, the idea of self-referentiality, having a writer as a character, is once again prevalent. In Act 2 scene 4, in the French version (Act 3 in the Chinese version), the character of the writer is seen talking to the character of the singer, who in the French version is referred to as La Chanteuse (female singer). The Chinese edition adds a sexual element by using the term Geji (geisha) and this translates to Fong’s English term of Singsong Girl. The following conversation marks the beginning of the end in the play in reference to ‘Snow in August’, the title of the play: Geisha  Snow in August, how strange. The writer looks at the sky, he mimes picking up snowflakes. Geisha (Sings.)  On the mountain Cao, it is so calm, the shadow of a clear wind. Writer (Recites.)  A woodcutter. Geisha (Sings.) Contemplating the green planes, the snowy peaks contain a meaning. Writer (Recites.)  A great master. Geisha (Sings.)  A good Shitou Xinqian sends us a message through. Writer (Recites.)  The hardship of life. Geisha (Sings.)  Originally heavenly enlightenment,6 in actual fact a big nothing. Writer (Recites.)  Indeed a good game.7 Geisha (Pizzicato; raises her head and sings loudly.)  Chan! (Gao 2000: 105–7)

The beginning of the end, self-referentially, serves as commentary to what has happened earlier in the play, Huineng’s journey as referred to in the writer’s words (Huineng was a woodcutter as well as a

202

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

great master), which is undermined in the ironic parodic tone, so common in Gao’s writing, whereby enlightenment is equated with suffering, nothingness and the playfulness of a game. There is a sense of descending from the heights found in the lyrical beginning of the opening lines of this passage, the reference to the strange image of snow in August, which is an ambiguous analogy, and where the image of a quiet snowy mountain peak is contrasted with green grassy planes. The synopsis that precedes the French script states that the last scene represents the meditation room transformed into a miniature world, where, after glorifying Buddhism, the religious fanatics light a fire, a metaphor perhaps for the contemporary world (Xu 2005: 41). It is important to note that the reference to a ‘world in miniature’ as an analogy of the contemporary world in chaos implies a dimension external to that of the one represented on stage; thus it is a fictional function of the theatrical representation as mimesis of an external reality. Within this context the image, and the title of the theatrical opera, ‘Snow in August’, could signify the coexistence of contradictory elements, suggested by the image of the snow in the summer, standing for the coexisting of the spiritual and the chaos of contemporary society. It is interesting to note that Gao does not use the Chinese word of hundun for chaos here, as he does in Between Life and Death (see Chapter 2, pp. 51, 59–60), which is mainly equated with the Daoist understanding of a primal state of origin, prior to the civilizing divisions of language. Chaos, here, is even implied in the title of the scene – ‘big row in the hall of worship’ (danao cantang) in the Chinese version and ‘uproar in the Chan community’ (charivari dans la communauté Chan) in the French. In comparison with the word, hundun, which is used in Between Life and Death, both lose their reference to a primordial state and generally refer to a chaotic situation. The latter is also realized theatrically in the choral representation of two different groups of people, a group of religious masters and a group



Latest Postdramatic Attempts at Transnationalism

203

of laymen, gathered together to witness the world turning into chaos. While, in the French version, the play ends with the group of laymen making a judgement on humankind (Les ennuis, c’est sont les hommes qui les attirent sur eux – Men bring trouble on themselves) (Xu 2005: 76), it is worth noting that in the Chinese version, the device of conversation between the Writer and Geisha is reintroduced as follows: Geisha (Sings.)  The small child cries. Writer (Sings.)  Just born. Geisha (Sings.)  The old man is quiet. Writer (Sings.)  He’s gone. Geisha (Sings.) A bright lamp brings in a rattling open fire (Gao 2000: 130).

The interlocution between the two characters continues in a playful manner, which serves to diminish the dramatic ending of the French version in comparison. At the end of the scene, the masters and the laymen join together in a choral format to conclude the piece: Masters (Sing.)  When old bridges crush, new ones are built. Writer (Sings.)  This is the way the world goes. Geisha (Sings.)  Even if the mountain Tai falls, or the Jade mountain does not, people will continue to self-inflict their own troubles. Writer (Sings.) The night rain falls on the banana leaves. A red carriage passes by and the wind mourns. Masters and laymen (Sing.)  Tonight and tomorrow morning, all the same, all the same, all the same; tonight and tomorrow morning, all the same; it will be wonderful; still wonderful all the same (Gao 2000: 131–2).

A similar tone of disillusion about the faith of humankind is expressed, but the choral format softens the inevitability of the judgement. With regard to the idea of ‘freedom’, as in Weekend Quartet, we see this linked to the condition of exile in Snow in August, as expressed in the content and references. Gilbert Fong stresses that Gao finds in

204

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

Huineng’s life the ‘perfect vehicle for his world view and philosophy of life – indépendence totale and freedom [sic]’, where the truth is only subject to the ‘actualization of individualism in its ultimate form’ (Fong 2003a: ix). Freedom is materialized in the object of Patriarch’s robe, which Huineng steals after the fifth Patriarch fails to find the rightful disciple. This triggers Huineng’s wanderings between the temples. Huineng seems to have chosen the condition of ‘the outsider’ as part of his spiritual and existential journey. Even though this is the most positive representation of freedom, especially in comparison to the darker side of it expressed in Death Collector, freedom is still described, here, as coming at a price, and that is isolation. Unlike other patriarchs before him, Huineng does not choose the comfort of a temple. Instead he chooses a nomadic isolated existence for himself. The message that the play seems to convey is rooted in a strong belief in individualism, in the form of self-reliance and the individual’s capacity to find his/her own truth. This is in the words of Huineng, when he responds to the Writer asking him which path to follow: ‘if you really want to know where to go, you need to find it yourself ’ (Gao in Xu 2005: 40). In terms of genre and theatrical tradition, presenting Snow in August, Gao’s French translator Noel Dütrait states that the work is, indeed, very important as it marks the emergence of ‘a modern opera of Chinese expression’ (un opera contemporain d’expression chinoise) (Dütrait in Xu 2005: 10), an opera that is neither a play nor an opera (ibid.: 11). Dütrait’s definition highlights the work’s hybrid nature in terms of both genre and theatrical traditions. In terms of the latter, there is a true melange between Peking opera (jingju) and Western opera. Xu Shuyua stresses the combination of Peking opera’s use of rhyme, non-monologues and constant repetition, and Western opera with its symphonic music, arias and recitatives, the latter driving the narrative of the piece (Xu 2005: 21). He discusses the characters’ being defined within the jingju tradition, but also following the structure of



Latest Postdramatic Attempts at Transnationalism

205

Western opera, which brings new life to jingju, while, at the same time, being rejuvenated by the jingju homologue sound. For this purpose, five Western opera singers, many vocal groups and choirs were used to accompany the main characters both at the Taiwanese and French production. It is interesting to note that each main part has an actor and a singer assigned to it: a tenor for the adult Huineng, a soprano for the part of Endless Treasure (Xu 2005: 23).8 The actors playing the main characters are all jingju trained performers, who, according to Gao, had the necessary technical aptitude and sophistication required and yet still had to receive additional training in modern dance to stimulate their creativity (Xu 2005: 18). In terms of cultural traditions, Gao expresses his intention to mix both Western and Eastern traditions (ibid.: 19). If we go back to Quah’s definition of transcultural theatre (see ‘Introduction’ p. 8), we could argue that this work best represents ‘cultural exchange and integration’ (Quah 2004: 14) and a dialogue between cultures (ibid.: 13). It is interesting to note, however, that Dütrait emphasizes Gao’s Chineseness, while Gao himself speaks about the melange, the meeting of two cultures used in his search to create a new theatrical form (Gao in Xu 2005: 18). Besides the transcultural element, we can define both productions in Taiwan and France, a truly transnational enterprise because of the involvement of both Western and Eastern artists: Xu Shuya, the music composer, Nei Kuang-Yan, the set-designer, and Lin HsiouWei, the choreographer, were all globally respected and of Chinese origin, while Marc Trautmann, the music director, and Philippe Gosperyinn, the lighting designer, were Western artists. More specifically considering the question of genre, we need to return to the words of the French conductor Marc Trautmann, who refers to a new kind of opera where the singers’ modus operandi is ‘culturally incompatible with that of the orchestra’, and there is latent disequilibrium in both the dramatic and musical elements (Trautmann in Xu 2005: 26). We recognize that there is autonomy

206

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

between the text and the music and as such a discordance that requires more attention and active participation from the audience, especially from a Western audience, according to Traumann. In Traumann’s words we find again an emphasis on the signs of difference as related to Gao’s Chinese roots. However, beyond the cultural connotations attached to Gao’s cultural heritage, I would argue that dissonance is part of the artistic nature of this theatrical work. The dissonance, evident in the production, which is, in some cases, fragmented, is reflected in the narrative of the text, which divides the linearity of Huineng’s life in its different moments. In the Chinese version, the first and second acts tell Huineng’s story in a series of vignettes detailing his transition from woodcutter to Sixth patriarch. The third act is about the aftermath, the plunging into chaos. Dissonance and fragmentation are maintained, however, through a holistic theatrical experience. The most important aspect to consider is that this piece exemplifies the concept of ‘Total Theatre’ as Isabella Łabędzka points out: Snow in August is a model example of the modern synthesis of arts, being at the same time a theatrical work of exceptional beauty, which eludes unambiguous interpretations, and simultaneously perfect in its use of the means of artistic expression… The story is performed not only with the word, sound of the instrument and of human voice, but primarily with the movement and gesture of the actor, with the changing hues of the light and with costumes, at times ascetic and at times sophisticated. The final result has been created not only by a playwright but by a painter with musical inclination as well. The performance marks a return to painting when the word—in spite of its unquestionable benefits—proves insufficient and unreliable (Łabędzka 2008: 207).

According to Łabędzka, Total Theatre is realized not only through the musical element, but also through the overall theatrical conception of this work, implicit in the text, and is manifested under Gao’s direction and translated through the use of movement and the modelling of



Latest Postdramatic Attempts at Transnationalism

207

the actors’ voices. It is a form of Total Theatre in that the process of musicalization, going back to Roesner’s definition, is truly the combination between text and music, which working in dissonance autonomously creates a holistic theatrical experience. In the main, the dissonance in this case is meant to invite the spectators, in a postdramatic fashion, into unfamiliar territory, in order to appreciate the theatrical experience in its novelty, despite the impossibility to define it totally, to place it within a specific genre. A brief comparison with Robert Wilson and Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach seems fitting, not only because Wilson’s productions celebrate a process of musicalization that is embedded within a theatrical setting, yet also makes use of dance sequences, but also because Wilson’s Einstein is a kind of biopic theatrical piece that is above a celebration of the mythical rather than the biographical. In the same way, Gao’s Snow in August is a celebration of the mythical figure of Huineng, First staged in Avignon, France, in 1976, Einstein on the Beach is a celebration of the mythical impact of Albert Einstein. It was born out of a collaboration between Wilson, composer Philip Glass and choreographer Lucinda Childs. The original piece, four hours in length without intermission, is made up of disconnected tableaux, dealing with poetic and popular images of Einstein. Unlike Gao’s opera, Wilson’s work is an abstract non-narrative piece that is meant to be experienced as pure music, a collage of imageries, that can be only truly appreciated using Lehmann’s approach of synaesthesia, which implies a synthesis of the perception of impulses of different and, in some cases, divergent natures that resist and escape such a process of unification (Lehmann 2006: 85). Like Gao’s opera, Einstein defies genre categorization, although it has been defined as possibly belonging to the French theatrical tradition of opera-ballet, popular between the late Baroque and the nineteenth century; this mixed musical dance and vocals in a rather casual narrative (Broadhurst 2012: 36). However,

208

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

there is a major different between Wilson and Gao: Gao does not totally want to abandon a dramatic composition in this work (and seen to some extent in Death Collector) and seems to recreate a fictive cosmos, which, as Fuchs affirms, manages to coexist with postdramatic tendencies. This can be explained by the fact that Gao created this work much later than Wilson and felt the need to return to a dramatic composition by further stretching and renegotiating the boundaries between the theatrical and the dramatic, while still defying categorization and creating new theatrical experiences. A similar approach can be found in the last theatrical work analysed in this book and, at the time of writing, Gao’s last theatrical work, Ballade Nocturne.

Ballade Nocturne Like Snow in August, Ballade Nocturne defies categorization and is also a good example of Total Theatre. I am in agreement with Coulter that a parallel can be made between Between Life and Death and Ballade Nocturne, in that which both works focus on female identity and female subjectivity (2014: 113). Between Life and Death presents a woman talking to herself in the third person about her own past, her own thoughts; while in Ballade Nocturne, the performer has to spilt herself between two dramatis personae, SHE (elle) and Actress (comédienne). She talks about two dramatis personae in third person, about a woman – or herself – walking in the street and her relation with the world and in particular with men. Ballade Nocturne is a good conclusion to this book as it will enable us to see Gao’s post-exile work in a closing cycle that started with Between Life and Death, after the breakthrough of The Other Shore. I believe, though, it is no coincidence that Gao has not written or produced any other theatrical work since Ballade Nocturne and has focused mainly on painting and film, instead.



