Asian Theatre

ASIAN THEATRE MANY ASIAN COUNTRIES SHARE COMMON THEATRICAL FORMS and conventions with India. India being the source of the theatre in Asia, these forms in many cases had migrated from India or were adopted by several Asian countries. The similarity of theatrical forms and conventions is such a dominating factor in Asian theatre that even in those countries, such as China and Japan, where the theatre developed independently, the basic dramatic principles and conventions are similar. The Asian drama is essentially a dance-drama. It has its roots in the ancient classical dances of Asia: Noh and Kabuki in Japan and Kathakali in India. All three are highly stylized, setting an aesthetic distance between performers and audience by various means: this was what Brecht called Verfremdung. The Asian dance-drama avoids the naturalistic limitation of the texture of everyday life: it is concerned with myth, with the expression of feelings, attitudes and ideas which take us to the deepest and most important aspects of man's nature, and so demands forms of dance and music of the greatest subtlety and beauty, able to support the expression of such transcendental matters. Each of the three dramatic genres we are concerned with here has its earthy, comic, satirical, relatively naturalistic side, but this commonly has the function of light relief helping audiences to come to terms with more exacting dramatic poetry-as did the satyr plays which were performed in ancient Greece after the tragic trilogies, the comic scenes in Elizabethan tragedies, and the jigs (bawdy farces, both sung and danced) performed after Elizabethan plays. The Asian theatre is total and the totality is achieved in many ways and through many dramatic devices and conventions. Poetry, music, dance and mime forming an integral part of the drama enrich and heighten the thematic content and artistic values of the play. The architectural features and form of the stage facilitating closeness and rapport between the actors and the audience give a sense of totality to the theatrical experience. Many conventions regulating the entries and exits of the characters, delivery of dialogues, representation of the locale and treatment of time and place are intended to enlarge the area of dramatic communication and multiply the levels of histrionic response. The script in Asian. drama is the basic factor in developing and achieving the elements and values of a total theatre. The script is not all important in the Asian theatre. What is of fundamental importance is the complex relationship between the 4·55 456 MODERN DRAMA February sung words and the dranlatic expression, by gestures, facial expressions , and dancing. Rarely is there a straight-forward one-to-one relationship between words and mudras-gestures-what we normally find is a parallel flow of two streams of poetic imagery, one composed of words and the other of dance images; the way in which these two streams interact varies a good deal from episode to episode in any one drama, and there are even greater differences between the different dance-drama forms. But it must be admitted that the script in Asian drama ignoring a formal structural unity and a single-plane movement adopts a flexible structure with thematic diversity and multi-plane movement of drama. Progression of the plot is concentric and not vertical as in Western drama. The drama of many Asian countries is both seg~ mented into small parts and also eminently organic. In Indian classical theatre each Act can be performed separately. Many folk plays are performed as serials, and Rama and Krishna cycle plays are divided into several drama days. Freedom from the laws of dramatic unities makes possible the multiplicity and simultaneity of action. All this helps in enlarging the thematic range of drama. The Asian drama is rooted in religion. Indian colonists carried the dance-arts of India to many countries of South-East Asia, along with religion, and there they have survived (in modified form), still telling the same stories from Hindu epics. Japan received the impact of Indian religion and Indian arts more indirectly-via Indonesia, Korea and China-but in her ancient forms of theatre one can detect im~ portant Indian elements; one can do the same in...