Chang, Peng-chun

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THE NEW DRAMA AND THE OLD THEATERBY PENG-CHUN CHANGProfessor at Naiikai ]\[iddle School, TientsinCHINESE drama and theater, together with other forms of cul-tural expression, have heen afifected hy the impact of themodern West. New influences have been brought in from abroad,and old traditions are being re-examined from a new point of view.Out of the complex situation, two movements are clearly discernible:the experimentation with new forms of dramatic composition andthe re-evaluation of the technique of the traditional theater.The Chinese became acquainted with Western drama in the be-ginning of the twentieth century. Amateur groups began to takeinterest in the production of Western plays. One of the better knowngroups, calling itself "The Spring Willow Society," about 190S.gathered enough courage to stage a Chinese translation of LaDame aux Cainclias. The manner of presentation, judged by recordsin photographs and written descriptions, must have been very crudeindeed.After 1917, when the new literary movement began, knowledgeof Western drama gradually increased. As one of the declared ob-jectives of the movement was the introduction of new literary formsfrom the outside world ; drama, especially modern prose drama witha social-problem content, attracted special interest. Plays of Ibsenwere quickly translated, widel}' read, and much discussed. The crav-ing for knowledge of Western dramas, thus engendered, gave an im-petus to a wide searching of playwrights to be translated. At thistime I find in my collection of translated plays, which is by no meanscomplete, more than forty authors represented. They range fromShakespeare, Moliere, Goethe, Schiller, Sheridan, Hugo, to themore recent writers such as Ibsen, Strindberg, Hauptmann, Wilde,Shaw. Galsworthy, Rostand, Brieux, Tolstoi, Chekov, Andreyev,Lunacharsky, and Pirandello. While there is much unevenness inthe merit of the translations attempted,, there can be no doubt thatWestern drama has definitely made its entry into the intellectualhorizon of the younger generation.The tendency is also clear that some writers have taken uponthemselves to experiment in writing in the new prose drama form.?.:i".i I ANi'AXc, i\ iiii-. KOI. I-: oi- -nil-; i aikv scattkrixc, ilowp'-RS'THE NEW DRAMA AND THE OLD THEATER 455They feel that, with all the social changes around, new experiencesdemand of plays a new content and a new philosophy of life. Playsof the old type are the embodiments of ideas of traditional moralityand of traditional values which are undergoing unavoidable trans-formation. New prose plays are being written, reflecting on life inthe present-day complex social situation. For instance, pieces havebeen composed taking as themes the experiences of the new indus-trial proletariat, the revolt of youth against family and social re-strictions, the exultations and disappointments of romantic love, andthe indignation and resolute courage in facing the invading foes.New life experiences demand new forms of expression.As the interest in the new drama has come as a phase of the newliterary movement, it is but natural that students in the schools anduniversities should form the main force that appreciates and sup-ports the new plays, translated and original. This explains why theproduction of new plays is still mostly done by students as amateuradventures, though sometimes with consummate skill and scrupulousattention to technique. It is just a matter of a few years, I believe,before professional groups giving performances of the new playswill emerge and attain both artistic and financial success, becausestudents who have left the schools and universities in the past fifteenyears are gradually assuming positions of influence in society, andtheir number is increasing with the graduates of each year.I relate here, in passing, an experience I had in producing Ibsen'sAn Enemy of the People, some five years ago, to serve as an illus-tration of the suspicion toward the new drama on the part of the oldconservative elements, which I am happy to say is no longer existentat present. This play of Ibsen, though much colored by his individ-ualistic bias, I thought, might give instructive warning against cer-tain democratic practices. During the dress-rehearsal, after thesecond act, I was informed that a telephone message from the mili-tary governor's ofiice ordered that the performances as announcedshould be canceled. We could do nothing but obey. Evidently, thetitle A)i Enerny of the People gave the military authorities much un-easiness and cause for suspicion that the play might be directedagainst them. The following spring I wanted to try again the pre-sentation of the play. This time I was cautious. I changed the titleto TJie Stubborn Doctor—a change, necessarily, without the consentof the author, but not altogether too outrageouslv inappropriate.Under this new name, with the same military authorities in the city.456 THE OPEN COURTwe got by safely. I learned from that experience that there was agreat deal in a name.While the new drama form is being acclimatized and while ex-periments are being made in the direction of giving the importedformula some distinctively Chinese flavor, what is the attitudetoward the old theater? How is the indigenous theater that has hada continuous tradition of more than seven hundred years being re-examined and re-evaluated?During the first flush of the new literary movement it was not un-commonly asserted that the traditional theater contained nothing oflasting worth and was destined to extinction in the evolutionarystruggle. More recently, however, attention has