Latest Postdramatic Attempts at Transnationalism

209

Ballade Nocturne exemplifies idea of Total Theatre, using music, dance, as well as acting, in the performance. The introduction of two dancers (Melancholy Dancer or La Danseuse Mélancolique and Lively Dancer or La Danseuse Dynamique) serves the function of embodiment: the two dramatis personae’s emotions are materialized through the expression of dance movements. Musicalization is seen in the presence of a male musician, possibly a saxophonist, who accompanies the action on stage and the textual lyricism of the verse form. There is also a strong focus on the use of dance sequences. In terms of genre, like Einstein on the Beach, it sits between dance and theatre. Unlike Wilson’s work, however, it is still heavily textual with a strong return to the use of monologies, as in Death Collector. In order to understand the theatrical impact of Gao’s writing in this last work, I will make some strong references to the 2010 production of the play and the differences between the original conception of the script, in which the idea of subjectivity and gender dynamics through the device of split personality is also analysed. Coulter discusses the radical changes to the cast in the 2010 production of the play staged by the SourouS Company in Paris’s Théâtre de l’Épée de Bois and codirected by Marcos Malavia and Muriel Roland. The production presents four female performers/ players on stage: one female persona playing SHE and Actress (Muriel Roland in this production) and a puppet player (Alicia Quesnel), who moves puppets around the stage – in place of the two dancers described in the script – and two female players (Carmela Delgadio and Corinne Hache respectively) using a bandneon and piano – in place of the male performer playing an instrument. The monologues of SHE were sung rather than acted in what looked like a cabaret performance. Coulter laments that what he reads as ‘a lyrical piece on identity’, especially feminine identity, becomes, in the production, the representation of a ‘homosocial world’ – and that reduces Gao’s

210

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

script to a cabaret performance, which he found confusing (Coulter 2014: 120). In a sense, the transformation and reinterpretation of SourouS Company of this play is similar to what happened in the case of Crimp’s Attempts in Mitchell’s 2007 production (discussed in Chapter 2) in which the production worked against the grain of the script. In both cases, the interpretation on stage exploited the openness of the plays and was aimed at rendering the bizarre and the playfulness into a production that could also entertain and amuse. I do not totally embrace Coulter’s disappointment, especially regarding the transformation of the play into a cabaret format and the changes that were made. In their dossier to the production, SourouS Company explain that there was an emphasis on the multidisciplinary approach to the play by using songs, music, movement, puppetry and video projection, which reflects the ‘choral interiority of Gao’s writing’ (intériorité chorale) (2010 ‘Ballade Nocturne (Théâtre Musical), Dossier’: 2). After seeking Gao’s advice, SourouS wanted to reflect the different levels of identification that are part of the play by presenting the doubling of one dramatis persona into different actors and by manifesting closeness in the use of first and second pronouns (‘I’, ‘you’), and the distance in the use of the third person pronoun (SHE), through storytelling, the embodiment of dream sequences and the recitation of poetry. Knowing how much control Gao has over his theatrical productions, there is no doubt in my mind that the ideas that the company adopted must have been carefully vetted by the author himself. Moreover, despite the multimedia approach, the company kept to the essentials of a theatrical presentation – a bare set, with a piano in the background, red clothes and standing lights, which serve to emphasize the lyricism of the play and focus on the playfulness of different layers of identity. To some extent, though, I also agree with Coulter’s disappointment in having a full female cast, which removes the explicit gender tensions that are intrinsic to the text and to the original conception of the play.



Latest Postdramatic Attempts at Transnationalism

211

There are parts of the monologies, especially when the second person pronouns are used, which address directly men and the conflict between men and women. According to Conceison, moreover, the silent character of Man in Between Life and Death finds his equivalent in the male player. In Ballade Nocturne, the male player is at least given ‘a form of audible expression’, while in Between Life and Death he is refused any access to a form of expression (Conceison 2009: 308). By failing to have a male counterpart at all in the production, this parallel cannot be made. I would further argue that by having a male puppet, as well as a female puppet, the production presents the embodiment of gender difference as controlled, manipulated and objectified. This raises questions about the way in which female subjectivity is presented in the play and in the production. Indeed, like Coulter, I find that the biggest different between the production and the text is in the presentation of subjectivity, which is reflected in how ‘multivocality’ and different levels of identification are used. Going back to Conceison, who translated the play into English, her definition of the play has an emphasis on the multivocality, which further develops the principle of the split subjectivity that we saw in Death Collector: In Ballade Nocturne, the split subjectivity of the female protagonist is further manifested in the bodies of at least three performers: one actress identified as ‘Actress’ and two dancers (one ‘Lively’ and one ‘Melancholy’) who share the role of ‘She’ (2009: 301).

Conceison asserts that the role of the two dancers and the presence of three performers is an embodiment of split subjectivity. Here, we need to focus on embodiment in connection to split personality. In Chapter 2, with regard to Between Life and Death, we examined embodiment, dance and pain as important postdramatic elements. Lehmann refers to an embodied language as a signifying character, where dance is also the best expression of the intrinsic possibilities of body language (see Chapter 2, pp. 34–5). In Alain

212

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

Timar’s 2001 production of Between Life and Death, having a dancer interacting with Woman and performing the role of nun, of the other woman, further enhanced the process of embodiment of pain, by translating physically Woman’s feelings and fears. Combined with the use of tripartition, the embodied theatrical experiences of pain and violence and the action of the two silent performers lead to the presentation of Woman’s journey through sequences of hallucinations on stage and the illusion of different perspectives, which calls for the spectators’ ability to discern between the different perspectives offered and their own embodied experience. Thanks to the added physicality, the importance of movement sequences and the refection and disintegration of Woman’s subjectivity are also present in Ballade Nocturne, as conceived in Gao’s text – which also highlights the difference between Ballade Nocturne and Death Collector, as we will see shortly, where no other characters or real movement sequences are presented. The process of embodiment that displaces and adds signification to the theatrical experience acquires a different effect in the production when, however, puppets are used instead. The device of having puppets manipulated by another performer means that the level of embodiment is reduced to contrived manipulated movements. In terms of subjectivity, the puppets represent ‘the other’ to the female dramatis persona, an ‘external other’ who is contrived and controlled, again by another performer, by another external self. A sense of separation, and power relation, isolate the main dramatis persona on stage; while, as also suggested by Conceison, the use of live performers, of other two performers in addition to the main speaking performer would mean that there would be sharing between the main speaking performer, the two dancers and a possible music player. Two performers, instead of two puppets on stage, would share with the main actors – on equal footing – the task of creating, splitting, and embodying the role of the imaginary character, the object of the narration. Moreover, the fact that both male and female



Latest Postdramatic Attempts at Transnationalism

213

puppets are presented highlights gender difference as an objectified other, a material and disembodied projection of gender relations that is external to the subjectivity of the female character. Conversely, the text in its original setting is about the combination of moments of closeness and distance, which can be found in the words of the monologies, where both the third and second person pronouns are used. In this regard, even if the SoursouS company had acknowledged the sense of closeness and distance, as expressed in the script, it opted for a theatrical solution that stressed distance rather than closeness, a plurality and multiplicity which, I would argue, slightly contradicts the ‘choral interiority’ of Gao’s writing. In fact, choral interiority is key to reading this play. I would argue ‘choral’ stands for a Nietzschean understanding of chorus, a unity that is anti-individualist in its indeterminacy and in which interiority stands for subjectivity. Choral interiority is in the split subjectivity, which unlike in Death Collector, points to a plurality that is not only linguistic but also physical and musical. It is a plurality that indicates division as well as unity, while in the production is only about a plurality that is divided and fragmented. In Conceison’s reading of the play, the two dancers reflect and embody physically the other two sides of one dramatis persona, where the SHE is split into Actress and the two dancers. I would add that SHE and Actress are paired with Lively Dancer and Melancholy Dancer. Actress is the one presenting SHE to the audience – she addresses the audience directly – and SHE speaks subjectively about her own condition, in the same way Lively Dancer carries and pushes Melancholy Dancer. Such a distinction is difficult to assess, especially between the two dancers, who are seen interacting, entering and exiting the stage. From the outset, however, the audience is clear that it is Actress presenting SHE to the audience. Several perspectives are created thanks to the presence of the different performers and the use of tripartition. However, if we compare it again with Between Life and Death and we question the

214

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

spectators’ role in participating in the meaning of the production process, major differences can be found between Between Life and Death, Death Collector, and the script of Ballade Nocturne. Referring back to Lehmann’s postdramatic aesthetics, as with Death Collector, both of these plays make use of ‘postepic’ narration, which is, in practice, mostly realized through the use of long expositive monologies. These monologies, or long expositive speeches, are used both to look into the character’s feelings and thoughts and also to reinforce the perception of a real ‘now’ through the direct involvement of the audience. However, Death Collector and Ballade enact more clearly a split of subjectivity than Between Life and Death: in Death Collector two performers play one dramatis persona and in Ballade Nocturne one performer speaks in different voices and the additional performers engage in physical movements. Focusing first on the performer–spectator relationship, I would like to refer back to Bleeker’s paper which questions Lehmann’s idea that ‘multiplication of frames’ increases (Bleeker 2004: 29) ‘perceptibility of the thing in itself ’ (ibid.: 30). She proposes that the use of several perspectives ‘turned seeing into an experience akin to hallucination’ (ibid.: 38) and changes the spectator into a ‘detached spectator’ rather than an actor (ibid.: 38–9) in the process of embodying the theatrical experience, while at the same time supporting such an illusion of detachment. Her paper suggests that, on the one hand, this leaves the spectators to decide what is actually presented on stage and what is the projection of ‘their own fantasies, desires, fears and imagination’ (ibid.: 40) and, on the other, it reinforces the creation of a fictional illusion. Following on from Bleeker’s argument, the use of different perspectives, in Between Life and Death, created through tripartition, the embodied theatrical experiences of pain and violence and the action of the two silent performers, does not merely eliminate theatrical illusion, but actually creates hallucinations that refer to both a suppositional



Latest Postdramatic Attempts at Transnationalism

215

real and a subjective real. Thanks to disappearance of Woman, at the end of the play, as well as the embodiment of violence presented, prior to Woman’s disappearance, the spectators are offered the chance to distinguish between the theatrical ‘real’ and their own embodiment of this real, a projection of their own subjectivity. A similar process takes place in both Death Collector and Ballade Nocturne. Regarding Death Collector, we referred to the flattening of perspectives, while in the latter play, we can identify an excess of perspectives, the use of different pronouns, the splitting voices, and embodiment through the physical movements of additional performers. It is in the excess of perspectives which, following Bleeker’s argument, the illusion of distance is multiplied. Paradoxically, it is thanks to this multiplication that the distance between performer – spectator is further flattened because excess of perspectives re-creates fictitionality, a fictive cosmos. In Between Life and Death, this is not totally the case because the play, in its unfolding of a splitting subjectivity, also alludes to violent acts on stage and enacts the character/performer’s own disappearance and fragmentation, which, in turn, recreates hallucinations that manifest a fictional reality being presented on stage through violence and by the force of the character/performer’s own disappearance and fragmentation. In Lehmann’s account, violence calls on the spectator to make a moral judgement and to justify his/her position. In Between Life and Death, violence equated with the gradual disembodiment of Woman challenges the position of the spectator even further and calls for an active stance. In Ballade Nocturne no violent acts are exposed and the ending shows the Actress recounting again the dramatic persona’s walk in the street as per the beginning of the play. The scene of a street crowd is projected as a video, while the two dancers walk across into the audience. As in Weekend Quartet, there is a cyclical closure, a return to the start of the play, and the video projection which states a connection to an outside extra-theatrical reality serves even further to reinstate a fictional illusion, a fictive cosmos.

216

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

Concluding remarks The three theatrical pieces analysed in this last chapter draw this cycle of Gao’s work to a close. On the one hand, in this last group of works, we see a return to a dramatic, to narrative closures which are still highly theatrical and unconventional. On the other, Gao ventures into Total Theatre, exploring further music, dance and movement. It is worth noting that Ballade Nocturne was written in 2007, much later than Death Collector in 2000 and Snow in August in 1997. This is interesting because ten years later, Gao has still maintained a similar theatrical approach. Conversely, it also shows that Gao, after receiving the Nobel Prize in 2000, has taken a distance from theatre. In this regard, it is no coincidence that Gao has moved away from the written word and the stage embracing more and more the visual and the musical: at the time of writing, Gao has not written or produced any theatrical work and has dedicated himself totally to filmmaking and painting. This also shows how much more comfortable Gao is with his cultural and artistic transnationalism. Artistically, he seems to have been able to move on to different endeavours, like filmmaking, while still maintaining an attachment to literature and theatre, as his films are also hybrid forms in between film and poetry and painting. Culturally, the case of Snow in August is quite telling. His return to his Chinese roots with Snow in August was aimed at creating a theatrical experience that is truly an attempt to transcend cultural boundaries – mixing Western opera with jingju and working with both Western and Eastern practitioners. Gao does not feel the need to prescribe two different kinds of cultural references for two sets of audience – Chinese and Western (as it was for Nocturnal Wanderer) in this case. Despite his collaborators (the translator Dütrait and musical director Traumann) still seeing him in these works, to some extent as the oriental intellectual, with



Latest Postdramatic Attempts at Transnationalism

217

all the post-exile theatre and his continuous exploration of new artistic forms, Gao has truly liberated himself from cultural and artistic boundaries, embracing his Europeanness and embodying a postdramatic transnationalism.

