China's top dramas

As Meng Jinghui’s seminal The Life Attitude of Two Dogs returns to Beijing (at Fengchao Theatre from Tuesday 14-Sunday 19 February, Mandarin only) Time Out looks at seven dramas that changed Chinese theatre forever

 

 

 Penned by ‘China’s Shakespeare’ Cao Yu, Thunderstorm is a hyper-tragedy about a respected family patriarch who fathers two children with his maid, then casts them out of the household. Through happenstance,his kidnapped daughter ends up his servant and gets involved with his son, not knowing they are half-siblings. The truth comes out; madness and suicide ensue. Be sure to check out the rest of the trilogy, Sunrise (Ri Chu, 1936) and Wilderness (Yuan Ye, 1937), too.

 

Significance

Critics point to the obvious similarities with Ibsen’s Ghosts. Regardless, Thunderstorm remains the first mature Chinese drama with a Western, not Peking opera, structure, setting the stage for China’s playwrights to come.

 

 

Legendary playwright Lao She’s masterwork represents the heart of Beijing culture, tracking 70 characters over 50 years, and covering three epochs of Chinese history. Act I deals with the Qing Dynasty’s decay, while Act II chronicles the Republic of China’s internecine warlord battles. The final act details the savagery of the Kuomintang government after the Anti-Japanese War.

 

Significance

Like many other classics, Teahouse was banned during the Cultural Revolution – which also saw its author’s ‘suicide’ – but was revived with great fanfare in 1980. Hugely popular abroad, this was one of the first Chinese dramas to establish a lasting link with the West, and provided China’s campuses with artistic vocabulary such as ‘symbolism’, ‘expressionism’ and ‘stream of consciousness’.

 

 

Zong Fuxian’s take on the 1976 Tiananmen Square incident, where officials attacked demonstrators mourning Premier Zhou Enlai’s death, sees a high-level cadre embrace capitalism – and suffer political persecution. A family hides him from sinister forces but pays dearly for its benevolence.

 

One of the first plays to deal openly with the Cultural Revolution, Zong’s story was an early example of shanghen, (‘literature of the wounded’), which used tales of human suffering to criticise the Gang of Four. Upon seeing the play, dramatist Cao Yu called Zong ‘a brave pioneer and my young teacher’.

 

 

Eight archetypal characters from Chinese society are desperate to follow their dreams to the big city, but the busses keep passing them by. When Silent Man decides to walk, Carpenter, Mother and the others spend ten years blaming society’s ills for their underachievements, before they too trudge off towards town.

 

Deemed politically ‘unacceptable’, Nobel Laureate Gao Xingjian’s first play was shelved for two years, but in 1983, director Lin Zhaohua staged 13 performances at the Beijing People’s Art Theatre before officials ordered the production to close. Besides rejecting traditional huaju (spoken drama) conventions, Bus Stop was also China’s first foray into the Theatre of the Absurd – think Waiting for Godot with Chinese characteristics.

 

 

Story

Also by the Gao-Lin team, Absolute Signal’s protagonist is forced to take part in a train robbery, but meets a former classmate, an elderly stationmaster, and his girlfriend while on-board. Conflicts ensue, convictions are clarified and the crime never comes off.

 

Set in a black box (hei xiazi) and using flashbacks, Signal is seen as China’s first experimental theatre work. Besides being hugely popular, it set off the ‘small theatre’ (xiao juchang) movement here and established director Lin as the father of experimental drama.

 

 

Based on Tang Ying’s novel No Love in Shanghai, with a stage adaptation by experimental theatre phenomenon Zhang Xian, Wife reflects the urgency many young Chinese felt in the 1980s to go abroad. Returning from the US, a young Shanghai wife feels adrift and realises she and her husband have grown apart.

 

Significance

Usually dwarfed by the Cultural Revolution’s long shadow,’80s China also saw tumultuous societal change. ‘This is what happens when you’re suddenly unlocked from decades of political pressure,’ says Qian Zheng, producer of Gao Zhan (20-20 Musical Company). ‘Freedom has a cost.’

 

 

With his watershed Rhinoceros in Love (Lian Aide Xi Niu, 1999), director Meng Jinghui proved that experimental drama could turn a profit. In 2007, however, Dogs made black-box theatre not only accessible but hip. Wealthy and Good Luck – wearing cargo shorts, high-top trainers and dog ears – play electric guitar and wax poetic about issues ranging from real estate prices and world hunger to fake handbags and transgenic vegetables, before boarding a spaceship for parts unknown.

 

Significance
Rhinoceros is a disturbing story of obsessive love, while Dogs is a high-energy, funny rant about the state of the world. In Dogs, Meng showed that with clever staging and engaged performers, theatre doesn’t need sets, costumes, a cogent storyline or even a common language to be entertaining and wildly popular. This is the ideal inspiration for future Chinese theatre; catch Dogs this month and see if you agree.