Chinese Shakespeares: Two Centuries of Cultural Exchange
By Alexander C.Y. Huang,
New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. 350 pp.

Lissa Tyler Renaud[1]

Does Shakespeare “belong” to the British, or to all the English-speaking countries? Or to the West? Or to the world? Generally, to those who answer “yes” to the first of these questions, Shakespeare’s art is essentially an art of language, and his plays cannot be fully appreciated without a full, flexible command of English. To those who think of Shakespeare as Western, Shakespeare’s plays express a particular cultural perspective, without which they lose all but their most superficial meaning. Even to those who think Shakespeare can have significance throughout the world, it may come as a surprise that his work has a long and dramatic history in Asia.

Alexander C. Y. Huang’s excellent new book, Chinese Shakespeares, tells the story of Shakespeare in Asia—a story which began virtually during Shakespeare’s lifetime—with an emphasis on Mandarin-speaking China and Taiwan, while also making reference to Cantonese-speaking China and Hong Kong, as well as to other countries whose fates are inextricably linked to the Chinese world, such as Korea and Japan. In this setting, Huang brings to the fore the complex concerns that necessarily emerge in any serious consideration of the intersection of Shakespeare and China.

“All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players”—some would say these famous words from As You Like It are among the most beautiful in the English language. The sequence of liquid sounds, for example—l, l, n, l, m, n, n, m, n, m, l—flirt with the tip of the tongue and the lips, and explode with irony on the hard, spitting initial p and the closing, teeth-gnashing z of the word “players.” This delicious movement of sounds in the mouth is animated by an inner pulse created by the perfect alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables. Some say such lines in Shakespeare are to be spoken in rhythm with the human heartbeat. Shakespeare not only gave the English language over 1600 words and countless expressions, but also gave listeners sounds, rhythms and images of such richness that they routinely captivate the reverent and the skeptical alike.

So how is the native English-speaker to appreciate these same lines, stripped of their mouth-feel and pulse, used to open a 1931 Chinese silent film based loosely on Two Gentlemen of Verona (A Spray of Plum Blossom)?

All the world is a stage.
And men and women merely players.

Huang sets about answering the question of what can make these wooden lines take flight, providing historical and social context for understanding the entirely different aesthetics offered by Chinese Shakespeare. His methodical explication introduces us to Shakespeare as his work has been variously employed for both liberal and conservative social transformation; as it has been read during various periods of political revolution or upheaval; as it has engendered narratives about cultural specificity and universality; as it has served the Asian countries to communicate not only with the rest of the world, but with one another. Huang also gives us the perspective that fixed ideas of China are nothing but highly inaccurate constructs--that instead there are many Chinas to be found in different historical periods, with different ideologies and geocultures, as well as in Taiwan since 1949, in Hong Kong and in the Chinese diaspora. His book, then, works meticulously to give us these more dimensional views of Shakespeare and China in the first place, and then to show the results of their multiple synergies. In the process, Shakespeare becomes “Shakespeare,” and China becomes “China.”

Huang’s concern is that discourse on Shakespeare and Asia has gotten bogged down in observations about the incompatibility of their aesthetics, which produce foreseeable counter-observations about their universality. He suggests “the development of a theoretical model for global Shakespeare,” and his method is derived from cultural and performance theories. His first chapter takes on the notions of “authentic” Shakespeare and cultural ownership. The next chapter describes the Shakespeare-inspired works made in China in the 19^th century based on the Lambs’ prose versions, Tales of Shakespeare—that is, before an actual translation of any play text of Shakespeare’s had been done.

Chapter 3 shows how translation of the plays brought with them moralistic and allegorical readings in the name of cultural reform, and attitudes towards the plays that were hard to shake off. Chapter 4 focuses on the new women’s movement of the 1930s and 1940s, and the resulting “cosmopolitan” interpretations of Shakespeare’s female characters on stage and in film. Chapter 5 looks at the larger meanings of Hamlet as performed in a Confucian temple and in a forced labor camp, and of an ostensibly apolitical Soviet-Chinese Much Ado. Chapter 6 treats the contributions that Chinese opera has made to international Shakespeare, while underlining the part that worldwide market forces have played in forming profoundly misleading impressions in the West that Chinese theatre is far more visual than verbal. Chapter 7 analyzes important, more recent productions in which a Chinese auteur director has seen a Shakespeare play through an intensely personal lens—for example, Lear in a Buddhist frame, or as a one-man show—part of a current of adventurous, experimental Shakespeare-inspired productions in Asia.