Conclusion

We can recognize many postdramatic elements in Gao Xingjian’s post-exile plays, written after 1987. Most are written, at least in some part, in the form of narrative plays, with the actors recounting events and situations. With no temporal spectrum and narrative logic, it is the actors themselves and their monologies who create a density of literary images. Most of Gao’s plays from this period enact a principle of self-referentiality and imply a theatre of spectatorship; the openness of their structure demands that viewers should decipher a plurality of signification. Most importantly, Gao’s post-exile plays explore the notion of the death of character. There is a strong focus on the relation between actors and characters that changes the conventional idea of an actor impersonating a character, and this also leads to an exploration of subjectivity. It has been important to recognize postdramatic elements in Gao’s post-exile plays because this enables us to place his work in the context of contemporary European and North American theatre, but this is only one of the aims of this study. Simply branding Gao as a postdramatic writer/theatre-maker, in fact, is not enough and in some ways is reductive of Gao’s creativity. The first aim of this study has been to assess wider cultural links between Gao’s theatre and the international theatrical community; the second aim being to consider anew the term ‘postdramatic’, and its connection to transnationalism. The important questions that this study has asked are: how does Gao contribute to postdramatic theatre and contemporary theatre in general, and what is Gao’s postdramatic transnationalism? Answers to these questions are revealed in Gao’s own work, in its complexity and in its experimentation.

220

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

The plays that followed The Other Shore have explored artistic and theoretical possibilities, but most of all have questioned the relationship between the dramatic and the theatrical in Gao’s unique approach to theatre. This book follows Gao’s artistic journey from the beginning of his exile until the time of this publication and shows this ambitious theatre-maker breaking through existing boundaries and conventions by first stretching the limit of the theatrical beyond the dramatic and then returning back to the dramatic, all the while retaining the experimental edge that makes his work so challenging and interesting to audiences. Keeping the first aim of this study in mind, i.e. placing Gao’s post-exile work within a wider European contemporary tradition, in the first part of the book I compared his plays with those of other theatre-makers. In Chapter 2, I draw parallels between Gao’s Between Life and Death and British playwright Martin Crimp’s Attempts on Her Life, a comparison made possible because both plays deal with female subjectivity – one female character, present on stage in the case of Gao’s play and absent in the case of Crimp’s. The conclusions drawn are that Gao applies a principle of self-referentiality to the play which creates a kind of theatre, conscious of itself, but, above all, conscious of its relationship with the audience, something that Lehmann refers to as a ‘theatre of spectatorship’. Moreover, this changes the way in which narration is employed in his work, through ‘postepic narration’ – that is a kind of narrative that has lost its traditional function, that of unfolding dramatic actions and events, by, instead, presenting theatrical moments connected through an atemporal, non-logical structure. This is enhanced by the use of monologies, which fulfil, more so in Gao’s play than in Crimp’s, the function of enunciation, of lamentation and of self-confession. Both plays stress the crisis of the character as a psychological and narrative entity, something which equates with Fuchs’ notion of the death of character. In Between Life and Death, the character, as a narrative

Conclusion

221

a psychological entity, is still challenged but is not totally obliterated. This is one area in which one can see the major differences between Gao and Crimp as writers. While Crimp’s absence of the character and ‘spectralization’ of language seemingly confirm Fuchs’ ideas, Gao’s play still deals with subjectivity, and challenges the illusion of the character’s psychological subjectivity. By mastering the use of different perspectives and points of view, thanks to the tripartition and the use of additional non-speaking performers, the character entity is split and challenged and at the same time the relationship with the spectators is altered. Alternative perspectives face the spectator with hallucinations. These hallucinations are not a substitute for fictive illusions, because they are self-aware of their own fictionality, thanks to the attention brought to them by the different perspectives, which make the audience conscious of its own position. The spectators not only have to discern the events presented on stage but are also made aware of their own subjectivity, of their own limitations as outside, yet subjective, observers. This occurs because the end of the play presents the character’s/performer’s own disappearance and fragmentation, which, in turn, further challenges the spectators’ position. Gao’s play transcends the dramatic by this clever use of perspectives, largely from the uniqueness of his own theatrical investigation. In Chapter 3, Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days is called into comparison with Dialogue and Rebuttal. Beckett’s Happy Days, like most of his late work, had an important impact on postdramatic theatre. Winnie’s entrapment, being half buried in a mound, is echoed in Girl’s and Man’s own trapped situation in of Gao’s play. This, with the motif of an after-death scenario, makes the comparison all the more worthwhile. We still see Gao exploit selfreferentiality and explore subjectivity by mastering an even better ‘theatre of perceptibility’, going beyond Lehmann’s idea of the impossibility of grasping signification from a labyrinth of theatrical signs.

222

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

While Beckett’s play depicts the impossibility of seeing oneself independently of ‘the Other’s’ gaze, as reflected in Winnie’s condition and her relation to the elusive Willie, Gao’s play makes manifest the paradox of this process of perception. Seeing oneself through the other’s eyes always implies a level of fragmentation or perception, depending on different points of view, which would always result in different perceptions of the self. This translates in Gao’s case into the use of different levels of framing, whereby, in the unfolding of the actions on stage, the bodies of the performers materialize the process of annihilation through their movements. It is a process of annihilation that is different from that seen in Between Life and Death. No long monologues are used and the spectators’ participation through the splitting of different perspectives is no longer encouraged by the force of one character’s monologue in connection with the silent characters, as was the case with Woman in Between Life and Death. Dialogue and Rebuttal has a dialogical format that makes use of monologies, mainly in the second act, interconnected through the two characters, Girl and Man, who are present on stage at the same time. The framing and presentation through both these two characters, and also the silent performer of Monk, describe a process, an hallucination that has its own progressive continuity, almost a dramatic linearity, as we see Man and Girl destroy each other and disappear. Here, the negotiation between the dramatic and the theatrical leads Gao to outline an almost linear process, where the theatrical is kept alive by the physicality of the piece, in its violent manifestation of cruelty and alienation. After interacting with, and challenging, one another, in the play’s first section, Girl and Man talk, though indirectly, to their bodiless heads and make physical movements that are sometimes at odds with what they are saying; the implied dissonance between words and actions is highly theatrical. The comparison of this play with Happy Days serves to highlight that the narrative of entrapment that Willie and Winnie cannot escape

Conclusion

223

can be solved. The dramatic–theatrical tension present in Beckett’s play, suggested by a circularity, a sense that actions can be repeated ad infinitum, is solved in Gao’s play by showing the possibility of escape through annihilation. In making comparisons between Gao’s post-exile work and that of Crimp’s and Beckett’s, the former’s theatre emerges as complex, yet fluid in its approach to the dramatic–theatrical tension, and still questioning and challenging the limits of artistic boundaries. His own conception of theatre is what informs Gao’s flexibility, continuous exploration and negotiation: inspired by the principle of jiadingxing, the idea of a suppositional/hypothetical theatre, the performer/role/ spectator relationship is altered thanks to the use of tripartition, the use of different personal pronouns, theatrical devices that are all unique to Gao. The use of different personal pronouns, in particular, can be considered as an extreme theatrical device, which exemplifies much of the postdramatic emphasis on postepic narration, of theatre of perceptibility. If we compare how monologies are used by other postdramatic writers, such as Elfriede Jelinek and Peter Handke, the multivocality of their monologies is flattened when the ‘I’, in most cases, is still used. The ‘I’ is a reminder of a limited yet unrepentant identification of actor with character, between the fictional and the real. Gao avoids this by his systematic use of different personal pronouns and the attention he pays to the construction of different perspectives. This application of different perspectives is perfected in Nocturnal Wanderer, analysed in Chapter 4. This is considered by many to be the most complex of Gao’s plays, as he introduces three levels of framing: the first level is in the ‘book’, as both an object and narrative device; the second is determined by the use of ‘tripartition’ and the actors’ own neutrality; the third describes the object of the book as a ‘meta-dramatic’ framing of the play-within-the-play. This play can be regarded as the most postdramatic of Gao’s post-exile work. The

224

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

process of the character dying, reduced to the inscription of its own fictional nature, unfolds through the gradual process of the dismantling of the self and also through its multivocality and multiple perspectives. In terms of subjectivity, different facets are presented through the protagonist’s interaction with other characters, other parts of his unconscious and conscious, as well as through the use of the image of the book. In a sort of poststructural work of subjectivity, the spectators are invited to construct and deconstruct the self of the characters and their own self, their own subjectivity. Nocturnal Wanderer marks yet another shift in Gao’s theatrical career, in that it introduces another element defining Gao’s ideological stance and pointing to an underpinning political backdrop. This materializes into the idea of freedom, which, in different Gao’s plays, has different connotations. All, however, express Gao’s interest in the individual, and the possibility that he or she can transcend cultural and national boundaries. In this particular play, freedom is perceived as part of a moral dilemma where freedom is aligned with violence, notions of good and evil. Yet the message is lost in the aesthetic of the play, in the exploration of subjectivity within its structure and the additional framing elements, which equate to Lehmann’s definition of freedom and also to an idea of the political that can only be depicted aesthetically and artistically. In Chapter 5, Weekend Quartet sees freedom take a concrete shape. It refers to the situation of the individual in exile, which is meaningless in the materiality of a condition that brings no happiness. With this play, Gao returns to the dramatic and succeeds in reconciling the dramatic with the theatrical postdramatic, through a realism that is postdramatic in terms of both forms and outlook. With named characters who are defined as psychological entities and not merely inscriptions, this reconciliation can be found in the construction of a spectacle that exploits the real to describe the subjective surreal of the characters and their projection of self

Conclusion

225

through continuous referencing to an external dimension, that of the weather and external landscape. The negotiation with the dramatic leads Gao – in the plays analysed in the last chapter: Death Collector, Snow in August and Ballade Nocturne – to return to a fictive cosmos, and also to the possibility of coexistence between the dramatic and postdramatic. This is not a return for Gao to a more conventional theatre but a celebration of theatrical forms that we have seen develop over the years his plays. For example, both Death Collector and Ballade Nocturne use monologies to enact the sense of a split personality. In Death Collector this translates into two performers voicing one dramatis persona, and in Ballade Nocturne into one performer, at first sight, taking on the role of two dramatis personae that are, yet, two sides of the same character, thus enacting one persona split into two. Moreover, the extra-textual elements – the focus on voice and music, the use of dance and movement – are sublimated by both Snow in August and Ballade Nocturne, both hybrid theatrical works that sit between opera, dance and physical theatre, and both exemplifying the idea of Total Theatre as inspired by Artaud’s theatrical approach, and by Gao’s own Chinese artistic heritage. Thus, returning to the question on Gao’s contribution to postdramatic theatre, the answer can only be found in the fluidity found in his post-exile work, in his continual renegotiation of the dramatic, while pushing the existing boundaries and engaging in the creation of a new and unexpected theatrical experience. Gao’s theatre is, in many ways, the ideal model for a contemporary postdramatic theatre, one that defies dogmatism and can reconcile the views and approaches of scholars like Lehmann and Fuchs who, while critical of one another, also have common ground. Gao has embraced Lehmann’s sense of aesthetics in his theatrical conception, and Fuchs’ ontological explorations, yet at the same time has kept his distance from both of them. He negotiates with the dramatic, thus denying Lehmann’s idea of an

226

Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

absolute postdramatic, and never fully embraces the idea of the death of character, as prescribed by Fuchs. Conversely, it is in the vein of this fluidity that this study has looked not only at theatrical practices but also at ontological cultural discourses that have enabled me to read Gao’s work through the ideas and notions by major contemporary poststructuralists like Lacan, Foucault, Baudrillard and the modernist Nietzsche. With regard to Gao’s postdramatic transnationalism, and the second aim of this study, it is important to bear in mind my definition of postdramatic transnationalism as a condition of transcendence of cultural – and not just national – boundaries. It is a condition that has passed over a dramatic peak, but has never fully left the dramatic behind. Gao’s theatre entails a constant negotiation between the dramatic and postdramatic, between death and life, freedom and non-freedom, all of which tell us that transcendence does not mean leaving the dramatic behind. Transcendence, as it is contained in transnational, is the constant process of negotiation, the constant moving forward towards new horizons that are never totally new, always aware of the baggage that is never completely left behind. So if we have seen, especially in Dialogue and Rebuttal in Chapter 3, and Nocturnal Wanderer in Chapter 4, how, thanks to his own occasional self-orientalizing, Gao’s Chineseness reappears in the form of Buddhism, we should not be surprised. I would argue, instead, that Gao’s ‘Chineseness’ and ‘Frenchness’, or rather his ‘Europeaness’, are corrupted, because in the building up of modern avant-garde movements and even earlier the migration of people and ideas have brought about developments in art, culture and theatre in a relentless cultural process of moving forward. Hence, there could not have been a Brecht without Peking opera, an Artaud without Balinese theatre, nor Chinese modern theatre without European avant-garde, and so on. It is in the vein of Gao’s postdramatic transnationalism, then, that we should stop thinking about fragmented cultural displacement and

Conclusion

227

start imagining holistic world cultures and their multivocality. Such an approach could arguably be applied to other cultural contemporary figures or to the more general study of postdramatic theatrical practice in Asia. For now, though, the hope is that this study will help readers to rediscover Gao as a European theatre-maker and a contemporary transnational genius.