been directed inlooking into the art of the old theater to find if there may not be inthe perfected acting technique some things that deserve analysis andre-evaluation. While the old plays may contain points of view thatare no longer suitable for the present era, in the consummate art ofpresentation on the stage are found elements both instructive andsuggestive, not only for the emerging new theater of China, butalso for modern experimentation in other parts of the world. I wasmost happily surprised two years ago. when I visited the Meyerholdtheater in Moscow, in learning something of its method of trainingactors. In a conversation which I was privileged to have withMeyerhold. he told me that he was influenced by his observationsof the technicjue of plastic body control and coordination of Chineseand Japanese actors of the traditional school. He worked on thesuggestion thus derived and evolved his system of actor-trainingwhich he called bio-mechanics. Every morning he had his actors gothrough a series of exercise-patterns that were intended to renderthe bodily parts plastic and agile and to effect an organic coordina-tion of muscle and mind.According to the tradition of the Chinese theater, actors mustgo through long strenuous training, usually beginning at the age oftwelve or thirteen and lasting for seven years or more. The train-ing was \ery severe, and patterns of dancing—in the broad sense ofthe term, including all bodily movements—and of singing weretaught and practised with the minutest attention to detail. The rhythmand grace of Chinese actors of the old school were the result of anintensive training. And it is in this emphasis on bodily plasticity thatwe find one of the glorious achievements of the old theater.THE NEW DRAMA AND THE OLD THEATER 457We may wonderand ask, if all actorsreceive training inthe execution of thesame patterns o fdancing, singing,walking, and talk-ing, what is thechance for individ-uality and progress?If all learn the samemanners of acting,how can a great ac-tor be distinguishedfrom a n unaccom-plished one? Rough-ly speaking, thereare three ways bywhich a great actormay be recognizedand acknowledged.First, a great actorexecutes his p a t-terns with more fin-ish than an averageone. He does not dothings mechanically,but coordinates hismuscles with his mind. And his attention is strained for the per-fect production of significant details. Second, a great actor in hisexecution of the continuous sequence of patterns, produces whatwe might call an aroma of unity. He gives you no chance of de-tecting where one pattern ends and another begins. And third,a great actor, after having achieved distinction in the execution ofpatterns that belong to the common stock of tradition, earns forhimself the right of creating new patterns and of contributing hisshare to the heritage of the stage. Here is where progress comes in.Not any willful innovator, but only the accomplished virtuoso canclaim the prerogative of creating and of leaving his mark on history.THE ACTRESS CHIN SHAO-MEI458 THE OPEN COURTThe traditional technique is obviously not motivated by photo-graphic realism. The Chinese theater cannot take pride in the min-ute and accurate imitation of actuality. In our theater stage walk isfrankly different from ordinary walk, stage talk from ordinary talk,stage costume from ordinary clothes, and stage make-up from or-dinary facial appearance. Yet, the process of extracting, for thepurpose of the stage, "essence" from actuality is by no means arbi-trary or fantastic. There is a method in its madness. The distinc-tions between art and actuality have been formulated and patternedgradually and cooperatively. The process of separating art from ac-tuality is not of the assertive type as evidenced in certain of themodern art movements, ^^'hen a modern artist tells you that hesees the world only in terms of certain shapes and of certain prim-ary colors which are strange, to say the least, to the common mortaleye, he is following a well-reasoned point of view, to be sure, butthat point of view happens to be recent and somewhat sudden inorigin. The Chinese, however, have evolved the distinctions l^etweenart and actuality in a slow and gradual manner.For illustration, let us see how a certain part of the Chinesestage costume gradually attained its present seemingly extraor-dinary aj^pearance. People who have attended Chinese stage per-formances must have noticed the flowing pieces of white silk, some-times over two feet in length, attached to the sleeves of certain cos-tumes on actors playing female parts. These pieces of material arethere not exactly because of the requirements dictated bv historicalauthenticity. They gradually grew from the short originals attachedto ordinary clothes for practical purposes to the flowing and flutter-ing lengths now seen on stage costumes. And the motivating princi-ple has been tlie artistic need of making these pieces longer andlonger for their function in assisting expression. The movementsof hands and arms are emphasized greatly and most meaningfullyby these long appendages. They add to gestures a certain extendedexpressiveness.Re-evaluated from the viewpoint of artistic tcchni(|ue, the oldChinese theater has much of suggestive and instructive value. Isnot the modern theater in the \\'est reacting against the photographicrealism that i:)redominated a generation ns^ol' .\nd are not modernexperiments being directed toward siui])lilicati(ni, synthetization, andsuggestiveness?

The New Drama and the Old Theater.

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The New Drama and the Old Theater.

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