The epilogue looks at the postmodern and the post-dramatic, along with the tangle of cultural threads that knot around Chinese productions that aren’t “Chinese” enough for Western audiences, but are too Westernized for home. The text is followed by ten pages of detailed chronological charts and thorough end materials.

It should be noted that this admirable work is theory, not theatre. Those who are used to thinking of Shakespeare as a man of the theatre will encounter him here in the theorist’s language of “Othering” and “interstitial space.” Practitioners who know the plays from the inside may puzzle over the “epistemological distance” between Lear and Cordelia (p. 14), or the passing statement that Beatrice forces Benedick to choose between male friendship and female love (p. 156). Actors might be surprised to see Stanislavsky’s notion of interior “subtext” referred to with regards to revolution and nationalism (p. 26). Nevertheless, Huang writes dazzlingly in his own context, states his theoretical intentions clearly and defends them forcefully. Still, his topic is so interesting, and he handles it so interestingly that, selfishly, one can hope his future writings will be in language rather less diligently academic so as to be enjoyed by, and to benefit, many outside his immediate field.

Today, with phrases such as “global market,” “cultural product” and “aesthetic commodity” looming over theatre debates, the intercultural matters addressed in Huang’s Chinese Shakespeares are surely relevant everywhere. Countries are now importing shows they used to export: productions of Faust, Godot, Medea, Salesman, Seagull and Tartuffe roam the globe, performed as a matter of course by companies that do not share the heritage of the playwright or his original audiences, with texts that have more or less proximity to their originals. As this trend continues to increase, Huang’s new book will no doubt serve all of us as a model for inquiry.

(This review first appeared in Gramma (issue 18, 2010), a journal of theory and criticism, published in Greece. It is reprinted here with permission.)

[1] Lissa Tyler Renaud, a master teacher of acting and voice at InterArts Training in California, has taught throughout the U.S. and at major theatre institutions of South Korea, India, Taiwan and Singapore. A recipient of Ford Foundation and National Science Foundations grants, among others, she is an award-winning actress and is recognized as a director and alignment practitioner. She publishes and lectures widely on the European avant-garde. Her co-edited volume, The Politics of American Actor Training, is newly out from Routledge, 2009.

Interview with David Zinder:
Director and Acting Trainer

Interviewed by Lissa Tyler Renaud[1].

Israeli director David Zinder is a cutting-edge artist who works in the tradition of the scholar-director. With a substantial background in improvisation and a Ph.D. in Dramatic Art, he has received, over some decades, spectacular—even grateful—reviews for his productions ranging from The Bacchae and Macbeth to The Real Inspector Hound. Zinder’s signature directing style, grounded in the dramatic canon and deeply radical in approach, has taken him to work at theatres throughout Western and Eastern Europe, to Asia and the U.S.

In the following interview, Zinder describes the close and sustained relationships with his designers that are a significant component of his working process. At the same time, unusual for a director’s process, Zinder has formulated his own method of actor training, named ImageWork—the result of which is markedly glowing reviews for his actors. With an early book out on Surrealism, it is exciting to think what Zinder might be doing with his current production, Six Characters in Search of an Author, at the Hungarian State Theatre of Cluj, in Romania. In the throes of preparation for this “radical re-working of Pirandello’s masterpiece,” David still made time to correspond with me for Critical Stages.

For more about David Zinder’s directing, teaching, publications and reviews, see his website at http://www.davidzinder.com/.

1. In your country/city, is there any major issue (e.g. a contemporary social problem) that artists fail or neglect to address on stage? Why? Is this due to censorship, or to a blind spot in the community's shared perception of the world—or to a community’s consciously or un-consciously avoiding it?

 

Israel's theatre scene is extraordinarily vibrant and wide-ranging. There are, in fact, very few major issues—if any—that are not addressed onstage. There is no censorship in Israel, and theatres, both government-supported and independents, deal with every possible aspect of Israeli life. As everywhere else, I suppose, there are topical trends that tend to temporarily overshadow other issues, so that, for instance, recently, political issues relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are not high on the agenda while internal social issues are, whereas in the last years of the 20th century, the political issues were the hottest item on the stage.

2. What, if anything, is difficult in communicating with the designers? Why? How early and how often do you exchange views about the coming production? Have you designed shows yourself, and if so, does that make communication easier?

I have "designed" shows only in the sense that I have on occasion chosen a particular configuration for an empty space (e.g. for productions of Macbeth and Blood Wedding, among others) and either created, bought or chosen the costumes, the props and the movable stage elements.

Did you discover anything from doing these things that now informs how you work with your designers?