Notes Introduction 1

2 3

4

5

6

7

8 9

Wang Chong, founder of Théatre du Rêve Expérimental (Xinchuan shiyan jutuan), is an Chinese emerging theatre director and awardwinning translator, very well known in the Chinese theatrical circles, whose works have been staged extensively in Asia, Europe and North America. Founded in 1982, it is one of the most reputable Hong Kong-based theatre companies, producing cutting-edge, multimedia work. A US-born Taiwan based playwright, theatre and film director. His theatre work has been recognized at the forefront of Taiwanese contemporary theatre, merging traditional forms with a new theatrical language, whose influences can be felt across China, Hong Kong, Singapore etc. This does not mean that references will not be made to elements of Chinese theatre in Gao’s work but they will be considered as part of a fluid discourse on his theatrical approach. Happenings have non-verbal characters; performers carry out tasks – in Kirby’s words, the ‘execution of a generally simple undemanding act’ (Kirby 1995: 21). A German scholar who had established The Institute for Applied Theatre Studies (AngewandteTheaterwissenschaft, ATW) at the Justus Liebig University Gießen in 1982. Huang directed Brecht’s Mother Courage in Beijing in 1959. Together with Chen Yong, Huang, also directed Life of Galileo in March 1979, which was the first foreign text staged in China after the Cultural Revolution (Ferrari 2004: 45, 59–88). One of the most famous modern Peking opera actors. Yu (1996) refers mostly to the articles by Zhang Li, Ding Yangzhong and Adrian Hsia in Brecht in East Asian Theatre and William Hui Sun’s article in Drama in the People’s Republic of China.

230 Notes 10 In terms of avant-garde theatre, Chen Jide defines its three main aspects as: yishu shiyanxing (artistic experimentalism); xianfeng de sixiang (avant-garde ideology), mainly questioning institutionalized values; and bentuxing (return to one’s nation origin) (2003: 8). Gao Xingjian and Lin Zhaohua, who directed Gao’s Alert Signal, Bus Stop and Wild Man, etc., were regarded as main exponents of avant-garde theatre (ibid.: 22); Gao Xingjian in particular was said to be the ultimate avant-garde artist. For his part, Lin Zhaohua denies belonging to this trend by saying ‘I am the man in the middle, I am rather a reformist’ (2001: 76); he goes on to state that drama should learn from tradition, which he regards as the real spirit of Chinese drama, but that it should also learn to move forward (ibid.). Despite sharing a common ground with avant-garde principles, Lin Zhaohua distanced himself from any artistic movement in an attempt to affirm his own individuality as an artist and director. 11 It is worth noting that, according to Hu Weimin, the idea of jiadingxing was the essence of Chinese xiqu (1986: 219). 12 I will mainly apply a textual analysis of the plays with strong reference to their performative potential. A more performance-based approach is needed and I hope that in the future I will be able to engage in an analysis of Gao’s performances. However, with Lumenis Theatre Company that I run, we staged a reading of Nocturnal Wanderer in Singapore and I have learnt much about the performative values of Gao’s theatre from this experience. In terms of texts, being originally a sinologist, I mainly looked at the Chinese original texts and those in Chinese that Gao had translated from the original French. Consequently, I have read his texts in French. When I quote from the texts I will provide my own translation from the Chinese, but I will also refer to both the Chinese and French originals (and when needed, the Fong English translation) when an issue of terminology arises or the meaning in the different versions and translations is substantially altered. 13 Fong’s English translation from the Chinese version of the play (Kouwen Siwang, literally meaning ‘to make enquiries about death’) is The Man Who Questions Death (which was published together

Notes

231

with the English translation of Escape – 2007); while Conceison, who also translated the play into English (its publication is forthcoming) from its French original, is still in dialogue with Gao about the best English title of the play. Having read the play in the original French before Fong’s English translation and the Chinese version came out, I opted for my own translation from the French, Le Quêteur de la mort. I freely translated the French quêteur, literally ‘seeker’, with the word collector, thus referring to the setting of the play in a museum. For all the other plays, I kept Fong’s English titles – for easier cross-reference with both English publications and other scholarly works in English.

Gao Xingjian and postdramatic theatre: The Other Shore – between Lehmann and Fuchs 1

2

3 4

5

6

In this respect, Gao emphasizes the relationship between the actors and the audience, where the actors stimulate the audience’s imagination (1988: 38). Szondi well explains this in the comparison between Sophocles’ Oedipus and Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman (1896) (1983: 199–202): ‘Here the past is not, as in Sophocles’ Oedipus, a function of the present. On the contrary, the present is rather an occasion for conjuring up the past’ (ibid.: 202). Epic here refers to the use of narrations, expositions in theatre etc. Here I comply with both J. L. Austin’s definition of utterance as a performative act in Austin’s 1962’s How to do things with Words and Lehmann’s definition of theatre as ‘only pretending to perform’ (2006: 179). Lionel Abel was one of the first one to use this term in his 1963 Metatheatre. Twenty years later, Richard Horby laments that the term has been rarely given an adequate definition and he generally defines it as ‘drama about drama’ and where the subject is about drama (1983: 31). In terms of differences between postmodern theatre and postdramatic theatre, I embrace Kerstin Schmidt’s view that these two are not very

232 Notes different (2005: 13). Schmidt compares Lehmann’s book to Stephen Watt’s Postmodern Drama, published in 1998. The main difference that she highlights is that Watt seems to be more concerned with postmodern forms of cultural expressions (1998: 28) rather than theatrical aesthetics. It is also important to refer to Jürs-Munby who states that other scholars had rejected a definition of postmodern style. It suffices to say that postmodern theatre has been used by scholars engaged with a cultural discourse of postmodern culture and theatre being an expression of it. 7 ‘What is at stake in the new theatre development are the questions in which way and with what consequences the idea of theatre as a representation of a fictive cosmos in general has been ruptured and even relinquished altogether, a cosmos whose closure was guaranteed through drama and its corresponding theatre aesthetic’(Lehmann 2006: 30–1). 8 In the same conference proceedings Dramatic and Postdramatic Theater: Ten Years After, it is worth noting that Lehmann, in his chapter, makes the point that postdramatic is no longer a term necessarily denoting deviant, oppositional or radical practices. ‘Elements of postdramatic practice have become generally accepted and define much contemporary theatre practice as such – not without often loosing edge in the process.’ However later on in the chapter he also reasserts the importance and the relevance of a postdramatic paradigm (2011: 32). 9 ‘Zen in particular is the product of the fusion of Indian Buddhism with Chinese Culture. […] Its acknowledged founder was Bodhiharma, who is supposed to have transported the peculiar tradition underlying Zen from India to China. […] The Chinese Zen Movement takes its space within the sphere of Chinese Mahāyā Buddhism. […] In Zen is found the Mahayanist negativity […] The key terms are “empty” (śūnya) and “emptiness” (śūnyatā), which apply equally to the metaphysics and to the way of meditations’ (Dumoulin 1979: 25–6). 10 ‘Transcendental wisdom or prajñā at work in non-objective way […] true, free, dynamic mirror-play of the mind’ (Dumoulin 1979: 48).

Notes

233

Gao and postdramatic theatre: a comparison with British playwright Martin Crimp 1 2

3

4

5

6

The first post-exile play was Escape (Taowang) written in 1989. In the French text Gao defines the different cast generally as Une femme, un Homme, Une autre femme; in the Chinese text an actress playing Woman (yiwei banyan nürende nü yanyuan), a male actor playing clown, a ghost and an old man (yiwei banyan nanren, gui, laorende choujiao) and a female actress playing the mental imageries of a female dancers (yiwei banyan nüren duozhong xinxiangde nuxingwuzhe), which is then reflected in Gilbert Fong’s English translation from the Chinese. Referring to Gao’s notes to Soul Mountain Chang Hsien-Tang states that this image might have been inspired by a Buddhist legend about a dispute between a Buddhist monk and a nun ending up in a blood bath (Chang 1996: 297). ‘In the Taoist text The Classic of the Way and the Power, the term hun-ch’eng appears, denoting “confusedly formed”, but the compound hun-tun never occurs. It is in the Huai-nan Tzu that the multiple forms of hun-tun and its synonyms are linked cosmogonically to the primordial state at the moment of creation. For example, in “Explanations”, chapter 14 of that text, there is an opening evocation of primordial chaos: “in the gaping, undifferentiated void, sky and earth were an unmarked mass in confusion [hun-tun] which had not yet been created” (SPPY 14.12)’ (Birrell 1999: 99). In the French version the chaos is casually referred to in the expression ‘sans route, sans but’ (aimless) (Gao 2000: 81), while Gibert Fong’s translation from the Chinese uses ‘the big Chaos’, with capital C (Gao 1999: 73) stressing the Chinese use of the word. It is worth noting that Fong translates this as “Nothingness” with a capital “N” (Gao 1999: 77), which could suggest that he refers to the Zen Buddhist idea of nothingness. However, the French text simply uses the expression ‘…tout s’éteindrait bientôt’, meaning ‘everything would die soon’ (Gao 2000: 84). This suggests a definite end, although

234 Notes it is weakened by Gao’s use of the conditional in place of the future tense. 7 ‘the person writing is inscribed in a determined textual system. Even if there is never a pure signified, there are different relationships as to that which, from the signifier, is presented as irreducible stratum of the signified’ (Derrida 1997: 160). 8 Deconstruction is mainly referred to Derrida but Christopher Norris engages in discussion about Richard Rorty, Jean Baudrillard, Stanley Fish and Paul de Man. 9 In Beckett’s play Krapp reads from a letter to make a new tape; she defines Kennedy’s A Movie as a pastiche of texts (Fuchs 1996: 79), and refers to Foreman’s notation system as part of his theatrical productions (ibid.: 81). 10 ‘When there is a quiescence of mental activity / then the need for discourse ceases and / Reality, like unto cessation, / Neither arises nor passes away.’ (Nāgārjuna’s Kārikā- Acharya Nāgārjuna, Indian philosopher the founder of the Mādhyāmika (Middle Path) school of Mahāyāna Buddhism) (Nagao 1989: 65).

Dialogue and Rebuttal: the death of love in postdramatic transnationalism 1

2

3

It is one of only post-exile plays originally written in Chinese and then translated in to French. Premiered at Theater des Augenblicks, Wien in 1992, under his direction, and in France at the Théâtre Molière (renamed in 1995 la Maison de la Poésie de la Ville de Paris, Paris) in 1995, under Gao’s direction. Nüzi means woman; however, in the characters’ brief in Chinese, Gao describes her as a young woman and Man as a middle-age man (2001a: 3). Hence I agree with Fong’s translation of the character as Girl. Contradicting my interpretation, Chang Hsien-Tang attributes the main difference between Girl and Woman to the fact that the latter is concerned with her ageing, while Girl is not (Chang 1996: 292).

Notes 4

5

6

235

Kōan, literally means ‘public document’: ‘kōan refers to the statement made by an old master, or an answer given to a question by a master […] the answers given have no connection to the question. Since the responses make no sense with respect to the question, the kōan terminates ordinary understanding. […] it functions to examine one’s mind. If the respondent is an enlightened being, that person’s response will indicate that fact’ (Olson 2005: 235). Huineng’s strategy can be summed up as the belief in ‘ free flowing together with all thoughts and things’ and his notion of no-thought opposes ‘both the absence of thought and the attachment to thought’ (Wang 2003: 5, 53). Huineng rejects both Shenxiu’s idea of linian (free from thoughts) and attachment to thoughts and chooses the ‘Middle Way’: ‘Only by practicing non-attachment within this chain or flux of thoughts can we hope to obtain liberation’ (Wang 2003: 68–9). (One cannot be sure whether or not Gao’s play is following Huineng’s idea, hence it cannot be appropriately considered within the analysis of the play).

