Gao Xingjian and Transcultural Chinese Theatre (review)

Gao Xingjian is the first contemporary Chinese playwright to enter the Western canon, as evidenced by his winning of the 2000 Nobel Prize for Literature; the translation of his works into numerous languages (including English); and the inclusion of his play The Other Shore in the latest edition of The Wadsworth Anthology of Drama (edited by W. B. Worthen), a widely used text in American college theatre courses. We will leave aside for the moment the huge controversy sparked by the Swedish Academy's choice of Gao, and the implications of his canonization in light of the facts that he has been exiled from China since 1987 and is a French citizen whose works are banned in his original homeland. When the decision was announced in 2000, China disowned him while Taiwan celebrated him.

Just before and in the wake of Gao Xingjian's acceptance of the Nobel Prize, several scholarly works were published in English that provide increased access to his plays and excellent analysis of his life and work. These include Gilbert Fong's The Other Shore: Plays by Gao Xingjian (1999), Henry Zhao's Towards a Modern Zen Theatre: Gao Xingjian and Chinese Theatre Experimentalism (2000), Kwok-kan Tam's edited volume Soul of Chaos: Critical Perspectives on Gao Xingjian (2001), and a special issue of Modern Chinese Literature and Culture (2002). The Chinese theatre specialist should of course read all of these texts, as well as the numerous published articles and emergent doctoral dissertations on Gao. However, for the nonspecialist who seeks a single comprehensive and readable source about Gao as a playwright (for he is also a novelist and a painter), the book of choice is Sy Ren Quah's Gao Xingjian and Transcultural Chinese Theatre. In this reviewer's opinion, it is the best overall study of Gao, inclusive of his personal background, his status as a transnational exile, and his dramaturgy and dramatic theory.

Quah displays a thorough knowledge of the existing literature (in both Chinese and English) on Gao, and has synthesized and clarified discussions of his plays and theories that appear in other texts. In particular, his explications of xieyi (polyphony), and jiadingxing (which he translates as "suppositionality," an improvement on Zhao's earlier translation, "hypotheticality") are informative and enlightening, and Quah does a better job than any other scholar of discussing Gao's theatrical oeuvre in the context of both its domestic and international influences, ranging from Huang Zuolin to Brecht and Beckett. The reader of this book comes away with a better understanding not only of Gao's strategies as a playwright, but also of the complex development of spoken drama in China during the twentieth century. Having gained knowledge in both of these areas, the reader is well prepared to read (and produce) Gao's plays, and is aware of his significant status as both an artist and a public intellectual.

The author's astute arrangement of the book aids in this process. Quah first introduces the reader to Gao, his Nobel, and the idea of the transcultural. Integrating inter- and intraculturalism, Quah's concept of transcultural theatre differentiates itself from Patrice Pavis's definition of the term in that it does not necessarily indicate a transcendence of particular cultures in a quest for universality. Rather, Quah wisely chooses the term "transcultural" in reference to Gao's dramatic practice because Gao "is at ease in and moves freely between different cultures" and "embodies aspects of cultural exchange and integration that are at times collaboratory and at times contradictory" (13–14). In part 1 ("Exploration within Context"), Quah first places Gao's emergence as a ground-breaking playwright in China within the wider context of spoken drama as an imported Western form subsequently influenced by Western figures like Brecht and Beckett ("Searching for Alternative Aesthetics"). He then explains how Gao responded to these influences in addition to intracultural indigenous traditions, particularly in his play Wild Man ("Exploration in Action"). In part 2 ("Theater and its Representation"), Gao...