Even though I believe these productions worked well, and based on previous and subsequent productions with designers, it was clear to me that a designer with an independent and different professional eye would have made a huge difference to the overall artistic level of these productions. My conclusion from all these experiences was very clear: I now work exclusively with designers and collaborate with them on the development of the concept, the space, the costumes and the props. This applies, by the way also to lighting designers, choreographers and composers whom I work with.

Since the experience of designing my own shows was fairly minimal, I can't honestly say that it helped or hindered my subsequent work with designers. All it did was bring home to me the cardinal importance in theatre of artistic collaboration with like-minded colleagues from the different disciplines of theatre practice.

I usually begin working with my designers (sets, costumes and lighting) from the moment I have a first conceptual idea for the production. Since I generally work on a production between six months and a year, this means a constant, lengthy and ongoing dialogue with the designers who, in this sense, become full collaborators in the development of the concept and the ultimate form of the production.

Since over the past ten years at least I have been working with very few, chosen designers/collaborators with whom I have found a common creative and professional language, there have been virtually no difficulties in communication that I can remember.

Would you say something about this language and how you arrived at it? Or what it is about these designers that made you “choose” them?

The choices of designers have been based either on a long-term acquaintance, as is the case with my collaborator on most of my productions since 2002, Miriam Guretzky, with whom I taught for many years at Tel Aviv University, or on acquaintance with the work of a particular designer on more than one production. These designs have to reverberate in me as belonging to my kind of theatrical vision in order for me to make the choice.

As a free-lance director, working mostly in Romania now, I have on occasion worked with local designers and the choice was always based on my having seen their work and had preliminary meetings with them before making a choice. Since I work so closely with my designers, and over so long a period of time in the development of the concept, this is a critical choice so I try to be very careful about it—which is not to say that there haven't been mistakes, but thankfully only one major one that I can remember.

3. In your creative process, which part do you enjoy least? Why? How do you tackle it?

This is almost a trick question. Since the creative process in theatre is protracted, collaborative and complex, it is bound to have ups and downs, but overall it is—for the most part—a joy ride from start to finish. If there are "down" moments, it is mostly when actors don't understand my direction even after I have tried to tackle the problem they are having with all the tools at my disposal. The only answer to that is patience, patience and more patience—assuming of course that I have a basic confidence in that particular actor that she or he can—and will—make the moment work eventually.

Compromise is always a difficulty. When I have a certain vision for the space or for a moment onstage and they don't work because of considerations outside or inside the creative process (e.g. budget restrictions, technical difficulties or problems with actors), I try to tackle it by searching for alternative solutions that might conceivably be better than my original ones. If none can be found and I have to compromise that is always something that I find hard to deal with, because the only remedy for that is making excuses after the fact—and that doesn't help in the real time of the performance.

 

4. During your career, have you ever received a particularly insightful piece of criticism? When, and what did it say? What made it especially important for you?

My answer to that is slightly off on a tangent, but hopefully useful for the purposes of this questionnaire. Salvador Dali once said that the best critique of a work of art is another work of art. Following this concept, I could say that the best "criticism" I ever received was from a wonderful Romanian director by the name of Vlad Mugur (who died in 2003), whose productions of great classics which I was privileged to have seen (Right You Are (If You Think So!), The Cherry Orchard and Hamlet, among others) were filled with so many brilliant and eccentric choices that were "right" even though I couldn't explain them, that I began using the term "Vald Mugur" for every creative choice I made in my productions that I felt was right but simply impossible to explain in any analytical way. I subsequently found a definition for this phenomenon in an article about another director's artistic choices which were described as "surprising and inevitable."

This is a wonderful reply! At the same time, since this is a journal about theatre critics and criticism, this question is being asked with an interest in opening communication between critics and directors. Now, with a chance to “speak directly to the critics,” is there something you can say to them?

More to the point relating to critics, the relationship of creative artists with critics is always very complex, but there is a golden rule that I have tried to follow in my own work and in my teaching which basically goes like this: the spectator—or critic, as the case may be—is always 100% right. The reason for this is very simple—you can’t argue with anyone's subjective perception of your work. What you need to do is listen carefully to every bit of criticism and take from it whatever is important to you. Yoshi Oida describes this beautifully in a paragraph on criticism in The Floating Actor when he says "even a distorting mirror is a mirror."

I can’t put my finger on any one piece of criticism which has given me a unique insight into the overall nature of my work, but I can honestly say that I have indeed listened carefully to everything that has been written about my work. What I have taken away from these critiques is perhaps a better understanding of how my piece actually worked.