Transnational postdramatic realism in Weekend Quartet 1

2 3

4 5

Werner Schwab (1958–94) is an Austrian playwright well known for his grotesque comedic style and anti-bourgeois stance. He wrote sixteen plays in four years and was found dead at the age of thirty-six. In the Chinese text Takefusiji, in the French Tarkovski; he is a Russian filmmaker, writer and theatre director. There are many terms in Buddhism to describe evil and most of them refer to desire (attho-desire, want, need, mamańkāro-desire, apekhādesire, longing, etc.) (Tachibana 1992: 73). Gilbert Fong (2003b) speaks of Gao’s personal and artistic exile. While also influenced by Nietzsche, this is generally believed to draw on Battaille’s notion of ‘the accursed share’, which in turn comes from Mauss’ idea of the gift. ‘The gift is our myth, the idealist myth correlative to our materialist myth […] The primitive symbolic process knows nothing of the gratuity of the gift, it knows only the challenge

236 Notes

6

7

8 9

and the reversibility of exchanges […] The primitives know […] that nothing is without return, not in a contractual sense, but in the sense that the process of exchange is inevitably reversible’ (Lee 1999: 43). From this, the symbolic is defined as: ‘neither a concept, an agency, a category, nor a “structure”, but an act of exchange and a social relation which puts an end to the real, which resolves the real, and at the same time, puts an end to the opposition between the real and the imaginary’ (ibid.: 45). ‘language has a metalinguistic function when it focuses on the code as opposed to the other components of the speech situation’ (Schiffrin 1987: 303). ‘A theatre of voices is much more “performance” (in the sense of live art or happening) than it is dramatic art because it frees the vocal utterance from the needs of psychological appropriation and dialogical context. And the strongest moments in this kind of theatre are perhaps just those when the framework of representation is broken or interrupted, when the act of speaking or singing performs almost nothing but itself ’ (Primavesi 2003: 65). It is worth noting that Izabella Łabędzka compares Handke’s play to Gao’s early play Monologue (Dubai; 1985) (2008: 88–9). Refer to Chapter 1. p. 34

Latest postdramatic attempts at transnationalism 1 2 3

4

(Epicurus 341–271 bc). This is taken from the Tetrapharmakos (the four-part cure) (Keimpe et al. 2005: 643). Frederick Nietzsche, ‘On the genealogy of morality-first essay’ (1887), (2006: 397); ‘The anti-Christ: Curse on Christianity’ (1888), (2006: 488). ‘The Overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the Overman shall be the meaning of the earth. […] Behold, I teach you the Overman: he is the lighting, he is this madness (ein Übergang und ein Untergang)’ (Nietzsche 2006: 256–7).

Notes 5

6 7

8

237

It is worth mentioning that, as stated in Chapter 4, there is no contradiction between the Apollonian and the Dionysian, as they are connected through ‘a basic ontology of becoming’. Dionysian is described as ‘an incessant process of creation and destruction, a “powerful unity” that precedes and exceeds individuals’. The process of becoming points to ‘the dream world of the Apollonian’, producing a series of illusions that articulate individuals, subjects and objects (Cox 2006: 501). The French version adds ‘La Loi du Buddha’ (Buddha’s law) (Gao 2005: 70); it is not present in Fong’s translation (2003b: 60). The French version translates it as ‘divertissement’ (game, entertainment) (Gao in Xu 2005: 70); Fong translates it as ‘horseplay’ (2003b: 60). The Chinese name Wujincang, meaning ‘endless possession’, is translated by Fong as ‘Boundless’; I opt, here, for the translation from the French Trésor Infini, ‘Endless Treasure’.

Bibliography (2007), ‘Attempts on Her Life Background Pack’, National Theatre Education. Available online: http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/ document/attempts-on-her-life-background-pack [accessed 10 January 2015]. (2010), ‘Ballade Nocturne (Théâtre Musical), Dossier’, SourouS Compagnie. Available online: http://www.sourous-compagnie.com/IMG/pdf/ DOSSIER_CREATION_-Ballade_pdf.pdf [accessed 10 January 2015]. Angel-Perez, É. (2002), ‘Martin Crimp: The Treatment (1993) et Attempts on Her Life (1997): Tricotage du Texte et Auto-Engendrement’ (Martin Crimp: The Treatment (1993) and Attempts on Her Life (1997): Interweaving Text and Auto-generation), Ecritures Contemporaines, 5: 99–110. Angel-Perez, É. (ed.) (2006), Voyages au Bout du Possible: Les Théâtres du Traumatisme de Samuel Beckett à Sarah Kane (Journeys on the Borderline of the Possible: the Theatre of Trauma from Samuel Beckett to Sarah Kane), Paris: Klincksieck. Angel-Perez, É. (2014), ‘Martin Crimp’s Nomadic Voices’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 24.3: 353–62. Artaud, A. (1958), The Theatre and Its Double, London: John Calder Ltd. Augusti, C. E. (2005), ‘Short Circuits of Desire: Language and Power in M. Crimp Attempts on Her Life’, Ariel: A Review of International English literature 36 (3–4 July–October): 103–26. Barnett, D. (2008), ‘When is a Play not a Drama? Two Examples of Postdramatic Theatre Texts’, New Theatre Quarterly, 24: 14–23. Barthes, R. (1977), Image Music Text, London: Fontana. Baudrillard, J. (1983), Simulations, New York: Semiotext(e). Baudrillard, J. (1990a), Fatal Strategies, New York: Semiotext(e). Baudrillard, J. (1990b), On Seduction, New York: St Martin’s Press. Baudrillard, J. (1993), Symbolic Exchange and Death, London: Sage. Baudrillard, J. (1996), The Perfect Crime, London; New York: Verso. Baudrillard, J. (1997), ‘The Art of Disappearance’, in N. Zurbrugg (ed.), Jean Baudrillard: Art and Artefact, 28–31, London: Sage.

240 Bibliography Baudrillard, J. (2000), The Vital Illusion, New York and Chichester: Columbia University Press. Baudrillard, J. (2001a), ‘Photography, or Light-writing: Literalness of the Image’, in J. Baudrillard (ed.), Impossible Exchange, 12–29. London: Verso. Baudrillard, J. (2001b), Selected Writing, Cambridge: Polity Press. Beckett, S. (1986), The Complete Dramatic Works, London and Boston: Faber and Faber. Berry, C. and Farquhar, M. A. (2006), China on Screen: Cinema And Nation, New York: Columbia University Press. Billington, M. (2007), ‘Review of ‘Attempts on Her Life’ directed by Katie Mitchell’, The Guardian (March 15 2007). Available online: http://www. theguardian.com/stage/2007/mar/15/theatre3 [accessed 10 January 2015]. Birrell, A. M. (1999), Chinese Mythology: An Introduction. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Bishop, R. (2009), ‘Baudrillard, Death and Cold War Theory’, in R. Bishop (ed.), Baudrillard Now: Current Perspectives in Baudrillard Studies, 47–71. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bleerer, M. (2004), ‘Look who’s Looking!: Perspective and the Paradox of Postdramatic Subjectivity’, Theatre Research International, 1 (March): 29–41. Bowers, J. P. (2002), ‘Jane Bowers on Gertrude Stein’s Theater Landscapes’, Theater, 32.2: 18–20. Brecht, B. (1978), Brecht on Theatre: the Development of an Aesthetic, (ed. and trans.) J. Willett, New York: Hill and Wang; London: Eyre Methuen. Broadhurst, S. (2012), ‘Einstein on the Beach: A Study in Temporality’, Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts, 17:5, 34–40. Brown, E. (1995), Meyerhold: a Revolution in Theatre, London and New York: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. Cha, Y. S. (2013), ‘Necessary Repetition/Répétition: Rehearsing Loss in the Theatre of Samuel Beckett’, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, 27.2 (Spring): 7–30. Chang, Hsien-Tang (1996), ‘Gao Xingjian zai “Shengsijie”, “Duihua yu fanhua” he “Yeyoushen” de qingyu shuxie’ (Desire Writing in Gao

Bibliography

241

Xingjian’s Plays, Between life and Death, Dialouge and Rebuttal, and Nocturnal Wanderer), Beitaiwan xuebao, 30: 289–99. Chen, Jide (2003), Zhongguo dangdai xianfeng xiju, 1979–2000 (Contemporary Chinese Avant-garde Theatre 1979–2000), Beijing: Zhongguo xiju chubanshe. Chen, Xiaomei (1995), Occidentalism: A Theory of Counter-Discourse in Post-Mao China, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Clements, R. (2014), ‘Deconstructive Techniques and Spectral Technologies in Katie Mitchell’s Attempts on Her Life’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 24.3: 331–41. Cohen, R. (1996), ‘Diasporas and the State: From Victims to Challengers’, International Affairs, 72.3: 507–20. Cohn, R. (1980), Just Play: Beckett’s Theater, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Conceison, C. (2009), ‘The French Gao Xingjian, Bilingualism, and Ballade Nocturne’, Hong Kong Drama Review, 8: 303–22. Connor, S. (ed.) (1997), Postmodernist Culture – An Introduction to Theories of the Contemporary, London: Blackwell Publishers. Coulter, T. (2014), Transcultural Aesthetics in the Plays of Gao Xingjian, New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Cox, C. (2006), ‘Nietzsche, Dionysus, and the Ontology of Music’, K. A. Pearson (ed.), A Companion to Nietzsche, Oxford: Blackwell. Crimp, M. (1997), Attempts on Her Life – Seventeen Scenarios For Theatre, London: Faber & Faber. Crimp, M. (2005), Fewer Emergencies, London: Faber & Faber. Cuddon, J. A. (ed.) (1991), A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory (3rd edn), London: Blackwell. Curien, A. (2006), ‘Solitude et échos vocaux dans l’écriture de Gao Xingjian’ (Solitude and Musical Echoes in Gao Xingjian’s Writing), in N. Dutrait (ed.), L’ écriture Romanesque et Théâtrale de Gao Xingjian (Gao Xingjian’s Novels and Theatre), 169–87. Aix-enProvence: Seuil. Debord, G. (1967), La Société du spectacle (The Society of the Spectacle), Paris: Les Éditions Gallimard. Derrida, J. (1990), Writing and Difference, London and New York: Routledge.

242 Bibliography Derrida, J. (1997), Of Grammatology, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Denton, K. A. (1998) The Problematic of Self in Modern Chinese Literature: Hu Feng and Lu Ling, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Dong, Jian (1998), ‘Zhongguo xiju xiandaihua de jiannan licheng’ (The Difficult Course of Modernization of Chinese Theatre), in Shi Xusheng (ed.), Zhongguo xiandai xiju zhongda xianxiang yanjiu (A Study of the Major Phenomena in Modern Chinese Theatre), 13–16. Beijing: Beijing guangbo xueyuan chubanshe. Dumoulin, H. (1979), Zen Enlightenment: Origins and Meaning, New York: Weatherhill. Earnshaw, S. (2006), Existentialism: A Guide for the Perplexed, London: Continuum. Elliott, A. (2004), Social Theory Since Freud: Traversing Social Imaginaries, London and New York: Routledge. Elliott, A. (2014), Concepts of the Self, Cambridge: Polity Press. Eysteinsson, A. and Liska, V. (eds) (2007), Modernism, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Felman, S. (2004), Jacques Lacan and the Adventure of the Insight, Psychoanalysis in Contemporary Culture, Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. Feng, Yiwang, (2001), ‘Ni, Yeyoushen’ (You, Nocturnal Wanderer), Lianhe wenxue, 17.4: 129–30. Ferrari, R. (2004), Da Madre Courage e i Suoi Figli a Jiang Qing e i Suoi Mariti: Percorsi Brechtiani in Cina (From Mother Courage and Her Children to Jiang Qing and Her Husbands: Brecht in China), Venezia: Cafoscarina. Fong, Gilbert C. F. (1999), ‘Introduction’, in Gao Xingjian The Other Shore, x–xlii, Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press. Fong, Gilbert C. F. (2003a), ‘Introduction: Marginality, Zen, and Omnipotent Theatre’, in Gao Xingjian, Snow in August, vii–xx, Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press. Fong, Gilbert C. F. (2003b), ‘Freedom and Marginality: the Life and Art of Gao Xingjian’, in Gao Xingjian; Gilbert Fong and Mabel Lee (trans.), Cold Literature: Selected Work by Gao Xingjian, viii–xvli, Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press.

