Hung Teng Chi: The Red Lantern: an Example of Contemporary Chinese Dramatic Experimentation

HUNG TENG CHI: THE RED LANTERN AN EXAMPLE OF CONTEMPORARY CHINESE DRAMATIC EXPERIMENTATION THE FOLLOWING COMMENTS ARE OFFERED IN THE HOPE that they may help to throw a little objective light on what has been an obscure field of study. The theater has remained one of the more neglected Chinese artistic forms if only for the reason that few Westerners, especially theater people, have had the opportunity for close contact with first class performances. In the Chinese as in any theater only immediate experience continually indulged can provide the knowledge from which understanding and appreciation are derived. This experience has been denied a majority of Western people compelled to accept the old exotic generalizations handed down ad nauseam. Practical experience has most often been limited to the hybrid displays of Chinatown or the unskilled performances of expatriate amateurs. Small wonder that the Chinese theater has remained remote in Western conception and if that is true of the past it is doubly so today. Communist attempts to "reform" the traditional Peking opera, so called, have made copy for the popular Western press in recent years although little real information has been offered the enquiring reader. With communication between China and the West at the present dismal levels it is only possible for most of us to follow Chinese theatrical activities from afar and through secondary sources. The description of the play Hung Teng Chi which follows is based upon a Chinese recording· of some of the main scenes performed by the original cast, the published script and the very considerable publicity that has been given the production in the Peking propaganda press during the last year. After what has been said about immediate experience a critique based on these sources sounds like a contradiction of principles, certainly it is unsatisfactory as total realization. Nevertheless, for those familiar with the form listening to sound patterns in this way provides working knowledge·Script and Score. I62 pp. Hung Teng Chi. Tsung P'u. (Chung-kuo ching-chil yUan wen-hsileh i-shu shih pien) Chung-kuo chiilg-chil yilan wen ch'u. Yin-yUeh ch'u-pan she. Pei Ching 1965. -Records Two LP Thirty-three and a half. Chung-kuo ch'ang-pien DM 6141-11. Chung-kuo ching-chil i-t'uan yen ch'u. Kao Yii-chien, Ch'ien Hao-liang, Liu Ch'ang-yil (chu yen). 404 1967 CHINESE DRAMATIC EXPERIMENTATION 405 which is not all conjecture and it is in the light of this that these comments are offered. Before going on to discuss the play, however, it may be relevant to attempt a brief analysis of the artistic philosophy of the old Chinese theater. With this clearly in mind it becomes easier to compare contemporary trends. The problems of intercultural communication often cause us to fall back on the use of familiar terminology to describe the unknown quantity. A good example is found in the word "opera" for so long a convenient but lazy English definition for traditional Chinese theater practice. Through force of habit the Chinese themselves have adopted this cliche in their own English usage. Until 1949 it remained the easy way out for defining a theatrical style that was really undefinable in plain English. Easy comparison leads to ambiguity which in this case meant that "opera" and "drama" became interchangeable terms in describing Chinese stage practice although they have different implications in their Western sense. Semantic ambivalence became yet one more factor in sidetracking Western comprehension of a form whose technical complexities in any case left the majority content to accept the nearest convenient definition. It will be suggested later that under communist "reforms" the traditional genre today can be more legitimately classed as opera for it is in the remoulding of form and method to conform with certain Western concepts that the real significance of present changes in the traditional Chinese theater must be sought. What is actively implied in comparing opera and drama in relation to the philosophy underlying Chinese theater art? Drama is created phenomenon on a stage resulting from the dynamic contribution of the actor within a recurrent flow of motion whose rhythms provide access to an inner world of...