Can you give any hint of the differences between working in Israel and Romania?

A word is perhaps fitting here relating to the nature of theatre criticism in the two cultures where I work, Israel and Romania. Over the past two decades, Israeli theatre criticism has become more laconic and somewhat less informed than before, perhaps due to the massive changes that have come about in communication in general. Romanian critics, I have found, are by and large holding on to the more scholarly tradition of the past, and the major critics write extensive reviews about performances with a wide range of intellectual associations that try to place the piece being reviewed in a broad context. Of the two, I clearly prefer the latter, because writing of that nature is bound to have, for the most part, more insightful comments about the production than the ten-liners produced by many critics in Israel.

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Interview with Stan Lai (Lai Shengchuan): Director and Playwright

Interviewed by Lissa Tyler Renaud[1]

Widely recognized as the most influential playwright/theatre director in the Chinese world, Stan Lai has been called “Asia’s Top Theatre Director” (Asiaweek) and “the best playwright in the Chinese language” (BBC).

Many of Lai’s 30 original plays have become classics of the Chinese theatre. His most famous work Secret Love In Peach Blossom Land (1986) “may be the most popular contemporary play in China” according to the New York Times. Lai’s epic 8-hour A Dream Like A Dream has been widely called by critics “a masterpiece” of modern Chinese drama. His “crosstalk” (xiangsheng) plays, starting with the groundbreaking That Evening, We Performed Xiangsheng (1985), epitomize the unique quality of his work that “blends high art with popular culture.” His recent The Village (2008) has become the most highly acclaimed Chinese language play of recent times. The Beijing News calls it “the pinnacle of our era.”

Lai lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan, where he has received the National Arts Award an unprecedented two times. In 2007, Lai was elected into the Chinese Theatre Hall of Fame. Lai’s work is celebrated for its heroic contribution to articulating the Chinese diaspora culture in its fullest complexity. His approach to doing this has been informed in some part by his years in the West: his Ph.D. in Dramatic Art from U.C. Berkeley in 1983, the improvisational approach to play creation he originally came to through Shireen Strooker of the Amsterdam Werkteater's, an affinity for the early European avant-garde. Lovers of Chekhov and Beckett, for example, detect much to gratify them in Lai’s productions. But it is through his commitment to Taiwan that he has so profoundly integrated and animated these forces.

The Chinese-speaking world observed the modern Western theatre for a century without having a comparable dramatic canon of its own, for the most part developing instead its magnificient classical theatrical forms and adaptations of Western plays. Lai has given the Chinese people a contemporary theatre of their own―a theatre that speaks for his nation, his part of the globe, his people in the largest sense.

Lai served as Professor and Founding Dean of the College of Theatre at Taipei National University of the Arts, and also as Visiting Professor at Berkeley, Stanford, Beijing’s Central Academy of Drama and Shanghai Theatre Academy. Lai has also made two feature films that have received top awards at the Berlin, Tokyo and Singapore film festivals. Lai’s website is located at http://www.pwshop.com/eng/stanlai.php.

Already known around the theatre-going world, Lai created the opening and closing ceremonies for this past summer’s 2009 Deaflympics in Taipei (see YouTube), that gave prominence to deaf communities internationally. His directing was acclaimed for the aesthetic beauty and innovation of these ceremonies.

Lai is so interviewed, so written about, so scrutinized with regards to his methods, his politics, his religion, on and on―that one can only hope to distinguish oneself as an interviewer by staying out of the man’s way. Lai answered the following questions against the backdrop of his shows in Guangzhou in January, in Beijing in February, in Taipei in March, and a trip to Nepal in between.

1. In your country/city, is there any major issue (e.g. a contemporary social problem) that artists fail or neglect to address on stage? Why? Is this due to censorship, or to a blind spot in the community's shared perception of the world―or to a community’s consciously or un-consciously avoiding it?

My creative base is Taipei, Taiwan, which I consider one of the freest places for expression in the world. Since the late ‘80s this free atmosphere has become an incubator for some of the most diverse and interesting theatre in the world. This was not true when I started making theatre in the early ‘80s. In those days we had stringent government censors who required us to submit scripts three months before opening. My method of writing plays has always been improvisational, so three months ahead of time there usually was nothing to show. We had to fabricate fake plays for the censors to screen. It was quite an absurd cat-and-mouse game. Oddly enough, the broad popular success of my plays kept the censors quiet, even though we were treading on many taboo subjects.

My plays are performed all over China―we share a common language. There we often run into interesting judgment calls on what can be performed.