Bibliography

243

Fong, Gilbert C. F. (Fang, Zixun) (2004), ‘Yi shuang lengyan choushen guanshen – cong Gao Xingjian de zhuangzuo lunshuoqi’ (Critical Eyes: Talking about Gao Xingjian’s Works), in Lin Mangshu (ed.), Xingjian – 2000 shouwei Nuobei’r wenxue jiang dezhu (Gao Xingjian, 2000 Literature Nobel Prize Winner), 177–81, Xianggang: Mingbao chubanshe. Fong, Gilbert C. F. (2006), ‘Un Esprit Libre à la marge’, in N. Dutrait (ed.), L’ écriture Romanesque et Théâtrale de Gao Xingjian (Gao Xingjian’s Novels and Theatre), 205–24, Aix-en-Provence: Seuil. Foreman, R. (1985), Reverberation Machines: The Later Plays and Essays, Barrytown: Station Hill. Foucault, M. (1970), The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, London: Tavistock Publications. Foucault, M. (1972), The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, New York: Pantheon. Foucault, M. (1973), The Birth of the Clinic, London: Tavistock Publications. Foucault, M. (1977), Discipline and Punish, Alan Sheridan (trans.), London: Allen Lane. Foucault, M. (1990), ‘An Aesthetics of Existence’, in L. Kritzman (ed.), Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings 1977–1984, 46–56, London and New York: Routledge. Foucault, M. (1991a), ‘What is Enlightenment?’ in P. Rabinov (ed.), The Foucault Reader, 32–50, London: Penguin. Foucault, M. (1991b), ‘On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress’ in P. Rabinov (ed.), The Foucault Reader, 340–72, London: Penguin. Foucault, M. (1999), Madness and Civilization, London and New York: Routledge. Freeman, J. (2013), ‘No Boundaries Here: Brecht, Lauwers, and European Theatre after Postmodernism’, New Theatre Quarterly, 29: 220–32. Fuchs, E. (1996), The Death of Character, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Fuchs, E. (2008), ‘Postdramatic Theatre (Review)’, TDR: The Drama Review, 52.2 (T 198): 178–83. Fuchs, E. (2011), ‘Postdramatic Theatre and the Persistence of the “Fictive Cosmos”: A View from America’, in I. Medenica (ed.), Postdramatic

244 Bibliography Theater: Ten Years After – (Conference Proceedings), Belgrade: Anthology Of Essays By Faculty Of Dramatic Arts 20. Gane, L. (1990), Baudrillard Live, London and New York: Routledge. Gao, Xingjian (1983), ‘Tan Jiadingxing – xiandai xiju shoudian chu tan zhiqi’ (On Suppositionality – Exploring the Seventh Method of Modern Theatre)’, Suibi, 6: 96–103. Gao, Xingjian (1988), Dui yizhong xiandai xiju de zhuiqiu (In the Pursuit of a Modern Theatre), Beijing: Zhongguo xiju chubanshe. Gao, Xingjian (1992), ‘Wenxue Yu Xuanxue Guanyu Lingshan’, (Literature and Metaphysics: About Soul Mountain) Jintian, 3: 203–15. Gao, Xingjian (1993), ‘Guoja shenhua yu geren diankuang’, (National Mythology and Individual’s Madness) Mingpao Monthly (August): 115–20. Gao, Xingjian (1996), Meiyou zhuyi (No-isms), Xianggang: Tiandi tushu yu xiangongsi. Gao, Xingjian (1999), The Other Shore, G. C. F. Fong (trans.), Hong Kong: the Chinese University Press. Gao, Xingjian (2000a), Gao Xingjian, théâtre 1 (La fuite, Au bord de la vie, Le somnambule, Quatre quatuors pour un week-end (Gao Xingjian, theatre 1 (Escape, Between Life and Death, Nocturnal Wanderer, Weekend Quartet)) (Beaumarchais 39), Carnièrers-Morlanwelz: Lansman. Gao, Xingjian (2000b), Bayuexue (Snow in August), Taibeishi: Lianjing chubanshe. Gao, Xingjian (2000c), ‘Wode xiju wode yaoshi’(My Plays and my Key), 264–84, ‘Juzuofa yu Zhongxin Yanyuan’ (Drama Writing and the Neutral Actor), 285–301, Meiyou zhuyi. Xianggang: Tiandi tushu youxian gongsi. Gao, Xingjian (2001a), Gao Xingjian juzuo xuan (Selected Plays of Gao Xingjian), Xianggang: Mingpao Zazhi Chubanshe You Xiangongsi. Gao, Xingjian (2001b), Zhuomo si chongzuo (Weekend Quartet), Taibeishi: Lianjing chubanshe ye gongsi. Gao, Xingjian (2002), Dialoguer-Interloquer, A. Currien (trans.), Carnièrers-Morlanwelz: Lansman. Gao, Xingjian (2004), Le Quêteur de la mort suivi de ‘L’ Autre rive et La Neige en août’. (Death Collector, followed by The Other Shore and Snow in August), Paris: Seul.

Bibliography

245

Gao, Xingjian (2007), Escape and The Man Who Questions Death, G. C. F. Fong (trans.), Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press. Gao, Xingjian (2008), ‘Wenxuede liyou’ (The Reason for Literature), Lun Chuangzuo (On Creation), Lianjing: Lian jing chubanshe ye gufen youxian gongsi. Gao, Xingjian (2010), Ballade Nocturne: Libretto for a Dance Performance, C. Conceison (trans.), London: Sylph Editions. Gao, Xingjian (2014), ‘Freedom and Literature’, in M. Lackner and N. Chardonnens (eds.), Polyphony Embodied – Freedom and Fate in Gao Xingjian’s Writings, 11–18, Berlin: de Gruyter. Garde, U. and Mumford M. (2013), ‘Postdramatic Reality Theatre and Productive Insecurity: Destabilising Encounters with the Unfamiliar in Theatre from Sydney and Berlin’, in J. Carroll, S. Giles and K. Jürs-Munby (eds.), Postdramatic Theatre and the Political: International Perspectives on Contemporary Performance, 147–64, London and New York: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. Genosko, Gary (2002), Baudrillard and Signs: Signification Ablaze, London and New York: Routledge. Gontarski, S. E. (2007), ‘Viva, Sam Beckett, or Flogging the Avant-Garde’, Journal of Beckett Studies, 16.1: 1–11. Handke, P. (1997), Peter Handke Plays: 1, London: Methuen Drama. Hearfield, C. (2004), Adorno and the Modern Ethos of Freedom, Aldershot: Ashgate. Hornby, R. (1986). Drama, Metadrama and Perception, Cranbury: Associated University Presses. Hu, Weimin (1986), ‘Huaju yishu gexin langchao de shizhi’ (The Essence of the Innovation of the Art of Huaju at its Pitch), in Du Qingyuan (ed), Xiju guan zhengming ji, 1, 217–30, Beijing: Zhongguo xiju chubanshe. Huang Mei-hsü (2000), ‘Shitang Gao Xingjian xijuzhong de seng dao renwu’ (A Preliminary Discussion on the Buddhist and Daoist in Gao Xingjian’s Plays’, in Fang Zixun (ed.), A New Era of Chinese Drama: The Second Chinese Drama Festival (Hong Kong, 1998) Symposium Papers, 296–309, Xianggang: Xianggang xiju xiehui, Xianggang xiju gongcheng. Huang, Zuolin (1986), ‘Mantan xijuguan’ (An Informal Discussion on the

246 Bibliography Ideas of Theatre), in Xijuguan zhengming ji (Notes on Theatrical ideas), vol.1, 1–18, Beijing: Zhongguo xiju chubanshe. Huang, Zuolin (1990), Wo yu xieyi xiju guan (My Idea of xieyi in Theatre and I), Beijing: Zhongguo xiju chubanshe. Hurst, A. (2008), Derrida vis-à-vis Lacan: Interweaving Deconstruction and Psychoanalysis, New York: Fordham University Press. Innes, C. (2003) Avant Garde Theatre: 1892–1992, London and New York: Routledge. Jaggard, D. (2004), ‘Dionysius versus Dionysius’, in Paul Bishop (ed.), Nietzsche and Antiquity: His Reaction and Response to the Classical Tradition, 277–94, Suffolk: Camden House. Jürs-Munby, K. C. (2006), ‘Introduction’, in H.-T. Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, 1–15, London and New York: Routledge. Jürs-Munby, K. C. (2009), ‘The Resistant Text in Postdramatic Theatre: Performing Elfriede Jelinek’s Sprachflächen’, Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts, 14:1: 46–56. Jürs-Munby, K. C. and Giles, J. (2013), ‘Introduction’, in K. Jürs-Munby, J. Carroll and S. Giles (eds), Postdramtic Theatre and the Political, 1–29, London: Bloomsbury. Kalb, J. (2002), ‘Samuel Beckett, Heiner Muller And Postdramatic Theater’, Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui, 11.1, 74–83 (10). Kapleau, R. P. (1980), The Three Pillars of Zen, Garden City, NY: Anchor Press. Keimpe, A. Barnes, Mansfeld, J. and Schofield M. (eds) (2005), Cambridge History to Hellenistic Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kellner, D. (2005), ‘Media Culture and the Triumph of the Spectacle’, in G. King (ed.), Spectacle of the Real From Hollywood to ‘Reality’ TV and Beyond, Bristol: Intellect books. Kirby, M. (1995), ‘Happenings an Introduction’, in M. R. Sandford (ed.), Happenings and other Acts, 1–24, London and New York: Routledge. Labedzka, I. (2008), Gao Xingjian’s Idea of Theatre, Leiden: Brill. Lacan, J. (1977), Écrits: The First Complete Edition, New York: Norton & Company. Lackner, M. and Chardonnens, N. (eds). (2014), ‘Introduction’, in

Bibliography

247

M. Lackner and N. Chardonnens (eds), Polyphony Embodied – Freedom and Fate in Gao Xingjian’s Writings, 1–10, Berlin: de Gruyter. Lai, Amy T. (2002), ‘Gao Xingjian Monologue as Metadrama’, in K. Tam Soul of Chaos: Critical Perspectives on Gao Xingjian, 133–46, Hong Kong: the Chinese University Press. Lane, R. J. (2009), Jean Baudrillard, London and New York: Routledge. Lee, Mabel (2002), ‘On Nietzsche and Modern Chinese Literature: From Lu Xun (1881–1936) to Gao Xingjian (b. 1940)’, Literature and Aesthetics: The Journal of the Sydney Society of Literature and Aesthetics (November): 23–43. Lee, Mabel (2003), ‘Returning to Recluse Literature: Gao Xingjian’, in J. Mostow and K. A. Denton (eds), Columbia Companion to Modern East Asian Literatures, New York: Columbia University Press. Lee, Mabel (2012), ‘Gao Xingjian’s Antagonism Towards Nietzsche’, presented at International Conference of Nietzsche and Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature (22–23 November) at Nanyang Technological University – Singapore. Lee, R. (1999), The Tao of Representation: Postmodernity, Asia and the West, New York: Nova Science Publishers. Lehmann, H.-T. (1999), Postdramatisches Theater, Frankfurt am Main: Verlag der Autoren 3. veränderte Aufl. Lehmann, H.-T. (2006), Postdramatic Theatre, London and New York: Routledge. Lehmann, H.-T. (2008), ‘Lost in Translation’, TDR: The Drama Review, 52.4 (T 200) Winter: 13–20. Lehmann, H.-T. (2011), ‘Postdramatic Theatre, a Decade Later’, in Postdramatic Theater: Ten Years After – Conference Proceedings, 31–46, Belgrade: Anthology of Essays by Faculty of Dramatic Arts. Lehmann, H.-T. (2013), ‘A Future for Tragedy? Remarks on the Political and the Postdramatic’, in K. Jürs-Munby, S. Carroll and S. Giles (eds), Postdramtic Theatre and the Political, 87–110, London: Bloomsbury. Levin, T. Y. (2004) ‘Dismantling the Spectacle: The Cinema of Guy Debord’, in T. McDonough (ed.), Guy Debord and the Situationist International: Texts and Documents, 321–444, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

248 Bibliography Lin, Kehuan (1987), ‘Gao Xingjian de duo shengbu yu xiadiao xiju’ (The Many Voices and the Suspense of Gao Xingjian’s drama) in L. Guorong (ed.), Gao Xingjian xiju yanjiu (A Study of Gao’s Theatre), 145–70, Beijing: Zhongguo xiju chubanshe. Lin, Zhaohua (2001), ‘Xiju de shengming li’ (The Vital Force of Theatre), Wenyi yanjiu, 3. Liu, Zaifu (2000), Lun Gao Xingjian zhuangtai (Talks on Gao Xingjian’s Approaches), Xianggang: Mingbao chubanshe youxian gongsi. Liu, Zaifu (2004), Gao Xingjian lun, Taibeishi: Lianjing chu banshe ye gufen youxian gongsi. Liu, Zaifu (2014), ‘Gao Xingjian’s Notion of Freedom’, M. Lackner and N. Chardonnens (eds), Polyphony Embodied – Freedom and Fate in Gao Xingjian’s Writings, 75–8, Berlin: de Gruyter. Lockhurst, M. (2003), ‘Political Point-Scoring: Martin Crimp’s Attempts on Her Life’, Contemporary Theatre Review 13.1 (February): 47–60. Marinetti, C. (2013), ‘Transnational, Multilingual, and Postdramatic – Rethinking the Location of Translation in Contemporary Theatre’, in S. Bigliazzi, P. Ambrosi and P. Kofler (eds), Translation in Theatre and Performance, 27–37, London and New York: Routledge Advances in Theatre and Performance Studies. McNay, L. (1994), Foucault: A Critical Introduction, London: Continuum. Meisner, N. and Mounsef, D. (2011), ‘From the Postdramatic to the Poly-dramatic: The Text/ Performance Divide Reconsidered’, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, 26.1 (Fall): 85–102. Mills, S. (1999), Michel Foucault, London and New York: Routledge. Milnes, T. (2003), Knowledge and Indifference in English Romantic Prose, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nagao, Gadjin M. (1989), The Fundamental Standpoint of Mādhyāmika Philosophy, Albany: State of New York University Press. Nealon, J. T. (2008), Foucault beyond Foucault-Power and its Intensifications since 1984, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Nietzsche, F. (2006), The Nietzsche Reader, K. Ansell Pearson and D. Large (eds), Oxford: Blackwell. Norris, C. (1991), Deconstruction: Theory and Practice, London and New York: Routledge.

Bibliography

249

Olson, C. (2005), The Different Paths of Buddhism, a Narrative-historical Introduction, London: A British catalogue publication. Oskala, J. (2005), Foucault on Freedom, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Porter, J. (2000), Nietzsche and the Philology of the Future, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Primavesi, P. (2003), ‘A Theatre of Multiple Voices’, Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts, 8:1: 61–73. Qian, Zhongshu. (1985), ‘Shi Keyi yuan’ (Poetry can Complain), in Yeshiji, Xianggang: Guangjiaojing chubanshe. Quah, Sy Ren. (2004), Gao Xingjian and Transcultural Chinese Theater, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Quayson, A. and Daswani, G. (eds) (2013), Companion to Diaspora and Transnationalism, New York: Wiley-Blackwell. Quitt, R. (2012), ‘Composition and Theatre’, in D. Roesner and M. Rebstock (eds), Composed Theatre Aesthetics, Practices, Processes, Chicago: Intellect Ltd. Reinelt, J. and Hewitt, G. (2011), The Political Theatre of David Edgar: Negotiation and Retrieval, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Riley, J. and Gissenweher, M. (2002), ‘The Myth of Gao Xingjian’, in Kwok-kan Tam (eds), Soul of Chaos, 111–32, Hong Kong: the Chinese University Press. Roesner, D. (2008), ‘The Politics of the Polyphony of Performance: Musicalization in Contemporary German Theatre’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 18.1: 44–55. Schiffrin, D. (1987), Discourse Makers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schmidt, K. (2005), The Theatre of Transformation: Postmodernism in American Drama, Amsterdam; New York: Rodopi. Shahar, M. (1998), Crazy Ji – Chinese Religion and Popular Literature, Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Asian Center. Shi, Xianrong et al. (1980), Huangdanpai xijuji (On Theatre of the Absurd), Shanghai: Shanghai Yiwen. Shi, Xusheng (1998), ‘20 shiji Zhongguo huaju yu xiqu de guanxi yanjiu’ (A Study of Twentieth-century Chinese huaju and xiqu), in Shi Xusheng

250 Bibliography (ed.), Zhongguo xiandai xiju zhong da xianxiang yanjiu, 1–32, Beijing: Beijing guangbo xueyuan chubanshe. Shuya, Xu (Gao Xingjian) (2005), Le Neige en Août, (Snow in August), Arles: Actes Sud. Sierz, A. (2001), In-yer-face Theatre: British Drama Today, London: Faber & Faber. Sierz, A. (2006), The Theatre of Martin Crimp, London: Methuen Drama. Sierz, A. (2007),‘“Form Follows Function”: Meaning and Politics in Martin Crimp’s Fewer Emergencies’, Modern Drama, 50.3 (Fall): 375–93. Simons, J. (2004), ‘Michel Foucault’, in J. Simons (ed.), Contemporary Critical Theorists – from Lacan to Said, 185–201, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Stegemann, B. and Price, M. R. (trans.), (2008), ‘After Postdramatic Theater’ Theater, 39: 10–24. Szondi, P. and Hays M. (1983), ‘Theory of the Modern Drama, Parts I–II’, Boundary 2, Vol. 11.3, The Criticism of Peter Szondi: 191–230. Tachibana, S. (1992), The Ethics of Buddhism, London and New York: Routledge. Tian, Min. (2008), The Poetics of Difference and Displacement; Twentieth Century Chinese, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Toffoletti, K., Baudrillard Reframed: Interpreting Key Thinkers for the Arts, London: I. B. Tauris. Tomlin, L. (2014), ‘Citational Theory in Practice: A Performance Analysis of Characterisation and Identity in Katie Mitchell’s Staging of Martin Crimp’s Texts’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 24.3: 373–7. Varney, D. Eckersall, P. Hudson, C. and Hatley, B. (2013), Theatre and Performance in the Asia-Pacific: Regional Modernities in the Global Era, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Voela, A. (2012), ‘Antigone and her Double, Lacan and Baudrillard’, Journal for Cultural Research, 17:3: 219–33. Wang, Youru (2003), Daoist Zhuangzi and Chan Buddhism, London and New York: Routledge. Watt, S. (1998), Postmodern/Drama: Reading the Contemporary Stage, Michigan: University of Michigan Press.

Bibliography

251

Weedon, C. (2004), Identity and Culture, Maidenhead: Open University Press. Weiss, K., (2010), ‘Beckett’s “Happy Days”: Rewinding and Revolving Histories’, South Atlantic Review, 75.4 (Fall): 37–50. Woolf, B. (2013), ‘Towards a Paradoxically Parallaxical Postdramatic Politics?’, in K. Jürs-Munby, J. Carroll and S. Giles (eds), Postdramtic Theatre and the Political, 26–31, London: Bloomsbury. Yang, Huiyi (2004), ‘Gao Xingjian de ‘Zhongguo qingyi jie’ (Gao Xingjian’s Affection for China), in Lin Manshu (ed.), Gao Xingjian – 2000 shouwei Nuobei’r wenxue jiang dezhu, 182–9, Xianggang: Mingbao chubanshe. Yeung, J. (2008), Ink Dances in Limbo – Gao Xingjian’s Writing as Cultural Translation, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Yip, S-h. T. and Tam, K-k. (2002), ‘Gender and Self in Gao Xingjian’s Post-exile Plays’, in Kwok-kan Tam (eds), Soul of Chaos, Hong Kong: the Chinese University Press. Yu, Shiao-Ling S. (1996), ‘Introduction’, in S.-L. S. Yu (ed.), Chinese Drama after the Cultural Revolution, 1979–1989, London: Edwin Mellen Press. Zhao, H. (2000), Towards a Modern Zen Theatre, London: SOAS University Press. Zimmermann, H. (2003), ‘Images of Woman in Martin Crimp’s Attempts on Her Life’, European Journal of English Studies, 7.1: 69–85.

About the Author Mary Mazzilli is currently a Lecturer in the department of Theatre and Performance at Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK, and has been a Research Associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, for several years. She was a post-doctoral fellow at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. She received a PhD from SOAS in Chinese Studies and Comparative Literature and previously taught at Goldsmiths College, in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. She is co-editor of  Transnational Chinese Cinema: Corporeality, Desire, and Ethics  (2014). She is, also, a theatre and book critic and has contributed to The Times Literary Supplement, British Theatre Guide, Arts Desk and Theatre Voice.

Index Alarm Signal (Juedui xinhao) 3, 16, 21 alienation 44, 45, 71, 72, 80, 81, 90, 97, 101, 103, 104, 165, 191, 222 alienation effect 14, 44 Brecht and 14 fragmentation and 44, 45, 222 Apollonian. See also Nietzsche, Friedrich Apollonian/Dionysian 194–5 dichotomy 194 process 195 Nietzsche’s categorization of 130 Artaud, Antonin 8, 14. See also Lehmann, Hans-Thies; Total Theatre Balinese theatre 8, 199, 226 Lehmann and 199 Łabędzka and 200 Total Theatre 8, 28, 199, 225 avant-garde 1, 11, 15 Chinese 2, 15 European 8, 15, 226 modern movements 226 theatre 15, 47 Western 8 writers 15 Barthes, Roland 37 death of the author 191 Baudrillard, Jean 19, 164–75, 226. See also Debord, Guy; Foucault, Michel; Fuchs, Elinor; Lacan, Jacques hyperrealism 147, 163, 165 ideology 10 illusion 164, 174 Lacan 170, 171 language 174

notion of reality as simulacra 165 photography 172–5 theory of 172–4 camera lens 175 reciprocal 173 symbolic exchange 164 seduction 170, 171 simulation 171 spectacle 166, 176 (see also Debord, Guy) subject–object and 167, 169 theatre of cruelty and violence 166 theory of production 148 and value 164 Ballade Nocturne 2, 9, 16, 19, 33, 35, 42, 179, 181, 189, 193, 197, 198, 200, 208–15, 216, 225. See also Gao Xingjian; postdramatic transnationalism; self-referentiality; Total Theatre; transnationalism Beckett, Samuel 14, 48, 68, 90, 111, 114, 116. See also Dialogue and Rebuttal; Fuchs, Elinor; Gao Xingjian; postdramatic theatre Bus Stop 48 Chinese theatre 89 Fuchs 91 Dialogue and Rebuttal and 89, 91, 107, 221, 223 Happy Days 17, 89, 92–3, 95, 97, 100, 101, 104–6 Krapp’s Last Tape 37, 68, 91, 143 Müller 90–1 postdramatic theatre 90–4 Waiting for Godot 48 Between Life and Death (Shengsijie; Au bord de la vie) 17, 33, 45,

256 Index 50–1, 62, 87, 91, 93, 94, 96, 98–103, 105, 110, 112, 114, 115, 116, 132, 145, 156, 158, 183, 186–7, 190, 193, 202, 208, 211–15, 220, 222, 226 body 34–5, 38, 39, 71, 76, 170, 186, 191 Crimp and 80 Dialogue and Rebuttal 97 dismembered 75 Fuchs and 37, 41, 68 Lehmann and 39, 58, 73, 120–1, 211 metadrama 31 on stage 34, 72 Brecht, Bertolt 8, 12, 14, 15, 16, 199. See also Lehmann, Hans-Thies; tripartition alienation effect 14 approach to theatre 14, 27 Brechtian methodology 14 Lehmann 27, 123 Peking opera 226 tripartition 71 Umfunktionierung 197 Brook, Peter 14, 16. See also Grotowski, Jerzy; Total Theatre Total Theatre 197, 199 Buddha 39. See also Buddhism Ji Gong (the living Buddha) 129, 130 Buddhism 59, 161, 202, 226 Dialogue and Rebuttal and 93, 102–4 Gao and 57 Zen Buddhism 2, 23, 38, 45, 86, 120 gong’an/koan 103 Bus Stop (Chezhan) 3, 16, 21, 48, 89, 147, 150 ceremonial 15, 113, 116, 166 death 105, 106

Dialogue and Rebuttal 107 and Lehmann 106 theatre 166 chaos 26, 32, 59–60, 94, 120–1, 202–3, 206 hundun (big chaos) 51, 59 cold literature. See Gao Xingjian Crimp, Martin 17, 33, 34, 47–89, 114, 143, 223, 233. See also Beckett, Samuel; Gao Xingjian; self-referentiality Attempts on Her Life 47, 112, 177, 210, 220, 221 Beckett 48, 223 Clash 48 Gao and postdramatic theatre 47–89 self-referentiality 63–9 spectralization 80–5, 86, 221 dance drama 16, 35, 73, 77, 159, 197, 198, 205, 207, 209, 211–13, 215, 225 Ballade Nocture 198, 209 Total Theatre 209, 216 wuju 198 Daoism 120, 133 death 17, 35, 38, 46, 60, 69, 73, 74, 91–2, 94–107, 110, 112, 116, 127, 129, 132, 139, 140, 174, 182–8, 190, 192–7, 220, 222–5. See also Death Collector; Gao Xingjian of the author 191 Beckett 90 beyond death 18, 94–107 (see also postdramatic transnationalism) of the character (see also Fuchs, Elinor) life and 51, 226 of love in postdramatic transnationalism 89–117

Index (see also Dialogue and Rebuttal) staged death 18 Zhao 141 Death Collector (Kouwen Siwang; Le Quêteur de la mort) 19, 33, 163, 179, 181–4, 187–97, 200, 204, 208–16, 225. See also self-referentiality Debord, Guy 148, 165, 176 Baudrillard and 165, 166, 176 theory of spectacle 148, 165, 166 Derrida, Jacques 10, 63, 66, 67, 80, 81 hauntologie 80 Dialogue and Rebuttal (Duihua fangjie; DialoguerInterloquer) 18, 34, 89–116, 131–2, 137, 139–45, 152, 168, 182, 193, 221, 222, 226. See also postdramatic transnationalism Dionysian 129, 130, 132, 194–6. See also Nietzsche, Friedrich énonciateur (story-teller) 47, 80 epic 27. See also postepic narration Fabré, Jan 43 fictive cosmos 28, 40, 41, 46, 123, 178, 197, 208, 215, 225. See also Fuchs, Elinor; Lehmann Hans-Thies Foreman, Richard 42, 43, 68, 114 ontological theatre 68 Foucault, Michel 10, 37, 134, 164, 184, 226. See also Fuchs, Elinor Baudrillard and 164 death of the author 37 freedom 133, 134 Fuchs and 37–42 language 139 freedom 9–10, 18–19, 117–47,