 

2. What, if anything, is difficult in communicating with the designers? Why? How early and how often do you exchange views about the coming production? Have you designed shows yourself, and if so, does that make communication easier?

Communication is always a problem and time consuming. The simple fact is that we all see the world differently and we all work differently. My method of making plays is very organic and difficult to comprehend. It sometimes starts from a kernel of a concept that can be very abstract, or sometimes a very mature idea and structure. That doesn’t mean that I have a set vision in my mind that the play has to look so and so. Not at all. I leave as much space as possible for visual elements to work themselves in to the play. But since mine is an organic process of creativity that progresses from phase to phase, the designer must tune in to the deepest nucleus of the work―before it is fleshed out. This is not at all easy. For many institution-trained scenic designers, (particularly from the U.S.), their priority is to produce a design as soon as possible. This is understandable for production needs, but undesirable for my process. The result is sometimes unusable or obsolete come performance. Some designers thus attempt to design a stage that is as open as possible to modulation, thinking that this will be the best way to satisfy my needs as the creative process unfolds.

Certain designers can delve into the core of the piece and contribute essential visual elements that in turn propel the creative process, enriching the script or changing the direction of the script-in-progress. This is for me the optimal situation, but often this creates chaos for the production side that must adjust with limited time.

More and more I design shows myself, or work with artists that I need to have less communication with! This may sound like a strange statement. Communication is not so much a problem as the time it takes to communicate. For me, since playwriting and directing is one job, not two, the two jobs happening concurrently, I always wish to have more time to myself to work on the enormous tasks to do with these two facets of the work. Thus to leave design issues to trusted artists who know me well becomes the desirable mode of working.

3. In your creative process, which part do you enjoy least? Why? How do you tackle it?

Once in Beijing, I was sat down at a table in a café from 9 in the morning till 7 in the evening, doing interview after interview after interview. The last one of the day, a very nice and polite man, asked this very question, and I rudely answered “This.” Though not part of the creative process per se (all facets of which I enjoy), promotion/publicity is an essential part of the success of a production, so I am listing it here. The Beijing circumstances are repeated everywhere, every time. Once in Tokyo I was “captive” in a hotel room for two days doing non-stop interviews from different media, and my translator at one point, after fielding a question, turned to me and said, “You rest, I’ll answer for you.”

Why? Because we never think this is part of our job, thus resenting it, but it is [part of our job] and we should accept it as such. Every production I wish for more and more private time to work on the script and everything to do with it, and every production I am called on for promotional needs. In recent years I have learned to live with it, and even look at every encounter with media as a chance to let people know more deeply about my work and even about life. Thus according to some media, some recent interviews I have given have let reporters change their attitudes about art and life. This comes from patience and tuning in to THEIR needs.

In China particularly, since my plays have had good success at the box office, many reporters assume I am a “commercial director.” And in market-crazy China, they are always curious about how I can always predict the market for theatre audiences. One recent interviewer even went so far as to ask, about my recent play The Village which had a very successful recent tour of China: “Which part of your play was trying to patronize the government? Which lines were attempts to patronize the audience?” I kept my cool and replied, “Do you really think that’s the way to write a play? Act one is brown-nosing the government. Act two brown-noses Shanghai audiences. Act 3 brown-noses Beijing audiences. I think that anyone writing a play using this strategy would certainly write a ridiculously lousy play.” Later this reporter apologized and sincerely said, “Thank you for making me understand this issue.”

 

4. During your career, have you ever received a particularly insightful piece of criticism? When, and what did it say? What made it especially important for you?

Though I have been blessed with my share of good critiques throughout my career, I always think that any negative criticism, right or wrong, is worth thinking about. Early in my career, after having made two plays through my improvisational methodology, a critic said that such a new method of creating plays is good, but it can only make episodic works of unrelated short scenes; it can never make a unified story. This was like saying that a collage artist can never paint a still life. This criticism spurred me to make my next play, called The Passer-By, a unified story akin to a psychological thriller, but built through improvisational rehearsals. Since then I have made many many unified stories, but they all have the layers and complexity that can be constructed through my method. A Dream Like a Dream is several unified stories spread out over an 8-hour structure.

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[1] Lissa Tyler Renaud, a master teacher of acting and voice at InterArts Training in California, has taught throughout the U.S. and at major theatre institutions of South Korea, India, Taiwan and Singapore. A recipient of Ford Foundation and National Science Foundations grants, among others, she is an award-winning actress and is recognized as a director and alignment practitioner. She publishes and lectures widely on the European avant-garde. Her co-edited volume, The Politics of American Actor Training, is newly out from Routledge, 2009.