257

160–5, 178–9, 181, 226. See also Gao Xingjian death 182–8 Nocturnal Wanderer 117–47, 224 ontological discourse 160–2 Snow in August 203–4 spectacle 162–5 Weekend Quartet 145, 149, 150, 224 Fuchs, Elinor 21–45, 10, 11, 18, 67, 79, 81, 86, 91–2, 107, 110, 112, 113, 114, 144, 148–9, 159, 178, 183, 188, 192, 194–5, 208, 220–1, 225–6. See also Debord, Guy; fictive cosmos; Gao Xingjian; Lehmann, Hans-Thies Baudrillard 148, 163–6 Beckett 90, 107, 143 Death of Character, The 37–42, 79, 86, 110 Lehmann 1–19, 21–45, 120, 123 literalization 44, 141 metatheatre 44 (see also modernist theatre) Other Shore, The 21–46 postdramatic theatre 19, 26, 90, 197 scenodrama 149 self (subjectivity) 13, 17, 46, 63, 124, 137, 141 theatre of presence 68 Gao Xingjian. See also Alarm Signal; avant-garde, Chinese; Ballade Nocturne; Between Life and Death; Bus Stop; death; Death Collector; Dialogue and Rebuttal; Fuchs, Elinor; Lehmann, Hans-Thies; Nocturnal Wanderer; postdramatic transnationalism; Snow in

258 Index August; transnationalism; Weekend Quartet; Wild Man Chineseness 2, 3, 9, 104, 205, 226 cold literature 8, 118, 132 Nobel Prize for Literature speech 8 Crimp, Martin, comparison with 47–89 Dialogue and Rebuttal 89–117 Frenchness and 9, 19, 179, 226 jiadingxing 16, 23, 24, 43, 115, 196, 223 neutral actor 26, 62, 72, 86, 140–1, 193, 223 Nobel Prize for Literature 1, 3, 8, 118, 187, 216, 243 (see also cold literature) Nocturnal Wanderer 117–47 Other Shore, The 21–46 theatrical origins of Gao 13–19 tripartition (sanchongxing) 25, 63, 72–80, 86, 110, 111, 140, 189, 221 Between Life and Death 61–2, 212, 213–14, 223 fragmentation 93 framing 178 neutral actor 44, 140, 141, 193, 223 Weekend Quartet 147–81 xieyi 14, 115 Grotowski, Jerzy 16, 28. See also Peter Brook hallucination 78–9, 85–6, 115–16, 144, 175–6, 196, 214–15, 221–2 Hamletmachine. See Müller, Heiner Handke, Peter 2, 3, 5, 11, 31, 33, 46, 55, 68, 91, 146, 177, 223. See also postdramatic theatre Sprechstücke 55 hyperreal/hyperrealism/hyperreality 147, 149, 164, 165, 166, 176, 178

Huang Zuolin 2, 14 hundun. See chaos Jelinek, Elfriede 3, 4, 33, 35–7, 46, 49, 80, 177, 223. See also Handke, Peter Ji Gong 129–32, 194 jiadingxing. See suppositionality jingju (Peking opera) 15, 204, 205, 216 Kane, Sarah 48, 50, 239 Kantor, Tadeusz 105, 106, 113. See also Lehmann, Hans-Thies ceremonial of death 105 koan. See Buddhism Lacan, Jacques 10, 57–9, 61, 63, 66–7, 72, 92, 110–11, 171, 226. See also Baudrillard, Jean; Lehmann, Hans-Thies mirror stage 57 seduction 170–1 self 192 semiotic 143 symbolic 109 unconscious and language 57, 110, 138, 168 landscape theatre 114–15, 149, 159, 199, 199. See also Fuchs, Elinor Lehmann, Hans-Thies 1–19, 26–37, 58–9, 63, 69–70, 80, 83, 121–3, 145, 207, 211, 214–15, 224–5. See also freedom; Fuchs, Elinor; Gao Xingjian; monologies; postdramatic transnationalism; postepic narration Beckett 90 Brecht 27, 41 body and 38–9 fictive cosmos 28 Fuchs 1–19, 39, 42

Index

259

hypernaturalism/ist 148 monologies 33, 72, 78 musicalization 34, 197 postdramatic theatre 1–19, 29, 35, 40, 55, 58–9, 73, 145, 147 definition of 117, 199 postmodern theatre 26–37 real/reality 29–30, 68, 113–14, 135–6 self 46, 63 theatre of death 101, 105–7 theatre of perceptibility 43 theatre of spectatorship 32, 85–6, 220-1 Lin Zhaohua 3, 200

also Handke, Peter; Lehmann, Hans-Thies; politics Hamletmachine 55, 145 music 15, 34, 36, 43, 49, 53, 83, 84, 106, 150, 159, 176–8, 181, 197–8, 200, 201, 204–7, 209, 210, 212, 213, 216, 225. See also Ballade Nocturne; Snow in August; Weekend Quartet) musical dance 159 musical score 106 musicalization 33, 34, 43, 178, 207 and Total Theatre 197–8

Marxist 144, 165 Mei Lanfang 2, 14–15 meta-dramatic 141, 144, 223 Meyerhold, Vsevolod 14, 15, 16. See also Brecht, Bertolt mimesis 15, 26, 28, 32–3, 55, 148, 166, 223. See also Lehmann, Hans-Thies modernism 1, 10, 37, 89, 90. See also postmodernism modernist theatre 12, 14–18, 21, 44, 49–50, 226 Fuchs and metatheatre 44 Western 14, 15 modernist writing 2, 49–50 monologies 33, 34, 69, 70, 72, 80, 102, 116, 188, 189, 192, 193, 200, 209, 211, 213, 214, 219, 220, 222, 223, 225. See also Crimp, Martin; Lehmann Hans-Thies Ballade Nocturne 225 Between Life and Death 116, 182, 222 Death Collector 193, 196, 200, 209, 225 Dialogue and Rebuttal 182, 222 Müller, Heiner 5, 55, 112, 117. See

naturalism 14, 147, 148, 177. See also Lehmann, Hans-Thies neutral actor. See Gao Xingjian Nietzsche, Friedrich 19, 130, 187–8, 190, 193–7, 213, 226 Apollonian and Dionysian 130, 194 Birth of Tragedy, The 193 Death Collector 187, 196 music 197 Thus Spoke Zarathustra 188 Tragedy 19 Übermensch (Superman) 187 nirvana 187. See also Buddhism Nobel Prize for Literature. See Gao Xingjian Nocturnal Wanderer (Yeyoushen; Le somnambule) 1, 18, 34, 117–46, 150, 152, 156, 161–2, 168, 175, 178, 184, 216, 223–4, 226 individualism and freedom in 117–46 language and subjectivity 137–46 opera. See jingju (Peking opera) originary self 45, 57, 60, 63, 65, 67, 69. See also Buddhism

260 Index Other Shore, The (Bi’an) 1, 17, 21–46, 102, 145, 280, 220 postdramatic and 42–6 Peking opera. See jingju performativity (and performative) 30, 35–9, 44, 46, 61, 62, 70, 72, 106, 149 photography. See Baudrillard, Jean politics 1, 12, 21, 19, 40, 117–18, 122–3, 131, 136, 137, 160, 162, 169, 178–9, 184, 224. See also Fuchs, Elinor; Gao Xingjian; Lehmann, Hans-Thies; Müller, Heiner freedom and 19, 117–18, 120, 178, 184 Nocturnal Wanderer 136, 146, 150, 224 Other Shore, The 1, 21, 145 politics of perception 122–3, 136 theatre and 18, 32, 117, 120, 123, 160 postdramatic realism 147–80, 224. See also postdramatic transnationalism; Weekend Quartet postdramatic theatre 1–19, 21–46, 47–87, 90–4, 105, 117, 120, 123, 136, 147, 149, 155, 178, 179, 196, 197, 199, 219, 225, 226, 227. See also fictive cosmos; Fuchs, Elinor; Handke, Peter; Lehmann, Hans-Thies; Total Theatre Beckett and 90–4 comparison of Gao to Martin Crimp 47–87 Nietzsche and tragedy 19 Other Shore, The 21–46 postdramatic transnationalism 6, 16, 18, 19, 89–115, 177–9, 181–97, 219,

226. See also Lehmann, Hans-Thies; Total Theatre; transnationalism Between Life and Death 87 Death Collector 181–2 death of love 89–115 Dialogue and Rebuttal 89–115 (see also Buddhism) realism and 177–9 postepic (post-epic) narration 34, 47, 69, 82, 86, 214, 220, 223. See also Brecht, Bertolt; Lehmann, Hans-Thies postmodern theatre 12, 26–37, 40, 64. See also Fuchs, Elinor; Lehmann, Hans-Thies Fuchs 37, 149 Lehmann and 26–37 postmodernism 10, 40, 49. See also Crimp, Martin; Fuchs, Elinor; modernism realism 14, 25, 147, 148, 167, 177–9, 224. See also postdramatic realism; postdramatic transnationalism naturalism–realism 148 postdramatic transnationalism and 177–9 Socialist realism 14 reality 14, 15, 18, 24, 28–30, 31, 34, 36, 44, 55, 58, 65, 70, 71, 72, 78, 79, 82, 83, 86, 96, 110, 115, 116, 121, 122–3, 128, 137, 140, 144, 147, 148, 149, 156, 157, 158, 162–8, 170, 172–5, 178, 179, 188, 202, 215. See also Baudrillard, Jean; mimesis art and reality as illusion 162–3 boundaries with fictional 122–3 fictional reality 79, 86, 115, 173, 175, 215 realist theatre (theatre of the

Index real) 14, 18. See also postdramatic realism; postdramatic theatre Brook and Stanislavsky 14 Reality Theatre 148 simulacra 165 unreality 79 Sartre, Jean-Paul 133, 134 Schwab, Warner 148, 177 seduction. See Lacan, Jacques; Baudrillard, Jean self-referentiality 17, 29, 30, 37, 46, 47, 55–69, 82, 85, 167, 181, 189–97, 201, 219–20. See also Crimp, Martin; Fuchs, Elinor; Lehmann, Hans-Thies; postdramatic transnationalism; transnationalism split of subjectivity and 189–97 Snow in August 201 self-reflexive. See self-referentiality semi-realistic 19, 102, 147, 154, 158, 172 simulacra. See Baudrillard, Jean Snow in August (Bayuexue) 16, 19, 35, 179, 181, 191, 198, 200, 201–8, 216, 225. See also postdramatic transnationalism; Total Theatre; transnationalism Soul Mountain (Lingshan) 1, 3 spectacle 19, 28, 40, 83, 84, 148, 149, 150, 162–76, 177, 178, 224. See also Debord, Guy freedom to 162–5 subjectivity to 165–76 spectator 27, 29, 30–2, 36, 42, 44, 46, 69–71, 78–9, 81–6, 91, 93, 112–16, 117, 121–2, 136, 141–5, 157, 167, 172–5, 189, 196, 207, 212, 214–15, 219–24

261

actor–role–spectator relation 44, 46, 55, 214–15, 223–4 theatrical experience and 69–71 spectralization. See Crimp, Martin; split of subjectivity; self-referentiality suppositionality (jiadingxing) 24, 43, 46, 79, 196 suppositional reality 82 suppositional theatre 24, 78, 86, 177, 223 symbolic exchange. See Baudrillard, Jean; Lacan, Jacques Szondi, Peter 12–13, 26–8, 41, 195. See also Lehmann, Hans-Thies crisis of the dramatic 12–13, 195 drama 26–8 Timar, Alain 75, 104, 212 Total Theatre (Le théâtre holistique; wanquan de xiju) 8, 16, 19, 28, 35, 181, 197–200, 206, 207, 209, 216, 225. See also Artaud, Antonin; Ballade Nocturne; music; postdramatic transnationalism; Snow in August; transnationalism music and 197–8 postdramatic attempts at transnationalism 199–200 transnationalism 7, 9, 16, 18, 46, 87, 118, 146, 181–227. See also postdramatic transnationalism trauma 90, 21, 92, 101, 105, 107 tripartition (sanchongxing) 25, 44, 63, 71–2, 75, 78, 86, 93, 110–11, 140, 141, 178, 189, 193, 212, 213, 214, 221, 223. See also Gao Xingjian violence 29, 32, 54, 71, 74, 75, 78,

262 Index 100, 103, 121–3, 127–9, 133, 135, 141, 166, 167, 212, 214–15, 224 Weekend Quartet (Zhuomo sichongzou; Quatre quatuors pour un week-end) 18, 34, 42, 147–80, 181, 183–4, 188, 191, 193, 203, 215, 224. See also freedom; Gao Xingjian; music

transnational postdramatic realism 147–80 Wild Man (Yeren) 3, 16, 21, 200 Wilson, Robert 28, 114, 197, 198, 207, 208, 209 xieyi 14, 115 xiqu (Chinese traditional theatre) 15 Zen Buddhism. See Buddhism